New gaming build - need a few tweaks please

[Mazmanmaz1]

All - building a new gaming rig. Here's the plan:

1) Use: gaming (want to be able to play the latest)
2) Budget: £1200 (+/- 10%)
3) Country: UK
4) Vendor: mostly Scan.co.uk (unless anyone has a better recommendation)
5) Preference: partial to Intel and nVidia
6) Current parts: none
7) Overclocking: no plans
8) Resolution: 1080p (want ultra detail setting)
9) Timeline: build in the next 4-6 weeks
10) OS: need to buy Windows 8

Here's what I'm looking at:

CPU: i7 4790K (£275)
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo (£26)
Motherboard: Asus Z97A (£100)
Memory: Corsair Vengence 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (£60)
Video card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB (£280)
Hard drive: Crucial M500 240 GB SSD (£85)
Optical drive: Pioneer 8x Blu-Ray player (£40)
Power supply: XFX 650w bronze (£85)
Case: Corsair Carbide Mid Tower 200R (£50)
Monitor: 27" Acer LED K272 (£150)
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech wireless set (£25)
OS: Windows 8 (£70)

I'm at £1,246. My questions:

1) Any glaring mistakes in parts selection?
2) Is the monitor decent? Ive researched this part the least so I appreciate any recommendations here.
3) I'm sure 8GB is enough for playing any game out there. Is this correct? Figure I still have room to upgrade down the road.
4) Given my objectives and budget, anyone feel strongly about swapping one part for something better?

Thanks in advance.

 

[lehtv]

7) Overclocking: no plans

Then you don't need a Z97 board. 4790K is also debatable... yes, it's higher clocked than any other Intel CPU out of the box, but it's also an overclocking part and you have to pay a huge premium for an overclockable i7. Xeon E3-1231 V3 would be the same thing at 0.5GHz lower and a much lower price, though a locked i5 would be even cheaper and achieve 90% of what you get with an i7 gaming-wise. A locked i5 will still support at least one graphics card upgrade after the GTX 970, so you have 4+ years of life on it if you upgrade graphics every two years. Possibly 6+, with the way things are going (DX12 will increase CPU draw calls drastically, reducing CPU limitations for the GPU).

8) Resolution: 1080p (want ultra detail setting)

Well, the Acer K272 you picked is 1440p. I agree with the 1080p goal though, GTX 970 is perfect for that resolution.

9) Timeline: build in the next 4-6 weeks

Well, that's a pretty long time, prices and availabilities can change in a month and a half. At this point, all you need is a general outline:

CPU: i5-4xxx (best ghz/£ at the time) or Xeon E3-1231V3
Cooler: stock cooler works fine if you don't mind a bit of noise at load, otherwise 212 EVO is a decent choice (but not necessarily the most quiet cooler available).
Motherboard: I'd get a H97 board with ALC1150 sound - Gigabyte H97-D3H for instance, currently £80 on Amazon
Memory: whichever 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 1.5V kit is the cheapest at the time
Video card: I'd prefer MSI, Asus, EVGA and Zotac over that, purely due to their smaller size which makes them more easily compatible with different cases.
SSD: M500 is last-gen, go with MX100 or M550
Optical: if you really need it
PSU: Overpriced and a bit too powerful, but otherwise good. Technically, you could run a stock clocked Intel + GTX970 build off of an XFX 450W but at this budget it's good to have a bit of extra power for the future. I'd go with XFX 550W, either the basic Bronze unit, or the TS or XTR Gold unit.
Case: OK. I think NZXT Source 340 would be a bit more advanced at £10 more
Monitor: For fast paced games, you want to ensure fluid motion and fast responsiveness: AOC G2460PQU or BenQ XL2411Z. If you don't care at all about fast paced games, consider an IPS monitor like Asus PB238Q. At the cheaper end, BenQ RL2455HM would be fine.
KB/M: Wireless for gaming? Not a great idea. I would recommend spending a little more to get quality parts with anti-ghosting for the keyboard and adjustable DPI for the mouse, at minimum. Corsair Raptor K30 £40 + Steelseries Rival £31 (sale @ CCL)
Mousepad: a cheap gaming mouse pad like QcK or QcK+ should do the trick.

3) I'm sure 8GB is enough for playing any game out there. Is this correct? Figure I still have room to upgrade down the road.

Yes, 8GB is enough for the time being

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nothing wrong with the M500 SSDs, that I know of. I'm using several, in both my and friends and relatives systems.

 

[Mazmanmaz1]

All helpful comments. Thanks everyone.

 

[mfenn]

SSD : M500 is last-gen, go with MX100 or M550

Actually, the M500 is two generations old at this point. The BX100 and MX110 are the newest drives. I agree that it doesn't make sense to get an older drive when the newer ones are about the same price and faster.

 

[lehtv]

Actually, the M500 is two generations old at this point. The BX100 and MX110 are the newest drives. I agree that it doesn't make sense to get an older drive when the newer ones are about the same price and faster.

By last-gen I meant no longer in production (a bit poorly worded there), which the M500 certainly hasn't been for a long while. Surprising if some places still have it in stock.

However, I thought MX100 was still in production... it looks like it's not. I guess that's officially last-gen too.

BX100 is not a successor to MX100 even though it is newer. MX100 performs better.

By MX110 you're probably referring to MX200 which is indeed the MX100 successor. EDIT. or is it? It seems to be priced higher than MX100 at launch, while BX100 is replacing MX100. Weird. Maybe Micron decided MX100 was too much of an allrounder, and wanted to provide a separate low cost SSD model and a high performance SSD model

 

[mfenn]

The BX100 also drops all the safety features the MX100 retains, so I'd avoid that SSD.

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here, but I assume you're talking about the MX100 having a capacitor that lets it dump the page mapping tables from DRAM to flash in the event of a sudden power outage. The BX100 doesn't need that because it uses a Silicon Motion 2246EN controller which does not use DRAM as a write-back page mapping cache (this is why random writes suffer). So it's not any more at risk of corruption than any other SSD, and is a great value.

 

[mfenn]

By MX110 you're probably referring to MX200 which is indeed the MX100 successor.

Sorry, yes I meant MX200. Its early leaks were as MX110 and it's branded as that in New Zealand randomly.

EDIT. or is it? It seems to be priced higher than MX100 at launch, while BX100 is replacing MX100. Weird. Maybe Micron decided MX100 was too much of an allrounder, and wanted to provide a separate low cost SSD model and a high performance SSD model

It's a bit confusing, but basically I was looking at it in terms of place in the price stack. The BX100 occupies the same price point as the MX100 and the MX200 is more akin to the M550. If you instead look at it from a features point of view, the MX200 does replace the MX100 and M550 together.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here, but I assume you're talking about the MX100 having a capacitor that lets it dump the page mapping tables from DRAM to flash in the event of a sudden power outage. The BX100 doesn't need that because it uses a Silicon Motion 2246EN controller which does not use DRAM as a write-back page mapping cache (this is why random writes suffer). So it's not any more at risk of corruption than any other SSD, and is a great value.

That's good to know. I was also under the (mistaken, apparently), that the BX100 was inferior to the M500, because of the lack of caps, and the (apparent) (non-)issues with the mapping table.

 

[lehtv]

Can you link the comparison article please?

 

[MTDEW]

Can you link the comparison article please?

I'm pretty sure it's quoted from HERE.