Looking to spend £1000 ex VAT on Gaming PC

[Hodson89]

Hi im new to the forum and not very good with the 'in n outs' of a computer. I am looking to spend 1k ex VAT on a gaming PC, I have picked out the following spec and was wondering if its ok.
I want it to play the latest games and also future games, and for it to allow me to upgrade any parts when needed ie new graphics card etc..

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX***SPECIAL***

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P(2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP (Special Offer)

Memory - 1st 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

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)

Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)

Sound Card
@ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

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

£1025.83 ex Vat


Any advise is very welcome and thank you in advanced

Danny

 

[mantadog]

Motherboard might be a little over the top, but it would give you loads of flexability in the future, just as long as you plan to use it their is no problems keeping it.

I would drop the cooler to the triple copper heatpipe as the fenrir is HUGE and might cause you more problems by blocking case fans.

Other than that it is a solid build, not much i would change other than the points liste above.

 

[MadMan]

it is a powerful spec that is capable of maxing out a lot of games. I would suggest getting the i5 2500 if gaming is all your doing as its a powerful cpu as it is. With the savings you could upgrade to a newer gpu like the gtx 680

 

[Atuleon]

Hi Hodson89,

• I wouldn't go any higher than 1600Mhz on your RAM, although you will not really see any benefit of having 1600Mhz or higehr without overclocking either to be honest. I say this as I hear on these forums quite a lot that there is more likelyhood of instability with a 1866Mhz RAM than 1600Mhz. The bottom line is that 1333Mhz will be absolutely great, and you will not notice any difference now in performance, but I can't resist getting the RAM a little faster at 1600Mhz 'just incase', as it is so cheap. Personally I really wouldn't go to 1866Mhz though, as it is not needed, will not allow you to see any difference in performance, costs more, and like I said, I hear that there is more chance of instability. I'd do some reading up on it if you are unsure.

• You can downgrade your motherboard one notch if you like to save some money. You will not see any difference in performance. The things to watch out for is that it is 6GB/s (SATA III), and that it has PCI-E3.00 slots (although the GTX580 only requires a PCI-E 2.00 slot, the PCI-E 3.00 will be required if you ever decide to upgrade you graphics card in the future).

• You can downgrade the cooler the the £19.00 super quiet one, which will do the job well and allow you to save a little cash.

I hope this helps ^^ To summarise, your build is very good, but you are getting components that are slightly 'overkill'. The bottleneck on the machine is your graphics card. It is a good card, but it's just the way technology is at the moment. The graphics card is always going to be the bottleneck on most solidly built gaming rigs. You will notice a load of difference by upgrading this to the GTX680 as Madman suggest, (even if it means dropping to the i5), but obviously the GTX680 is a fair old wack more. The only other thing you can do, is to get a solid state drive, which will allow you to load games and statup your OS 3x faster, but I personally feel it would be best on your budget to throw any extra cash on the graphics card instead of this.

 

[Hodson89]

Morning, thanks for the replies and all of your Knowledge. I have dropped down on the cpu and ram and upgraded the gpu and also lowered the cooling as stated. What monitor will i need to use to profit from the gpu, as i will be getting this a month or less after buying the computer

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX***SPECIAL***

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)

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

£1050 ex Vat

Have I changed this correctly to your advise?

 

[Atuleon]

I am not the too sure on PCSpecialist monitors, but you want to get one with full HD resolution, (1080p).

 

[Atuleon]

P.S. For your information: you're latest build is much stronger for gaming than the first. ^^ Glad we could help.