building a pc-need advice

[DrumRoll]

Hi guys.

 

Decided to try and build my own gaming pc due to the cost of buying a prebuilt one.

 

here are the components I have decided upon so far:

 

case:Rosewill R5 case

Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H (rev. 1.0) - Motherboard - ATX - LGA1155 Socket

PSU:CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

NOW what I need some help with is deciding on what to get in terms of RAM/graphics card/sound card/hard drive.

 

Is that everything I would need? Do I need all these items?

 

Anyway, I know most people will want to know what sort of budget I have and the truth is I don't really know. I want to get the basics sorted and an idea in my head before I work things like that out. So...I want a good quality product at a good price. Not dirt cheap but not ridiculous.

 

any help is appreciated!

[JohnFlower]

Haswell has just been release, why are you wanting an 1155 board? Do you already have a CPU somewhere?

I recommend thinking about your budget. What you call dirt cheap and what others call dirt cheap are likely very different.

[Air King]

Two moths ago I builted my own Gaming PC...the one I'm using now:

 

These are all the parts needed to build a Gaming PC ---- the given suggestion are the one I chose for myself---.

• Case: NZXT Guardian 921 RB (175$)
  
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z77-DS3H  (115$)
  
• CPU:  Intel Core i5 2500K (215$)
  
• Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 550W (120$)
  
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (70$)
  
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660  (240$)
  
• HDD: 2TB Seagate Barracuda (100$)
  
• DVD Drive: LG Multi etc.... (31$)
  

You should invest more on Graphic card and buy an GTX series like 660 or better if you can afford and CPU i5 is more than enough. Also the Ram is better 8GB and above cuz they don't even cost much. Also if you buy a powerful Cpu like the one mentioned it's adviced to buy also another cooler and not use the one that comes with it. As for Hard Drive it depends on the other files you want to keep on it beside games of course,..1TB is enough most of the time(you can add more later if needed) .

[DrumRoll]

thanks for the advice guys.

 

Johnflower. I picked that motherboard simply because it was the highest rated on a site, no personal knowledge or preference.

[JohnFlower]

Ok, well, you might want to either wait a while for thorough tests, or get a decent Asus 1150 board.

[DrumRoll]

this one?

 

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Z87-A-DDR3-1600-Motherboard/dp/B00CRJSV9O

[JohnFlower]

I would aim for at least the Z87-Deluxe... But as I don't know the budget, I cant say what fits your needs.

[Dae314]

The A is fine, but honestly dude, it's pretty clear that you're not up to speed on planning your build. Especially when you're building on your own, you should aim for a certain level of basic knowledge (like what the most recent releases are). Don't just buy whatever everyone else says to buy (going just off rating), learn a little yourself and find out why it's recommended. Maybe you won't need some features on the highest rated item, and you can opt for a cheaper item that's just as good for your need.

I highly encourage you to look at my guide here:

http://forums.kametsu.com/index.php?/topic/30271-a-newbies-hardware-guide-updated-682013/

I made it especially for builders at your level. You don't have to read it all, but scan through the topics. If there's a subsection you don't know about (e.g. Amperes on the PSU, TDP on the CPU, etc.) give it a quick read. Check out some of the builds at the bottom and you'll have a rough idea of how much power you can get out of each price range. The more knowledge you have the better chance you'll have of avoiding situations where you need to return incompatible parts or you end up with a dead build that you don't know how to explain well enough to someone else who could help you troubleshoot it.

[DrumRoll]

would anyone be able to suggest a build that would let me play Company of heroes 2 on decent settings? I know its a very ambiguous question but strategy games are all I am really interested in for the PC, they're my favourite game genre in general.

 

Budget:cheap as possible within the parameters of playing coh2 on decent settings aka no stuttering etc (very technical term)

 

thanks all

[JohnFlower]

Budget really needs to be a monetary value, else I could recommend you getting a 780, 4470k, 32gb RAM and a 512gb ssd... It does everything you want, and in my eyes, can be relatively cheap.

[ZeroPenguins]

^Liar, as if you have the money for that... If you did you would've ditched that i7 990X and those 580s. Hahaha

 

And I hoped you meant the 4770K, 4470K? Wtf lmao

 

@OP

 

Well Johnflower is right, give us how much you really want to spend. Because "technically" speaking you could build a computer from $0-infinitiy dollars, and from your standards it could be a $750 dollars is expensive and good priced is $500. For me expensive is $3000 and cheap is $1500. I spent shit ton on my computer, probably over $3000 dollar by now seeing that I keep on buying new parts and upgrading old shit (Y GPU SO MUCH!?) over the past years. You don't know how lucky you guys are, people who own the first gen i7s like Johnflower and me, we spent at least 2-3X more on motherboards and 3-4X more on RAM than you could've ever imagined. DDR3 RAM was expensive as fuck I tell you, 3GB 1333MHz kit was over $100 dollars back in the day. Hahahaha old news I tell ya.

[JohnFlower]

4470k, 4770k, w/e. Haswell has just been released, and I have no clue about their naming structure... I don't see why Intel didn't stick with the easy to understand i7 920-985 etc :\

I guess they ran out of numbers, starting from 850 with the original i series.

[Dae314]

Here, how's this build:

http://i1072.photobucket.com/albums/w378/Dae314/build_zps073a3a23.png~original

Total is $690.

You can drop the price by

1) getting rid of the cooler (-$33)

2) finding a CD drive you can recycle from an old build (-$18)

3) dropping the HDD size (variable decrease)

4) dropping memory to 4GB (variable decrease)

5) dropping down to a 7770 (variable decrease)

6) dropping to a lower richland processor (variable decrease)

Edited June 22, 2013 by Dae314

[DrumRoll]

my budget is about £600, or $925

[ZeroPenguins]

4470k, 4770k, w/e. Haswell has just been released, and I have no clue about their naming structure... I don't see why Intel didn't stick with the easy to understand i7 920-985 etc :\

I guess they ran out of numbers, starting from 850 with the original i series.

 

Surprisingly the 850s came after the 920-965 series. With a new socket as well, but I guess it was still considered as first gen.

[DrumRoll]

thanks Dae. this came to about £530 on amazon so I will probably get the 7080 (total:£590) instead of the 7050 graphics card, is this a wise idea?

Edited June 22, 2013 by DrumRoll

[Dae314]

OH you're ordering from UK? Post your build advice thread here:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/

You'll get a lot more help there.

Since you finally gave us a budget, you can move the CPU up to an i5 Haswell and a Z87 motherboard. Also, I think you can probably move up to a 7870 or around there. The danger of buying AMD right now is that they're probably going to refresh their GPU line in response to Nvidia's cards that have just been released.

[JohnFlower]

Yeah, AMD are due for a refresh on their cards. I hear they're working with DICE to get more optimisation for their cards (on the Frostbite engine at least), which should be a good thing for anyone who games with AMD hardware.

As I mentioned earlier, get the higher end Asus boards with a moderate Intel CPU. The Z87-PLUS should be good for your needs, along with i5-4670K.

These are perfect components for a gaming system, but they do come at a higher price. I personally would recommend these as a minimum for any new gaming PC. With new consoles due out later this year, you can expect PC games to take a step forward in terms of the processing power needed to run them. If you skimp on the components now, you will likely be kicking yourself later.

The motherboard and CPU I mentioned total to around 420USD. This leaves you with quite a bit of room to go for a 7870 (I would recommend at least a 7970, but the budget wont allow for that). Let's say 225USD (it varies on model) for the 7870.

RAM: another 90USD (looking at corsair Dominator 8gb (2x4gb)). At this stage, you're at ~735USD.

Hard drive: You don't really have the budget to get an SSD... Perhaps you could recycle a hard drive from an older PC and save up for one in the future?

PSU: At least HX series. Nothing less. Get the 650watt model, which is around 130USD. Total: 865USD

Inbuilt sound these days is relatively good these days, and I doubt your needs require a soundcard of any kind.

[Dae314]

I managed to swipe a 7970 for $300 last night . Newegg had a sale ^^. I was going to wait for the 760, but looking at the specs, and especially looking at that awesome game bundle by AMD convinced me. I don't care if I get 10 less frames per second, I got an extra gig of memory and Bioshock Infinite!

Anyway, I hope you're not expecting to fit a monitor and operating system into your budget because then we're back to my build xD. Link me to your build thread on bit-tech so I can follow it there too. Bit-tech is usually where I watch/do build advisories. I think you can even get free shipping from scan if you make enough posts on the bit-tech forum.

[DrumRoll]

No I have monitors, keyboards and all the other ancillary stuff all over the place, not that naive;)

 

Thanks for all the advice thus far. Now I just need money:)

 

also, any ideas on the best place to buy this stuff in the uk? I've been on amazon but I know there are some deals to be had in other places (so long as shipping is included.)

 

P.S does anyone know any tricks for not paying vat? Just something a friend was speaking to me about...so I thought I may as well ask. I run a charity, does anyone know if that would entitle me to a vat relief on computing items?