New Gaming PC €800 Budget

LawlessBoy

Im looking to get a new computer over the next few months. I'm hoping to have a €800 budget for this. I wouldnt be confident enough to build it myself. I dont need any extras such as mouse, keyboard or monitor. It has to have a copy of windows included but as a student i do believe i can pick up a copy cheaper?

I would be willing to buy the parts in myself if there is a place that anyone knows of that offer pc building.

The only thing this pc will be used for is gaming, im hoping to be able to run the likes of BF, Skyrim, Arma or good settings with a good framerate if its possible.

Thanks in advance,
Sean

Procrastastudy

PC building service is available right here on boards.ie PC B&U forum - just tell us where you are.

Also watch this:

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If you want to ask about a new build, please include as much of the following information as possible in your thread:

1. What is your budget? [€xxx]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? [Gaming/Video editing/3D Modelling/HTPC/Internet] (If gaming include which games)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes/No]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [Hard drive/DVD Drive/Case/PSU/etc.] (If possible state brand and model of the parts to ensure compatibility)

5. Do you need a monitor? [Yes/No]

5a. If yes, what size do you need. [19'/20'/22'/24'/etc.]

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [1920x1080/1440x900/etc.] [Yes/No]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/etc.]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [Yes/No]

8. How can you pay? [Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser]

9. When are you purchasing? [In x days]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [South Dublin City/Cork City/Kerry/etc.]

If you have a sample build yourself, use Fluffy's script to format it nicely.

LawlessBoy

1. What is your budget? [€800]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, BF, Skyrim, Wow, Arma

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No.

5. Do you need a monitor? No

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Is it a big advantage? dont understand it to be honest.

8. How can you pay? Credit card, laser

9. When are you purchasing? over the next 2-3 months

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [South Dublin City/Cork City/Kerry/etc.] Yes, South dublin

Eboggles

LawlessBoy wrote: »

1. What is your budget? [€800]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, BF, Skyrim, Wow, Arma

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No.

5. Do you need a monitor? No

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Is it a big advantage? dont understand it to be honest.

8. How can you pay? Credit card, laser

9. When are you purchasing? over the next 2-3 months

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [South Dublin City/Cork City/Kerry/etc.] Yes, South dublin

If it's at least 2 months away, you might be better off waiting until then. Hardware prices fluctuate weekly when new components are released, so it might be better to do a build for you a few days before you're buying.

You see, a graphics card that would fit in your budget (GTX 660ti) hasn't actually been released yet, it's scheduled for a August 16th release date. Chances are it will (a) be a great card that you will buy or (b) drive the prices of other cards down which you could then afford. Either way it'd pay off to wait.

Just my 2 cents.

Procrastastudy

Overclocking is simply taking a component - lets say the CPU - and running it faster than the specification laid down by the manufacturer. This creates more heat and can shorten the life of the component. That said everyone does it.

There are various levels to overclocking each getting more complicated. At the very basic end its moving some sliders around in software.

My advice is buy a machine that can be overclocked even if you don't want to initially. When your machine is shiny and new you'll be scared to do anything to it. Three years down the line when its not running things as you'd like and your getting to the point of chucking it out overclocking will extend the useability and might just stop you having to spend money upgrading.

Other people overclock because they know they can get the performace they need from a cheaper component AMD7950 GPU (Graphics card) being a very good example. By moving some sliders in AMDs software you can get that GPU to out perform the more expensive 7970.

Others do it for the craic

I'll knock you up a build in a few but listen to eboggles - the build may (probably will) be very different in a few weeks time. That said you can go though the components line by line and ask questions and get a feel for what they do and what you can live with and without.

LawlessBoy

Thanks for the replies, if you let reckon i could get a better build closer to the time i think thats what ill do. Im hoping to have it going mid september.

Really appreciate the input.

That video you linked earlier really simplifies it. I was expecting it to be alot harder then it seems.:D

challengemaster

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Overclocking is simply taking a component - lets say the CPU - and running it faster than the specification laid down by the manufacturer. This creates more heat and can shorten the life of the component. That said everyone does it.

Just to point out for someone that doesn't know and might get scared off by it

"Shorten the life of the component" doesn't mean it'll die in a month. Most CPU's would probably still be running perfectly by the time we die. Shortening it's life means maybe knocking 2-3 years off the expected life, which it will more than likely never reach anyway due to upgrades.

Obviously there's correlation between how much you push the part to it's limit, and how quickly it degrades, but for the most part it's negligible.


As for why people do it - some tasks like video encoding / rendering are very CPU intensive. Pushing more performance out of the CPU within it's tolerable limits can greatly improve the speed at which some tasks are done

Procrastastudy

Item|Price
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.44
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen, 1GB GDDR5|€197.26
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€90.77
Seagate Momentus XT 750GB + 8GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€138.01
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€215.78
BitFenix Shinobi Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black, ohne Netzteil|€52.88
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.99
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€791.12

Okay I'd expect this to come down to within your budget as the GPU should get cheaper after the 660ti launches. e.g. about €40 cheaper meaning you can afford windows in a €800 budget.

Some options

3570K CPU fitted - if you are going to overclock on this budget you would be better with a 2500K and an after market CPU cooler - see video posted

The Hard Drive is a combined SSD (Solid State Drive - Fast but small and expensive) and a HDD (Mechanical Hard Disk Drive - Slow but big and cheap) ideally you want a seperate SSD and HDD but that would be more expensive.

Eboggles

Seagate barracuda 500GB + 64GB Samsung 830 = €137

It's actually cheaper .

LawlessBoy

Thanks i didnt realise the prices of parts changed so much. So what your saying is that a SSD would be a higher standard then a HDD but would be a bit more expensive?

Procrastastudy

Eboggles wrote: »

Seagate barracuda 500GB + 64GB Samsung 830 = €137

It's actually cheaper .

But a 64Gb SSD would be pretty small for installing anything but windows on. You could use the Intel Caching. And let be fair you need at least 750Gb for Games, movies and po.... potential yes that what I was gonna type.

@Lawless yes you use an SSD for Windows and games and then a HDD to store movies, data and any games you only play once in a blue moon. Loading something like BF3 off a hard drive takes ages.

challengemaster

That's pretty much it. IMO the way to think of an SSD is like the internals of USB keys daisy chained together. There are some drawbacks, but in general the performance boost is incredible and there are no moving parts. Because they're such high performance, even smaller sizes like 64gb have a hefty price compared to a mechanical drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j84eEjP-RL4

Here's some more reading on SSD's

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18040306

Tropheus

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

But a 64Gb SSD would be pretty small for installing anything but windows on. You could use the Intel Caching. And let be fair you need at least 750Gb for Games, movies and po.... potential yes that what I was gonna type.

@Lawless yes you use an SSD for Windows and games and then a HDD to store movies, data and any games you only play once in a blue moon. Loading something like BF3 off a hard drive takes ages.

Windows wouldn't require anything near 64gb. 20gb at most. That's unless you're running Vista;)

challengemaster

ksimpson wrote: »

Windows wouldn't require anything near 64gb. 20gb at most. That's unless you're running Vista;)

Take into account hard drive "shrink" or whatever it's called. 64gb drive is now somewhere around 50-55. Allowing 20 for Win7 you still have 30gb. It's not a huge amount, but should be enough for some stuff

Procrastastudy

Shogun II is 25GB alone
Battle Field 3 19GB! (Jesus)
Wow around 10GB (IIRC)
Skyrim 6GB

You'll fill a 64Gb SSD up very quickly and end up messing about moving things round.

Item|Price
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.44
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen, 1GB GDDR5|€197.26
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€90.77
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€215.78
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.99
Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA 6GB's Paper Box|€102.55
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.57
Seagate Barracuda 7200 500GB SATA 6GB's|€60.67
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€795.02

If you could push the budget this is what I'd go for.

Different people will have different takes but these are the options:

A mechanical HDD on it own - Cheapest / Simplest
A SSD and HDD - Best solution / not very complicated but does need some 3rd party software to keep things where you want them in you use Steam
A Hybrid - Not as fast as an SSD but very simple, quite fast, middling on value
A small SSD a HDD and Intel Caching (Which is on the mainboard I spec'd) which essentially does the same thing as a hybrid if a bit better. Setup is quite simple.

To be fair I would actually go with the setup eboggles suggests (all be it with a 1TB HDD) and set up caching but I was trying to keep it simple.
2TB Hardrives are the best price per GB but it comes down to budget.

challengemaster

Now that's more like it

Any reason for picking the Shinobi over the Merc?

Procrastastudy

Just cooling but actually go with a Merc Alpha if you're getting a stock 3570K

(Stock means with the crappy Intel supplied fan)

Ill update the build actually.

Procrastastudy

Item|Price
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.44
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen, 1GB GDDR5|€197.26
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€90.77
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€215.78
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.99
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.57
Samsung SSD 830 64GB SATA 6GB's Paper Box|€67.76
SEAGATE Barracuda Green 2TB 5900.3 SATA 3 6Gb/s 64MB 8,9cm (3,5")|€98.57
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€798.13

On this build you'd set up caching and let the computer figure out what needed to be on the SSD - it's also got a 2TB Hard drive which even I couldn;t fill with po... potential.

LawlessBoy

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Shogun II is 25GB alone
To be fair I would actually go with the setup eboggles suggests (all be it with a 1TB HDD) and set up caching but I was trying to keep it simple.

So that would be a seperate HDD and SDD? Are there any big drawbacks to it besides having to move stuff around

challengemaster

If you can stretch the budget by about 30 quid you can get the best of both, 128gb SSD and 2TB HDD

Procrastastudy

Sorry I'm probably bamboozling now.

Eboggles is suggesting a 64GB SSD - I reckon thats too small. If you want a separate SSD and HDD you need at least 128GB in my opinion.

The Z77 motherboard (and some others but you should get a Z77 as listed) have a clever feature where they will look at what you use the most, Windows, WOW and what ever game you happen to be playing a lot and copy them across to the SDD. This speeds using them up. Because its automatic you can use little SSDs (64GB, 30GB) which are cheap.

With a 128GB SSD you can do this manually which is fastest of all - assuming you bother copying what ever it is on to the SSD. You also install windows and any apps you use regularly on the SSD. Beware this setup does take some fiddling around.

Eboggles

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Sorry I'm probably bamboozling now.

Eboggles is suggesting a 64GB SSD - I reckon thats too small. If you want a separate SSD and HDD you need at least 128GB in my opinion.

The Z77 motherboard (and some others but you should get a Z77 as listed) have a clever feature where they will look at what you use the most, Windows, WOW and what ever game you happen to be playing a lot and copy them across to the SDD. This speeds using them up. Because its automatic you can use little SSDs (64GB, 30GB) which are cheap.

With a 128GB SSD you can do this manually which is fastest of all - assuming you bother copying what ever it is on to the SSD. You also install windows and any apps you use regularly on the SSD. Beware this setup does take some fiddling around.

Still won't be as fast as a regular SSD though, and 64GB is definitely enough.

It's enough space for Win7 and all your (non-games) programs. What else do you use it for?

Procrastastudy

Eboggles wrote: »

Still won't be as fast as a regular SSD though, and 64GB is definitely enough.

It's enough space for Win7 and all your (non-games) programs. What else do you use it for?

Games!

I hate trying to play BF3 or Shogun II of HDDs and mine are RAID 0.

MMORPG is much better off an SSD as well as you dont have to wait so long for bloody zones - although I was EQ2 so maybe that doesnt happen in WoW

challengemaster

Eboggles wrote: »

What else do you use it for?

You probably don't want to know the answer to that :pac:

I'd imagine he has all his games loaded onto it

LawlessBoy

challengemaster wrote: »

If you can stretch the budget by about 30 quid you can get the best of both, 128gb SSD and 2TB HDD

If i can do that, that is more then likely what i will do.

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Games!

I hate trying to play BF3 or Shogun II of HDDs and mine are RAID 0.

MMORPG is much better off an SSD as well as you dont have to wait so long for bloody zones - although I was EQ2 so maybe that doesnt happen in WoW

No you still get a loading screen:D... Was hoping to give GW2 a try when it comes out aswel. I imagine thatll need alot more grit then wow, since its a very outdated game.

Procrastastudy

What do you think about over clocking? The builds I've done are a sort of half way house.

LawlessBoy

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

What do you think about over clocking? The builds I've done are a sort of half way house.

Id say i would be willing to try it, i read a few articles on it. I think its something definitely worth trying for gaming.

Procrastastudy

You definitely need a better cooler (€40ish) and ideally a better case. Just bear those in mind.

If you're going for the 128Gb SSD let me know I might fiddle with the build now I have a better idea of what you're going for. As Eboogles says though it may be quite different in 3 months.

Gbear

After doing some sleuthing around for my own build and going from what GCD said in another thread, apparently the HD7870 is going to come down a fair bit in about september, at least if I'm reading this right and it's not waffle:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/16/amd-radeon-hd-price-drops/

- The AMD Radeon™ HD 7870 GHz Edition will now be available for $299 USD (SEP)

$300 = €245

It'd put you over budget but I would think it'd be a significant improvement over the 7850.

LawlessBoy

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

You definitely need a better cooler (€40ish) and ideally a better case. Just bear those in mind.

If you're going for the 128Gb SSD let me know I might fiddle with the build now I have a better idea of what you're going for. As Eboogles says though it may be quite different in 3 months.

I think it would be best for gaming, depending on the price difference that is come september.

LawlessBoy

Not necroing, just didnt want to start a new thread.

Budget still stands at 800 euro, dont know if anything can be upgraded. No longer need a copy of windows so there more room in it now.

Anyone have any suggestions to a build at that price?

Thanks alot.