Spec for Gaming (£8-900 budget)

[Raz0r85]

Hi,
I'm almost ready to order a PC, mainly for gaming as well as photo editing and have so far come up with this spec:

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8P67 PRO (NEW REV 3.0): USB 3.0/SATA 6Gb/s, CrossFireX™ & SLI
Memory (RAM)
4GB KINGSTON HYPER-X SPECIAL EDITION GREY - DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 2GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - DX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE Need For Speed™ World Starter Pack with any Nvidia® GTS450 or above!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD5002AALX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 11 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £882.00 including VAT and delivery.

I think I'm pretty much happy with most of it, but unsure about the graphics card, I have been switching constantly between the GTX 570 and the radeon 6950/70. I'm also not sure if the processor cooling or PSU will be enough? Any advice would be much appreciated !

Cheers

 

[JonnyPx]

The PSU is just about right I think. The GTX 570 is an excellent choice. I've been looking at this card aswell, and it seems about 8-10 percent faster than the 6950. It's roughly the same as a 6970 too, perhaps a little faster in some games, so thats also good. Your cooling is fine, unless you are going to Overclock it outrageously, it should not be a problem. So all in all, a very good system.

 

[Teaz]

That's a nice spec for what you have come up with. You have made the right choice with the 570 for gaming as it's performence is near to the 580. It will be more helpful with it's CUDA Cores when you're doing any editing so the 570 is fine. As for the CPU Cooler, that's fine as the other coolers are more for intense heavy load on the cpu like overclocking so the triple copper is enough to keep the cpu temps cooled.

The ram you may consider switching them to the 1333Mhz as you won't really see a difference in it as it's mainly effective in overclocking so the 4gb 1333Mhz ram will be enough to run the pc smoothly.

Other than that, you may consider swapping the Hard Disk to the 640GB of the caviar black which has a 64mb cache which should be nicer. You could save by popping the motherboard down to the normal p8p67 as the pro is just almost about the same but the Pro just has the extra SLi capabilities which is fine to hold on to if you plan to SLI in future but if not you could save yourself.

As for the whole spec it's spot on

 

[Raz0r85]

Thanks for the replies guys, decided to take your advice and go for the 640GB caviar black, kept the Kingston ram though (the price difference wasn't much so didn't seem worth changing) as well as the motherboard so that I can SLI later on.

Anyway order now placed, just the agonizing wait now! :wacko:

 

[Rynade]

You should have got 2500k instead of 2500, i hear overclocking is a no brainer.

 

[Sie]

overclocking isn't exactly a no brainer if your computer iliterate on the back end of computers, also the 2500 is perfectly fine for gaming, its a tab behind the 2600 but not by much.

 

[Meds]

Yup, unless you really want to overclock and it's something you're interested in then why do it? At the end of the day, stock speeds will be more than enough for 95% of users.

Secondly, Raz0r85, you mention that there is a chance you may opt for sli in the future? If so, I would strongly advise you to get a the Corsair TX850 PSU. The TX650 is just enough for the current spec, if you stick another GTX570 in there it will probably have a heart attack.