Help with building pc for the first time :)

[JPearce]

Hey guys this is my first time building a pc. Ive spent a bit of time researching and choosing parts but i'm very new to this.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for.

Gaming - bf3 etc

2. What YOUR budget is.

Preferably under £700

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

UK

4. IF YOU have a brand preference.

Prefer Intel and nVidia

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

No current parts

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

Would like to be able to overclock in the future

8. What resolution will you be using?

1920 × 1080

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?

In about 3 weeks

These are the parts which I have been looking at:
CPU: i5-3570k - £175 (only £10 more than 2500K)
GPU: Asus nVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 TI Direct II TOP 1GB £180
or MSI nVIDIA GTX 560 TI Twin Frozr II 1GB £163
(seems to be the best price to performance card)
Motherboard: P8Z77-M PRO £113
(£50 cheaper than the full size board - can still go sli in the future)
Case: NZXT phantom 410 £80
RAM: 2x4gb Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz £41
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500Gb SATA3 £52
PSU: Corsair GS800 800W £83
Drive: Asus DRW-24B5ST 24x £14

Total: £721 - £738

All the prices are from amazon uk.
I plan to buy another 560ti in a year or so.

I was just wondering if you guys could tell me if I have made any huge silly errors or if there is a much better (or cheaper) option that I should be looking at.
The components above are slightly more expensive than i would like but if its going to run games well, be able to oc and have good upgradeability im willing to spend a few extra pounds.

Thanks very much in advance

 

[lehtv]

CPU Good (£175)
GPU 7850 2GB (£190) is better for the money, it overclocks like mad and consumes much less power and has twice as much VRAM. You can Crossfire+OC it on a 650W unit with plenty of watts to spare. If you're biased against AMD cards, wait until GTX 660 is released before buying a discrete GPU, that one in SLI should be fine with 650W as well.
Mobo Here's a good full size SLI/CF board: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (£110)
Case There are better cases for the money, e.g. Fractal Design Core 3000 (£50)
RAM Buy low profile (£41)
HDD Meh. Faster and twice as big for 30% more: Seagate 1TB 7200 (£68)
PSU Corsair TX650 V2 (£72)
DVD Good (£14)

= £720

I'd make an SSD the next upgrade. I'd overclock the CPU sooner rather than later... but at least at the time of the next GPU upgrade.

 

[JPearce]

Thanks for the reply.

For the PSU it is only £10 cheaper that the 800W would it not be worth having the extra power just in case or will i never need it?
As for the HDD I don't think I'm ever going to use up much space (i doubt anywhere near 500gb) is the extra speed worth the extra £16 (will i notice a difference).
Are there any physical disadvantages (except for the price) to the original case, i just really like the look of it.
I'm still unsure about the GPU. How important is the extra vram as i won't be going above 1920x1080?

Thanks

 

[lehtv]

For the PSU it is only £10 cheaper that the 800W would it not be worth having the extra power just in case or will i never need it?

The 650W PSU is also more efficient, backed by 5-year warranty and built by Seasonic instead of CWT (which I would count as a plus). You're very unlikely to ever need more than 650W. If you want to get away with even less, GS600 is a decent choice for £60, it'll run 7850 Crossfire fine.

If you built a PC that would require a more powerful PSU, it would make little difference to the budget of that PC whether you replaced the PSU or not.

As for the HDD I don't think I'm ever going to use up much space (i doubt anywhere near 500gb) is the extra speed worth the extra £16 (will i notice a difference).

I thought I'd never use more than 1TB and now my additional 2TB drive is nearly full... I just don't think that 500GB for £50 is a good deal.

Are there any physical disadvantages (except for the price) to the original case, i just really like the look of it.

No, it's a decent case. Just know that you're paying only for better looks, not functionality or quality.

I'm still unsure about the GPU. How important is the extra vram as i won't be going above 1920x1080?

Pretty important especially in demanding, large scale games like BF3. 7850 is fast enough (especially with OC) to take advantage of settings that require more than 1GB VRAM, even on 1080p. And if you crossfire it, you won't be limited by VRAM nearly as badly as you would with 560 Ti SLI. SLI/Crossfire mirrors VRAM so you only have as much as you would with a single GPU. My personal experience with a single 560 Ti has been that many games can max out the VRAM on it but almost always at an unacceptable cost to framerate. A single 560 Ti isn't really fast enough to require more than 1GB.

 

[mfenn]

All the prices are from amazon uk.
I plan to buy another 560ti in a year or so.

The GTX 560 Ti is already a generation old at this point and it's unlikely that you'd be able to find one for a reasonable price in a year unless you're willing to hunt for used deals. A year from now you'd probably be better off waiting until the next refresh to drop and buying a new single card. Same goes for the 7850.