Is this selection OK?

sparky29

Reputable
Jan 11, 2015
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Hi. I am building a gaming computer with my son. I would be grateful if anybody could give me any advice about my selection and if it could be improved without spending too much more as we are at the upper end of his budget.

Sorry the selection has no links but I couldn't work out how to export it from PCPartpicker.

CPU Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor £169.49 Amazon UK

Motherboard MSI Z97-G55 SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard £109.99 Aria

Memory Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory £39.48 More Computers

Storage Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive £35.98 Amazon UK

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive £34.98 Amazon UK

Video Card MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card £264.98 Amazon UK

Power Supply SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply £101.51 Amazon UK

Thanks for any help or advice
 
Many thanks for your reply.

Which one? Is there much difference apart from price?

Gigabyte GA-H97-HD3 £70.69
or
Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H £79.99
 
The D3H has more storage options in the form of M.2 PCIe (a native PCIe storage drive) and SATA Express (a way of adapting SATA drives to utilise PCIe). Whilst you probably won't use these, given the menial price difference and the fact that you may want to take advantage of the technology later, I would recommend the D3H.

Do you know what case you have or can you upload a picture? Good airflow is important and old or basic cases don't promote it very well.
 


Thanks for your advice bicycle_repair_man. The tower is over 10 years old and I have been using it for spares over the years so I suspect it may be time to replace it. I just didn't want to buy another for the sake of it.

http://imgur.com/a/nDD0d


 
That's a poor case quite frankly, so I'd definitely recommend a replacement.

The most important things to look for in a case are:

1. How easy is it to work with?
2. Does everything fit comfortably?
3. Are the ports and buttons located where you want them?

Most modern ATX and mid-towers come with plenty of fan mounts and lots of space for airflow. Some have LED lighting or built-in fan controllers, so there's a huge choice. £40 or so will get you something good. Maplin sell PC cases if you wanted to try a few.
 


Thanks for your advice again :)
Thinking about going for a Cooler Master SGC-1000-KWN1 Enforcer @ £69.99
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooler-Master-SGC-1000-KWN1-Enforcer/dp/B004S9S218/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1449168742&sr=1-1&keywords=Cooler+Master+SGC-1000-KWN1
Only costs a little bit more, has good reviews and looks the business for a teenage lad with the leds on the front.
I also took your advice and bought a Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard.
He's only got an £800 budget and this build comes in at £715 so far with a bit of shopping around but I think he is getting a lot for his money compared with off the shelf systems. And that is with a Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB (not 120 GB as above) when Amazon had the offer on last week @ £40 😀
 
That's a nice case; certainly looks the part.

For £800 you're certainly getting more than if you bought from somewhere like PC World. Plus, you don't have all the useless crapware that comes pre-installed and can swap components as you wish. Don't like WD hard drives? Buy a Seagate one instead. Prefer MSI GPUs? Then go for it. That level of customisation really separates self-built from off-the-shelf PCs.

Just out of interest, here's a similarily-priced desktop from PC World; http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/lenovo-ideacentre-700-desktop-pc-10138291-pdt.html.

The CPU is weaker, the GPU is weaker, it has no SSD, it has a generic Intel motherboard, a crappy, no-name 400W PSU (which I bet doesn't deliver 400W) and an equally crappy case, and it's more expensive!