Newbie ahoy: first time building a PC

[Betamax]

...And I've gotten myself a bit lost to be honest. Apologies for any rookie mistakes in the following post!

I've been lurking around a bunch of sites for a while now trying to work out the best combination of performance and bargain, however due to my limited experience with the inner workings of computers it's taking far longer than I would like - in part due to my busy schedule with work (etc.) at the moment. In all this time PCS has given a very good impression and thus it's the first place I thought to seek advice.

My budget is: £800, although I could push it up a little if given good reason.

Use: This is primarily for gaming, the aim is to run Skyrim, TOR, The Witcher 2 and BF3 as close to high/max settings as possible, whilst retaining a good framerate. Is that even possible on this budget, or am I looking more at medium settings with good FPS? I've read conflicting things.

I'm looking towards making this as future proof as possible.

I would also be interested in having it set for video editing/basic filmmaking, although that isn't a priority at the moment.

I'm sorted for a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Don't have usable speakers, but have a headset so they aren't a massively important right now. Not interested in office, av software etc.

Cooling and such is a big issue for me. It's not something I know much about, despite trying to educate myself on the subject recently, but I've had issues with it previously and will almost certainly be gaming for significant periods of time on this rig; naturally I want to get the cooling/PSU side of things right to reduce any issues arising from that.

I would post a spec, but I really have read so many conflicting ideas by now that I wouldn't know where to start. I'm unsure about whether an Intel or AMD system would be better for example, if it helps i'm not confident about overclocking myself - although I may be able to get assistance should it be beneficial.

I gather that I should be sorted with 4/8GB RAM, a quad core CPU, and a single quality graphics card (possibly leaving room for SLI or Crossfire in the future) with a caviar black HDD and a 650w+ corsair PSU but again, if anyone can help by posting the best gaming spec my budget can manage it would be appreciated. I hope the info I have provided is enough?

Oh and is the NZXT Phantom case alright for this sort of build?

 

[Fear]

This spec is £20 over if you can stretch that much but just to point out if you want to leave room for upgrades like a second GPU you would need the next motherboard which is an extra £32 and then you would also need to upgrade the PSU so you would be looking at even more money, you say that you want editing well you would be best going for 8GB of ram for that but to keep the price down it only has 4GB which will be fine for gaming so you will either want to up that now or you could buy it later when you start editing, i only put the Haf922 case on the spec not the NZXT phantom you mentioned as tbh you would do better to spend money elsewhere to improve the spec for what you want.

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M5A87: AM3+ PLATFORM, DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above!
Memory - 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1[SUP]st[/SUP] DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
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 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £820.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[Wozza63]

the above would definitely be worth an extra £20

 

[MeveM]

I can confirm that the GTX 570 runs BF3 at max with very nice FPS, no lag what so ever on Casbian Border (64 player map) in the beta, used the Nvidia BF 3 beta drivers with it. Awesome card.

 

[Betamax]

Thanks for the replies. :turned:

I'm liking that spec and will likely be placing an order in the next few days. Should be able to scrape some more funds together to go for those options suggested as well, although I do have a couple of questions:

-Reading the info on the PCS site should I be looking at getting a better CPU cooling system? It seems to be recommended if you are planning to put a lot of hours into gaming.
-Is it worth going for a better soundcard? Not enough of a difference unless you are really serious about the audio side of things?
-I looked into the SLI upgrade and it's tempting. Would it be recommended to further future proof the build? Or will I get by with the one GPU, possibly upgrading it down the line. I gather to upgrade it would involve the next motherboard up, and an 850w PSU.
-Is it worth shopping around for a case? Or is the one suggested by Fear pretty much the best mix of value for money and performance?
-Lastly, is it worth spending some extra cash on the AMD Phenom II x4 965 or 70 over the 955?

Obviously if I do all of the above I'm going over budget, but I'm looking into ways to extend that as I said so I'm open to the possibility if it'll significantly improve the system.

 

[Fear]

Normally i would put the tripple copper CPU cooler on a spec but they don't have that listed at the moment i am guessing they are just out stock and getting some more in at some point (probably best phoning them to make sure if you want) you should be ok with the standard CPU cooler i only had a standard intel cooler on my last PC and that kept the CPU cool just not as cool as the after market ones do, the titan evo they have is an absolute beast but as with other things you can only get the best all round spec with the budget and £39 is quite a lot to add on.

A soundcard i will not do without but i can notice the difference and i just can't listen to the onboard, your best bet is to get your system without and if you are not happy with the sound you can always add 1 in.

You can happily go either way, apart from the initial extra cost of getting what you need for sli you would be getting a second card somewhere around a year or two down the line when it is quite a bit cheaper but remember if your original card fails after you have done this then you are back to where you were with your system, so if you leave it as is with the selected motherboard and 650W PSU it is normally enough to power the top end single GPU nvidia cards (not sure on AMD's as i have always looked at nvidia but i have been told on the config warnings with some builds using a HD6970 to get a 750W) so all the money saved in the first place can go into whatever you can afford on the latest gen cards out at the time.

I will leave you to make your own mind up on what case you get

For your editing you should get a slight boost upping the CPU if you can manage the extra.

So it's basically a case of getting what you can within your budget obviously if you are going to increase it then you can improve on the spec above.

 

[Betamax]

Hmm okay, thanks. I'll try phoning them and work it out from there. As you say, £39 is quite a lot to add if I can avoid it!

I'll take your advice about the soundcard too, although I know what you mean about wanting more than the onboard I think I'll make do for now and save the pennies there.

Not sure about the SLI thing, think I'll work out just how much I can add to my budget first as I'm definitely thinking about upping the CPU.

I'll be ordering on payday next week anyway, I'll update the thread then with what I end up going for!

 

[Betamax]

Just thought I would post to say that I've ordered, and thanks again for the help.

Ended up going for a slightly altered build. After reading around about the 560ti I felt happy going for that over the 570 and using the money I saved to make the computer SLI ready.

After much thought I ended up going with the NZXT case as however much I tried to be sensible I just preferred how it looked, after reading reviews of the various cases on offer I just decided to lump out the extra cash even if it is mostly for cosmetic reasons.

Threw in some speakers and surge protection as I needed them anyway. Plan to upgrade the RAM, soundcard and add another GPU down the road.

Case
NZXT PHANTOM WHITE GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 QUAD CORE 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3)
Motherboard
ASUS® M5A99X EVO:USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gb/s, Quad CrossFireX™/SLI™
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, 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 (£86)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Speakers
LOGITECH S220 2.1 SILVER/BLACK SPEAKER SYSTEM (£18)
Surge Protection
6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector (£9)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)


Price: £835.00 including VAT and delivery.

Look okay?

 

[tom_gr7]

could you go for 850w corsair for sli of tht 560ti?

i'd lower the case to put more money into components.

 

[Fear]

could you go for 850w corsair for sli of tht 560ti?

i'd lower the case to put more money into components.

750W is perfectly fine for sli on 2 x GTX 560Ti.

As long as you get what you are happy with then that is all that matters but for a gaming rig i would have stuck with the single GTX570 and just upgraded to a new card in 2-3 years anyway i am sure you will be very happy with the spec you have ordered

 

[Betamax]

@Tom: I know I should be sensible and lower the case, but I'm being stubborn heh. Just like the design of the NZXT case too much and I'm a stickler for how something looks. /mywallethatesme.

In the long run I'll add any of the bits I don't get now anyway, and the way I see it is that this will do everything I want it to until that time.

750W is perfectly fine for sli on 2 x GTX 560Ti.

Yeah made sure to check that.

As long as you get what you are happy with then that is all that matters but for a gaming rig i would have stuck with the single GTX570 and just upgraded to a new card in 2-3 years anyway i am sure you will be very happy with the spec you have ordered

Yeah that decision went to the wire, but in the end this just felt right based off what I was reading and my gut instinct. Gotta go with your gut sometimes I guess!

But yeah, I've +repped everyone who posted to help, great feedback.

 

[JamesMLB]

Don't buy the 2.1 speakers, they are £18 and the sound quality isnt that good.