Improve Gaming Build

[Thomas01]

My PC build so far: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/JbdxWZ

Budget: £950 (give or take)

Hello everyone, I am trying to make a PC that will mainly be used for Gaming however will also be used for School Work, General internet usage, and watching videos (in that order of importance). I do not want to upgrade this build for two/three more years time so that is why the parts may seem to be more than I need at this time.

Could you please recommend some improvements and tell me what Cooler I should get (I am not planning to overclock) and the PSU also.

How I would like to play games:

I will be playing a large variety of games with my friends and we will be talking over Skype. I would like to run most games at their highest settings and with smooth frame rates (60fps).

Thanks for any help you can give me.

- Thomas

BTW I am new to this site so sorry if I have made a mistake on where to post this question or whatever.

 

[frag06]

I would go for something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£167.50 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£23.82 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£68.99 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£87.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (£267.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair 450D ATX Mid Tower Case (£90.00 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£84.49 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £936.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-08 17:28 GMT+0000

or:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£243.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£23.82 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£63.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (£267.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case (£58.79 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£84.49 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £948.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-08 17:45 GMT+0000

You don't need the i7 for gaming; an i5 will give you the same performance.

I added an SSD, better GPU, a case and a PSU.

The 212 EVO is more than enough for a 4690K if you aren't overclocking.

 

[RookieOfTheYear]

My PC build so far: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/JbdxWZ

Budget: £950 (give or take)

Hello everyone, I am trying to make a PC that will mainly be used for Gaming however will also be used for School Work, General internet usage, and watching videos (in that order of importance). I do not want to upgrade this build for two/three more years time so that is why the parts may seem to be more than I need at this time.

Could you please recommend some improvements and tell me what Cooler I should get (I am not planning to overclock) and the PSU also.

How I would like to play games:

I will be playing a large variety of games with my friends and we will be talking over Skype. I would like to run most games at their highest settings and with smooth frame rates (60fps).

Thanks for any help you can give me.

- Thomas

BTW I am new to this site so sorry if I have made a mistake on where to post this question or whatever.

Do you need an Operating system, monitor, keyboard and mouse included in the build?

 

[RookieOfTheYear]

Here would be my suggested build without needing an operating system, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£243.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£23.82 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£63.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£90.00 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (£275.58 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£59.60 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.46 @ Aria PC)
Total: £973.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-08 17:42 GMT+0000

 

[RookieOfTheYear]

And this would be my suggested build if you do need an operating system, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£199.69 @ More Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£63.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (£275.58 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£59.60 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.46 @ Aria PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£75.35 @ Ebuyer)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2252MH 60Hz 21.5" Monitor (£105.59 @ Amazon UK)
Keyboard: Gigabyte GK-K6800 Wired Standard Keyboard (£9.37 @ Aria PC)
Mouse: Zalman ZM-M300 Wired Optical Mouse (£7.99 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1013.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-08 17:47 GMT+0000

It comes in a about £70 over your budget, but you get everything you need to start gaming. You would just most likely want to upgrade your sound as you would have to use the built in speakers from the monitor. This would last you the the three years you are hoping for, and if not, you could easily just add a second 970 in SLI and be right back on top playing all the latest games on ultra. I made sure you have a big enough power supply to support SLI (or crossfire if you for some reason went the AMD route in the future). That Xeon is a ridiculously good deal. You get i7 performance for a fair amount less money. The reason it is cheaper is because it doesn't have integrated graphics. But that is irrelevant since you will be using a discrete GPU.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

 

[Thomas01]

And this would be my suggested build if you do need an operating system, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£199.69 @ More Computers)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£63.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (£275.58 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£59.60 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.46 @ Aria PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£75.35 @ Ebuyer)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2252MH 60Hz 21.5" Monitor (£105.59 @ Amazon UK)
Keyboard: Gigabyte GK-K6800 Wired Standard Keyboard (£9.37 @ Aria PC)
Mouse: Zalman ZM-M300 Wired Optical Mouse (£7.99 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1013.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-08 17:47 GMT+0000

It comes in a about £70 over your budget, but you get everything you need to start gaming. You would just most likely want to upgrade your sound as you would have to use the built in speakers from the monitor. This would last you the the three years you are hoping for, and if not, you could easily just add a second 970 in SLI and be right back on top playing all the latest games on ultra. I made sure you have a big enough power supply to support SLI (or crossfire if you for some reason went the AMD route in the future). That Xeon is a ridiculously good deal. You get i7 performance for a fair amount less money. The reason it is cheaper is because it doesn't have integrated graphics. But that is irrelevant since you will be using a discrete GPU.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

I do not need an OS, Keyboard or a mouse but I do need the monitor. Is there anything i can spend the extra £100 on or is that build fine without it? Both of the builds you have suggested look the best so far so I will probably go with one of those builds.

 

[RookieOfTheYear]

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean by extra £100. I thought I was a bit over budget on both builds. Here is the build I would go with if you can afford to stretch your budget that far.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£243.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.19 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£63.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£89.72 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (£275.58 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£59.60 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.46 @ Aria PC)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2252MH 60Hz 21.5" Monitor (£105.59 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1054.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-10 00:36 GMT+0000

It is just the first build I suggested with the same monitor in the second build added to it, except I took off the CPU cooler to save a little money. You could save another £50 by going with this SSD instead of the Samsung if you need to.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£42.80 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £42.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-10 00:44 GMT+0000

Remember the prices of these parts can change any time. And if you wait more than a week, at least one part will most likely go up in price.