New Build Cost Cutting

Hanley209

How are you all, I'm in the process of picking out the best bang for my buck gaming rig I can.

I'm aiming at a target performance in BF4 at 1080p at 60fps locked high settings.
To do this I decided that I would go used for big ticket items, the CPU and graphics card.

So with my used parts I though I was doing great, but now my build is around the 500 pound mark and is looking too expensive to me.
I dont need a windows copy, and monitors and peripherals budget is separate to this.

I'd like to get the tower down to in around 450 pounds.

Any suggestions on where to cut back? Or have I cut it as close as I can already to hit my target?
The motherboard is the one place where I could halve the cost immediately by going H61 chipset and giving up overclocking but that seems to defeat the purpose of the k chip.

Here's the pc part picker link http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Wjs7t6, and thanks in advance for any advice. It's much appreciated.

Hanley209

Ok i just realised how impolite it is to just post a link to my build so here is the actual build in text
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£75.00)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£120.00)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Red 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£32.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card (£145.00)
Case: Corsair SPEC-03 Red ATX Mid Tower Case (£42.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£66.96 @ Aria PC)
Total: £557.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-18 02:07 GMT+0000

MarkAnthony

I wouldn't advertise that you're pirating; especially at like €15 for a key.

This is looking like it'll go for silly money (low). If you don't get that one wait til after Xmas and look out for 7970s still great cards.

Motherboard looks very dear.

Hybrid HDD - Hmm - go for a very cheap HDD and pop in a cheap SSD later. Not convinced on the performance of the Hybrids.

PSU seems dear.

AlmightyCushion

Where are you getting a 2500K for £75? That seems very cheap.

Dvraiz

You could get a worse GPU/Motherboard if you really only want to spend 450, but it's really up to you.

grindle

It's pretty hard to come up with a build that's lower in price for the same performance BUT your CPU/Cooler/Mobo combo is a false economy if those prices you've posted are accurate (if £557.91 was your actual total then I've managed to scrape it down to £500-£510).

If you get a cheap case (£25 or less - you can probably find some good Bitfenix or Fractal Design cases for this second-hand) you can have a build with an i5 6600+H110M mobo for the same price and have room to upgrade in the future.

i5 6600
H110M mobo
8GB RAM
1TB HDD
PSU
+€30 delivery
+ case & GPU should be in and around £500-£510

Hanley209

Thanks for all the replies guys.
@mark antony yeah the mobo has been the bane of my life the last couple of days. Managed to find a cheaper one on eBay today for 75 pounds. Biostar but hopefully not crap. As for PSU if I was scrimping anywhere I'd prefer not there as the electric in my area is not the most stable, (we've had multiple computers die due to surges and fluctuations) so I went for the cheapest 650w tier one PSU I could find. Took your advice about the hybrid drive and switched to a regular HDD.
@almighty cushion one on adverts.ie right now for that.
@Dvraiz yeah as above mobo is now 40 pounds cheaper, as for GPU... With 2nd hand 290s that cheap I don't think its worth the 10-15 fps I lose for 10-20 pounds less.
@grindle well future proofing and upgrade-ability is not really my concern. Once this is built it should do for 3 years is my hope. By that time skylake will be old hat and haswell chips will be bargain basement (I hope). Second hand case I completely forgot to consider whelp. I'll start looking now ha.

MarkAnthony

The guys here have some very good and reasonable PSU suggestions. I'd be more worried about the in going power if you're having surges etc.

You might consider switching to an AMD platform if its just gaming your after. You could go with a new mobo and CPU.

Hanley209

MarkAnthony wrote: »

The guys here have some very good and reasonable PSU suggestions. I'd be more worried about the in going power if you're having surges etc.

You might consider switching to an AMD platform if its just gaming your after. You could go with a new mobo and CPU.

I'll have a look through the forum for PSU threads, thanks. AMD from what I read are cheap but less bang for buck. Also I'll be doing some light android ROM development so would prefer Intel hyperthreading and better per core performance. Unless rumors of AMD's CPU demise have been greatly exaggerated..

Digital Solitude

Don't go AMD.

A Haswell or Skylake i3 would let you easily hit the budget with upgrades, no point in going for such an old chipset imo.

You can probably get a Haswell i5 build for less, you'll have no overclocking but you won't need to.

That or drop GPU to a 380

i5s don't have Hyperthreading

MarkAnthony

Hanley209 wrote: »

I'll have a look through the forum for PSU threads, thanks. AMD from what I read are cheap but less bang for buck. Also I'll be doing some light android ROM development so would prefer Intel hyperthreading and better per core performance. Unless rumors of AMD's CPU demise have been greatly exaggerated..

Roman General, American writer, whats the difference :pac:

The AMD platforms can be dirt cheap with some silly core counts. There seems to be a bit of a bias against them. Really it comes down to cost if you can get intel cheaper obviously do it but personally I quite like some of AMDs stuff.

Xenoronin

AMD just have a lot of negatives that they need to address, power consumption, heat, performance per core, and this isn't doing them any favours either

Here's hoping that Zen puts them back on track so that Intel has some competition in the desktop/laptop department.

Serephucus

There's also the fact that it looks like all Skylake i3s will be overclockable now, with a Z170 board. The board probably pushes things out of your pricerange, but worth investigating at least.