New build advice?

[Cerysm]

Hey guys I'm looking to build my first pc and would some advice on what i've chosen. Please let me know what you think, and any improvements or incompatibilities. I'm a casual gamer (WoW, Sims 3 and hopefully 4, Walking Dead, Skyrim being the main ones), but i'm not really looking to run everything on ultra, I just want the system to be able to play everything decently, with no lag. Other than games, I only use it for internetting, and general pc usage. I'll be using it on a 40" screen (aka my tv) but I have no idea if this influences anything.
My budget would ideally be £400, but I can push it to £450/£500 max.
I'm torn between doing an fx6300 build, and doing an i3 4330 build (with an i3 and a decent z87 mobo I can upgrade to an i5 4670k later this year maybe).
I'm still deciding on cases, so if you've got one that you think would be great for me then please link me! I'm just looking for something plain case-wise, like the corsair 200r, with good air flow, and a good build.

I also would need the mobo to support the cpu out of the box, because I have no way of updating the bios (or whatever it is that would need updating. sorry! I'm new!)

so here's the AMD
and here's the i3

Thanks! and if what I've chosen is a load of crap, don't hesitate to do me a completely different build!

Cerys.

 

[lmaonade200]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (£89.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£55.93 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£69.98 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£43.90 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 260X 2GB Video Card (£101.52 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£53.88 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £415.20
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

slightly tweaked your i3 build, since you didn't mention anything about overclocking, I'm assuming you won't really want to mess with it, so an H87 motherboard will be fine, just pair it up with a non k i5 4670 later and you'll pretty much have the same thing without the extra $50 dollar expense. (unless you DO want to overclock, in that case just ignore the above)

upgraded the video card slightly, an R7 260x is a decent graphics card that can be counted as mid-ranged, while a 7750 is an entry level.

 

[Cerysm]

Thank for that lmaonade! You're right in that I'm not bothered about overclocking. I'm not really into like having the fastest of the fastest, so i highly doubt i'd start oc'ing.

What kind of matx board might you recommend? Ideally one that has sata 3, usb 3, and supports the 2133 ram?

 

[lmaonade200]

hmm okay I didn't notice the 2133Mhz RAM the first time, sorry about that, it doesn't look like any of the H87 boards supports over 1600Mhz, so you'll have to go with a Z board.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z87pro4

so something like this will be nice and is feature rich enough, may not be as savvy on the heat protection and the capacitors like your first MSI board is, but it won't make a difference unless you are truly giving your CPU a huge overclock.

On another note, your 2133Mhz RAM will not run as advertised with an i3 I do not think, because RAM speeds are also dependent on the CPU, since you have to overclock the CPU's FSB settings in order to utilize faster RAM I believe. But once you do switch to that i5 4670k you'll be able to use the RAM to it's fullest.

 

[sora]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (£89.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£55.93 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£69.98 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£43.90 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 260X 2GB Video Card (£101.52 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£53.88 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £415.20
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

slightly tweaked your i3 build, since you didn't mention anything about overclocking, I'm assuming you won't really want to mess with it, so an H87 motherboard will be fine, just pair it up with a non k i5 4670 later and you'll pretty much have the same thing without the extra $50 dollar expense. (unless you DO want to overclock, in that case just ignore the above)

upgraded the video card slightly, an R7 260x is a decent graphics card that can be counted as mid-ranged, while a 7750 is an entry level.

this, 260x is great for casual gaming imo

 

[Cerysm]

hmm okay I didn't notice the 2133Mhz RAM the first time, sorry about that, it doesn't look like any of the H87 boards supports over 1600Mhz, so you'll have to go with a Z board.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z87pro4

so something like this will be nice and is feature rich enough, may not be as savvy on the heat protection and the capacitors like your first MSI board is, but it won't make a difference unless you are truly giving your CPU a huge overclock.

On another note, your 2133Mhz RAM will not run as advertised with an i3 I do not think, because RAM speeds are also dependent on the CPU, since you have to overclock the CPU's FSB settings in order to utilize faster RAM I believe. But once you do switch to that i5 4670k you'll be able to use the RAM to it's fullest.

I'm not dead set on this ram, it was only chosen because of the price and higher Mhz over some other Ram that was only a fiver cheaper or something. I'd be okay switching down if the i3 wouldn't utilise the 2133. I'm all about saving pennies, so I'll go with the 1600Mhz and a cheaper mobo probably.

 

[lmaonade200]

what you can do is get a H87 motherboard with a set of 1600Mhz RAM (make sure it's a quality set of course), then tighten the timings to 7-7-7-24 if possible, it'll essentially have 1866Mhz RAM performance

and this case I would say go with my first suggestion an R7 260x is a pretty decent card that's often underestimated, and is one of the better price/performance units these days. And you'll be able to save a bunch of money and upgrade to an i5 sooner than later

 

[Cerysm]

what you can do is get a H87 motherboard with a set of 1600Mhz RAM (make sure it's a quality set of course), then tighten the timings to 7-7-7-24 if possible, it'll essentially have 1866Mhz RAM performance

and this case I would say go with my first suggestion an R7 260x is a pretty decent card that's often underestimated, and is one of the better price/performance units these days. And you'll be able to save a bunch of money and upgrade to an i5 sooner than later

Thanks for your help! I'm torn between some corsair vengeance RAM and Crucial ballistix. Are there any other RAM brands you might suggest? Or is any performance Ram cool?

 

[lmaonade200]

I mostly like Corsair, Kingston, and G.Skill, most RAM from any company will perform about the same, but quality brands have less issues like incompatibility, bad sticks off the bat, etc