Help building a new rig

[scarffo]

Hi there, I’m Andy and I’m new to the forum, although I’ve been lurking for quite a while. I’m not 100% sure if this is the right place to post this kind of thread, so I apologise if I’ve done something wrong, but I couldn’t find anything specific to what I’m asking in through searching.

I’m looking for help on a system that’ll be mostly for casual gaming and general multi-tasking (browsing/word processing etc). My budget is £700, possibly slightly more if I was to include a monitor. I don’t need an OS, DVD drive, mouse or a keyboard since I can provide these myself.

I’d like it to be able to play recent games on good settings, preferably at 60fps (I’m not particularly bothered about ultra settings or anything like that). My problem is, I have very little knowledge when it comes to GPUs or GPU/CPU combinations so I have no idea what I’d need to make this possible.

I’m not sure whether AMD or Intel would be the better route to go down, but I’ll be buying almost all of the components from http://www.amazon.co.uk/ since I'm in England.

Just to make sure I've covered everything in the sticky, I'll most likely be running it at 1920x1080, possibly overclocking it (although it'd be most helpful to assume the system isn't overclocked) and I'll be using it as soon as it's built.

Thanks,
Andy.

 

[mfenn]

Welcome to the forums scarffo, you are indeed posting in the correct place. Can you let us know definitively whether or not you require a monitor? That's a pretty significant expense in your price range and would significantly change the recommendation.

Also, are you able to order from http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ?

 

[scarffo]

I can use my current monitor so no, I don't need require one and yes, I can order from overclockers.

 

[nsafreak]

You don't sound 100% sure as to whether or not you're going to overclock and that does affect the build cost by a pretty fair margin. I haven't quite been able to put together a overclocked build into a 700 pound budget (well, I did but you'd have to drop the SSD and I almost consider them essential now) so I've come up with two builds:

Overclocking build

CPU: Intel i5 4670K
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87M-D3H
RAM: TeamGroup 8GB DDR3-1600
GPU: Sapphire R9 270X
CPU Heatsink: ThermalRight TrueSpirit 140
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
HDD: Seagate 1TB
PSU: SeaSonic G Series 550 watt
Case: Corsair Carbide 300R

Total (not including shipping but including VAT): 768.90

Non Overclocking Build

CPU: Intel i5 4430
Motherboard: AsRock B85M Pro4
RAM: TeamGroup 8GB DDR3-1600
GPU: MSI R9 280X
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
HDD: Seagate 1TB
PSU: SeaSonic G Series 550 watt
Case: Corsair Carbide 300R

Total (not including shipping but including VAT): 749.83

If you don't mind going to multiple different sources there's also the build I put together on PC Part Picker:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£64.71 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£55.17 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£68.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card (£225.60 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case (£47.98 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Be Quiet 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£45.50 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £676.94
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-26 22:59 GMT+0000)



If you don't overclock that gives a bit more room to upgrade the video card, yes I know overshot budget on both and I'm forgetting an optical disk drive. I just have them lying around myself so I didn't include one, if you don't have a spare or can't use the one from your current build add another 20 pounds to either build. All prices are from overclockers.co.uk .

 

[mfenn]

Very nice examples from nsafreak! I think that it goes to show that giving up overclocking capability can get you a much better GPU. Since the GPU is the primary determiner of gaming performance, you want to get one that's as powerful as possible within your budget.