Gaming Rig for £1500

[wowcraftify]

A while ago I was contemplating ordering a gaming rig for £1000 but held off for a while and now I have £1500 to spend, I'm glad I did now seeing as haswell processors and nvidia 700 series cards are out. I have two options, overclocked or not overclocked, they both use similar if not identical parts and I wouldn't like to exceed £1500 but maybe £1550 if it allows a significant upgrade. This PC will be used for gaming on a single 1080p monitor at max settings preferably and video editing (will add more RAM if it doesn't exceed £1550). All feedback is much appreciated as I'd like to order soolner rather than later.

My two current configurations are as follows:


Case
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4770k (3.5GHz) 8MB Cache
Free Item
Free Item
FREE GRID 2 GAME with 4th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-4670K & i7-4770K!

Motherboard
ASUS® Z87-A: ATX, USB2.0, USB3.0, SATA6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPERX BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2400MHz X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
Free Item
FREE SPLINTER CELL BLACKLIST GAME with GTX 660 & 7 Series GPUs!

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX750 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£89)

Processor Cooling
Corsair H60 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£59)

Sound Card
Asus Xonar DGX 5.1-Channel Gaming Audio Card (£27)

Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 150Mbps PCI-E CARD (Special Offer) (£6)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 2 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365

Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days

Or...


Case
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE

Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-4770k Quad Core (3.50GHz @ max 4.40GHz)

Motherboard
ASUS® Z87-A: ATX, USB2.0, USB3.0, SATA6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPERX BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2400MHz X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
Free Item
FREE SPLINTER CELL BLACKLIST GAME with GTX 660 & 7 Series GPUs!

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX750 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£89)

Processor Cooling
Corsair H60 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£59)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Asus Xonar DGX 5.1-Channel Gaming Audio Card (£27)

Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 150Mbps PCI-E CARD (Special Offer) (£6)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 2 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 8 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days

Sorry if it looks scruffy, copying and pasting, thanks in advance.

P.S Also is it worth getting a sabretooth motherboard, no idea what's different about it so would like to know.

 

[mantadog]

The formatting is fine, much easier for us veterans to read it like that I don't like it when people change it

A couple of point from both specs. Drop the 2400Mhz ram to the 1600Mhz. The faster stuff gives no performance, could be more unstable and although it might not be much more expensive that money is better spent elsewhere. If your getting the first spec and have no intentions to overclock at all then drop the water cooling and kick the CPU down to the 4770.

Overclocks for gaming are usually a waste of time, but for video editing it might be worth it if you really do a lot of it.

The 770 should max out most games, but do be aware that it probably wont last for long as games like crisis 3 are just above the generally accepted minimum of 30 FPS coming in at 34Fps on max settings. If you just turn down the settings slightly you probably wont notice and will be rewarded with better FPS so it's not all bad. But that is coming from someone who can hardly tell the difference between low and ultra on most games

 

[wowcraftify]

Thanks for the reply, judging by the small price difference I'm probably going to buy it overclocked, I thought the speed of the RAM would benefit editing programs and such but maybe not. Regarding my gpu, is it worth me buying the "Vanquish Enforcer" from the review section, it has a 780 and similar specs except for a CM Storm Enforcer case, I would've bought this straight away if it weren't for the case, it only includes 2 fans and I think the HAF-X is a much more appropriate case, will the Storm Enforcer do a good enough job of keeping the system cool?

Edit: Actually read review, CPU got to 82 degrees under load & GPU got to 75 degrees, is this a safe temperature to be running at under load?

 

[keynes]

Edit: Actually read review, CPU got to 82 degrees under load & GPU got to 75 degrees, is this a safe temperature to be running at under load?

Yes, you can also improve the cooling in the case by adding more chassis fans and/or increasing the fan speed of the corsair cooler,

 

[wowcraftify]

Thanks for the help, will be ordering tomorrow. Just a quick thing, will pcs fit extra case fans by request without losing the review price (configurator it's 1750 not 1500)?

 

[mantadog]

Those temps would have been under stress test conditions I would bet, so you would probably never actually reach those temps when editing or gaming because stress test programmes tend to created more heat than anything you can do in the real world.

As for the fans, you could always call and check. If they say they can't then it really isn't a problem to do it yourself. I bet YouTube has hundreds of videos on how to do it, so long as you can work a screwdriver you can fit a case fan. So I wouldn't let that stop you ordering, I know it can be daunting if you have never been inside a PC before but with the help of YouTube I'm sure anyone can fit a case fan.

 

[wowcraftify]

Thanks, will just fit it myself, helped a lot of friends build their PCs before.