1st PC Build - need help

[MH1812]

Hi,
I'm building my first PC & i have a friend who can help me assemble it, but i was wondering if anyone could give me advice on a build. I am aiming for £450 - £550 range and have found this build...

It's mainly for online games and skyrim. Could anyone improve my build? - if there are any offers on which would give me a better deal or confirm they are all compatible.
Any help would be really appreciated,
thanks
p.s - sorry, forgot to add, ill be buying parts from the uk

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Looks like a reasonable low-end/midrange gaming rig to me.

Are you intending to over clock? If not, you can probably use whatever fans come with the case, and use the HSF that's included with the CPU. So you'd save like 30 pounds.

Also, not to spend your money for you, but no SSD makes me sad.

The case seems unnecessarily large. It's roomy (probably pretty good for over clocking, and I like the look of it) but if you're not overclocking and don't intend to add a second GPU later, you could probably get a mATX case/motherboard for the same money and save some space/weight.

 

[Seba]

I would go for a Core i5 build (and using the included cooler), instead of FX-6300.

And replace the DDR3-2400 with DDR3-1600 1,5V. You can also go for 1x8GB instead of 2x4GB.

Could you fit a R9 280 3GB in your budget (instead of R9 270X)?

 

[MH1812]

hey,
thanks for the advice, i am not planning to over-clock, i think i will take your advice on that and use the fans which come with it.
Could you recommend any good solid state drives?
i will probably improve it in the future but just needed something to start me off with really.
thanks again

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Could you recommend any good solid state drives?

Standard readily available choices would be Samsung 840 EVO series and Crucial MX100. Use SSD for Windows and applications and an HDD for storage.

 

[mfenn]

I would go for a Core i5 build (and using the included cooler), instead of FX-6300.

And replace the DDR3-2400 with DDR3-1600 1,5V. You can also go for 1x8GB instead of 2x4GB.

Could you fit a R9 280 3GB in your budget (instead of R9 270X)?

I think in this budget, you can choose between the SSD and i5, but not get both. The least expensive i5 4430 costs £132, which eats up most of the remaining budget. I'd honestly stick with the FX-6300 and go for an SSD like the Crucial MX100 128GB for £53.

 

[Aolish]

Standard readily available choices would be Samsung 840 EVO series and Crucial MX100. Use SSD for Windows and applications and an HDD for storage.

Pretty much a lot of people are doing this, a friend of mind as well as myself did this also. You just can't get anymore efficient than that when it comes to performance as far as I know minus OCing.

The only thing I recommend is a stronger CPU. Infact go as fast as possible. These days (and this is my opinion) besides the storage capacity, I find that the processor seems to get outdated quick inside of a rig (unless your familiar with OC). You should just get the fastest possible to avoid any headache later on since its obviously one of the more harder components to upgrade. You want easy upgrades later in the future. Stick in that extra ram? no problem. Upgrade the GPU? no problem? Upgrade the PSU? no problem. Upgrade the CPU? Suddenly things got harder compared to the other three. There is just to much involved with the processor upgrades. You might/need to update the bios, purchase another motherboard which sometimes requires new ram modules etc(?)

IMO apart of purchasing a new computer is to also plan for the future as easy as possible. Sure you can purchase a board that will support future processors but wouldn't you want to just stick in a new GPU or RAM and just be done with it? Again just an opinion. 😀

 

[mfenn]

I find that the processor seems to get outdated quick inside of a rig (unless your familiar with OC).

This opinion runs counter to the technical reality that CPUs are just not improving as fast as they used to.

If you built a Core i5 2500K + Radeon 6970 machine in January 2011, then your CPU would still be absolutely fine for gaming, but your GPU would be in need of replacement (it's slower than a $150 R9 270).

 

[Aolish]

This opinion runs counter to the technical reality that CPUs are just not improving as fast as they used to.

If you built a Core i5 2500K + Radeon 6970 machine in January 2011, then your CPU would still be absolutely fine for gaming, but your GPU would be in need of replacement (it's slower than a $150 R9 270).

yeah thats my main bottleneck now in my rig, I might upgrade next year or whenever nvidia or amd releases there next gen GPUs. To be honest I haven't had the time to play all that much these days. When I then have the time to play I end up playing games that use old engines which play perfectly smooth on a 7850 like Arkham City and TR Underworld (collecting the treasures and relics).

But back to what I was saying. I just think the cpu is a hassle to upgrade whenever u need to. Plus with the arrival of next gen console ports coming out I have this funny feeling that the fastest processors are going to be needed in order to achieve playable fps on max settings. Just look at some of the next gen games we have now on PC, they already require super fast i7s. With developers getting more and more familiar with next gen hardware and the fact that developers can code to the metal much more efficiently on consoles than on PC, games will start to look better and better. When those games get ported over to the PC I have a feeling some serious juice will be needed to run those games. Obviously I'm no expert and of course I could be wrong.