New sensible gaming transplant project.

Captain Chaos

I know you've probably seen threads like these all day but here goes. I been out of the PC gaming seen now for about 3 years, just game up after all the hassle with my last PC and the problem with it could not be found. The next gen consoles have been taking care of my gaming interest for the time being.

Anyway, I want to make a come back. My old system is a
Gigabyte 3D Aurora case: I plan to keep for the new build.
Some MSI mobo:
Core 2 Duo 6600:
2GB DDR2 RAM:
8800GT 1GB:
640Gb HDD:
800W PUS: Which I think was the cause of the fault with it.

Now, before I go on I have to say I have never successfully built a new rig. Tried it once and it would not start up, think it was HDD related but someone sorted it, that was about 6 years ago. Before that I performed a HDD swapout that didn't work out either.:P I feel confident in my abilities now though.

So anyway, keeping my old case and I want a new rig for some decent gaming. Budget is not that strict but I am looking for bang for buck and an element of future proofing. I'm out of the loop on the current CPU sockets and how the GPU market is with whatever DX version is the mainstream.

Currently I have ordered,
[SIZE=-1][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Samsung F3 103SJ 1TB HDD.
8GB DDR3 Corsair XM3 CL9, not great I know.
LG BDRW.

In my current to get list is,
I5 2500K, don't know if stock cooling is OK or will I get something fancy for it? Don't plan on doing any crazy OC'ing.
ASUS 6950 2GB. I'm not sure about my GPU choice need help on that one.
Motherboard, I'm a bit lost. Looking at a few ASUS P67 based boards but again not too sure and need help.
PSU, I have no idea what's good really. I think 650W would be enough, my last PSU was 800W but the components were more power hungry back then.

I have ditched Komplett as a outlet to buy from after all the goings on. My PC above was custom built my them back in '07.:eek:

I have been looking at some things on Amazon where I got the HDD, RAM and BDRW, and Hardwareversand seems very popular here but I have never used them before.

Also games I would be mainly playing would be: Lock On 2 and Black Shark, the new Elder Scrolls and Deus Ex also ARMA 2. If they would have any bearing on GPU choice.

I plan on getting this
http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_01COM/16_MONITOR/03_MONITOR/productdetails/20016196/Samsung_23_PX2370_LED_2ms_HDMI_DVI_VGA/LS23WHEKFV_EN/default.aspx
But from somewhere cheaper if possible.

[/FONT][/SIZE][SIZE=-1][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Any help you be great. Sorry for long and drawn out post.[/FONT][/SIZE]

jme2010

You are bang on with your specs. Keep your psu if its a quality brand and hasnt deteriorated on you.

i5 2500k goes with a P67 mobo. Asus and MSI are good at the moment, make sure its a B3 revision.

Great GPU choice. And if your lucky you'll have a 6970 thats just branded as a 6950. You can unlock it with a bios update. Then use the bios switch to flick between modes 6970|./|6950

And hardwareversand is a great site. expect to save about 50 quid on that build if not more.

Dublin_Gunner

Hardwareversand is not necessarily the cheapest you know.

I specced a similar build cheaper between dabs and pixmania not so long ago - plus they have decent sites to navigate, plus I'd rather give the tax money to the Irish exchequer.


But apart form that, I'd agree with what you've said.

Speccs are bang on, i5 2500k (stock cooling is fine even for a small OC), 8GB of that Corsair ram is perfect, the HD6950 is also excellent bang for your buck.

For the PSU, go for a Corsair HX or TX series 650W or greater. Quality units, and not overly pricey.

I'd avoid Komplett unfortunately, horror stories from them over the past few years since they were taken over - I used to use them all the time.

Most solid overclocks I've seen lately have been happening on the Asus boards. Pretty much any board you find now will be a B3 revision anyway.

But I can recommend the P8P67 Pro - built a rig around one for a friend of mine a couple of months ago, quality board.

The MSI P67 GD65 is also an excellent board.

You'll have a fine gaming rig there.

Captain Chaos

Thanks for the replies.

I have decided to go for the P8P67 Pro board.
I'll look into the Corsair PSUs listed.

I'm having second thoughts on the i5 25k and debating with myself on the i7 26k. Just looking at some benchmarks in real world terms and trying to justify the cost jump from the 25k.

I wasn't too sure on the 6950, I want a GPU built on the current latest GPU architecture and not last years model bumped up with clockspeed. I'm not brand loyal so I would consider the Nvidia alternative which I think is the 560Ti but not a new GPU design? ATi seems to be the more popular gamer choice today.

I'm not even looking at SLI or Crossfire yet but the P8P67 gives me that option in the future if I think I need it or should I go for a higher end GPU or even a dual GPU card or are these just a gimick?

Dublin_Gunner

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

I have decided to go for the P8P67 Pro board.
I'll look into the Corsair PSUs listed.

I'm having second thoughts on the i5 25k and debating with myself on the i7 26k. Just looking at some benchmarks in real world terms and trying to justify the cost jump from the 25k.

I wasn't too sure on the 6950, I want a GPU built on the current latest GPU architecture and not last years model bumped up with clockspeed. I'm not brand loyal so I would consider the Nvidia alternative which I think is the 560Ti but not a new GPU design? ATi seems to be the more popular gamer choice today.

I'm not even looking at SLI or Crossfire yet but the P8P67 gives me that option in the future if I think I need it or should I go for a higher end GPU or even a dual GPU card or are these just a gimick?

For a gaming rig, get the 2500K, just as fast for gaming, €100 cheaper.

The 5xx series are an upgrade to the 4xx series. die shrink, clock speed bump and architecture tweak - they are excellent cards.

The 6950 is a good card too, and if you get a reference design, it can most likely be unlocked to 6970.

However, just look at performance benchmarks - don't worry if one company's tech is a few months older!

However, if you're gonna save the €100 by getting the 2500K, why not put that towards the gfx card and get a 6970 (no need for a bios flash) or a GTX570?

Of course, you may wish to keep the cash in your pocket, that's your decision, but just giving some options

Captain Chaos

Dublin_Gunner wrote: »

However, if you're gonna save the €100 by getting the 2500K, why not put that towards the gfx card and get a 6970 (no need for a bios flash) or a GTX570?

Of course, you may wish to keep the cash in your pocket, that's your decision, but just giving some options

Oh, wow.

This has given me more to think about now. Yeah looking at some benchmarks of the 6950 fitted with either the 25k and the 26k, once you go into the higher res in some games, it's the GPU that becomes the bottleneck and not the CPUs:eek: .

OK, an i5 25k it is.

So now a 6970 or a 570, looks like I'm going to have to up the now PSU too. ATi don't seem to have anything that can really touch a 570. Also I can see now that having more than 1GB of VRAM makes nada difference. I was dead set on a 2GB 6950 for the textures in flight sims and ED's A-10C which seems hefty enough on specs but reviewing site are saying it's a waste.

Dublin_Gunner

You wouldn;t need to up the PSU. A good quality 650W would be fine for that system.

Just remember good quality PSU - never skimp on a PSU

Captain Chaos

Dublin_Gunner wrote: »

Just remember good quality PSU - never skimp on a PSU

Yeah, learned that the hard way with my last system. I didn't skimp mind you but the thing was ropey as hell after about 18 months. Didn't think it was worth the hassle of sending the thing back to Komplett back then.

I've settled on this puppy.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=45194&agid=1165

Think I should get the €5 cheaper model at the stock clocks as it's in stock and just clocked 100Mhz slower. I can always OC it later.

Dublin_Gunner

Yep, good card

jme2010

Captain Chaos wrote: »

ATi don't seem to have anything that can really touch a 570. .

I think the 6970 beats the 570 at higher resoultions.

Jonny7

Theres a 570 from pixmania.ie for 270ish euros, good deal if you ask me

Serephucus

At the moment I'm leaning towards NVIDIA. One of the reasons is that their new architecture is very linear. You can OC your GPU by 15% and you'll almost always get a 15% increase in GPU-limited games. The same can't always be said for AMD current line (or NVIDIA's G92B architecture [GTX 285]).

NVIDIA's cards tend to be slightly higher under load than AMD (with the exception of the 6990), but they're lower when they're in their idle state.

As others have said your build is bang on. To throw yet another spanner in the works (:P), have you thought of an SSD at all, or is that something that even interests you?

Captain Chaos

Serephucus wrote: »

To throw yet another spanner in the works (:P), have you thought of an SSD at all, or is that something that even interests you?

I've ordered an XFX HD6970 already. It was a though choice between Nvidia or ATI. Looking back I tended to go with Nvidia over the years.

I have never really thought about SSDs. I usually just slap a HDD in my PC and leave it as is. I don't even like partitioning a drive. I know people say it's good to just leave the OS on one partition as a boot section. As you can see I've never really liked to monkey about with my storage options, I've never had a PC with more than one drive installed.

All I think I would do with an SSD is use it as the boot device for faster bootups. Don't really see the point of getting one just for that.

I have everything ordered at this stage. Just waiting for every thing to get here. The only thing I'm thinking about is a CPU cooler. I know the 25k can get up to the 4Ghz mark with the stock unit. I am trying to see if there is a decent quiet unit that is easy to fit. I've had some trouble in the past, nearly snapping motherboards because of the pressure need to fit some Zalman units years ago. Had my eye on the Arctic Freezer 7 .rev2, cheap fits on no problem from what I can see but I don't know if it's worth it over the stock intel unit.

Serephucus

One of the main reasons I got an SSD, is that they don't slow down over time.

If you have a regular hard drive, your registry and User folders can get filled and fragmented and the like, and gradually your computer slows down. I'm sure you've noticed how a clean install is always quicker than what you had before.

With an SSD, because there's nothing mechanical, a bit on one side of the drive takes jsut as long to fetch as a bit on the other, so it's always as fast as the first day you get it.

Almost anything will be better than the stock cooler.

Dublin_Gunner

The freezer 7 pro rev.2 is an excellent little cooler. I had one up untill a while ago, pity as I sold it for a tenner!

SSD is not essential, so I wouldnt get one if it meant sacrificing on something else.