£800 budget - Requesting alittle help

[Sie]

So as the title says ive got a £800 Budget (+/- alittle).
Use : Extreme gaming
Case: Maelstrom T900 (im in love with this case)

So if anyone could give me a hand with some specs or general advice for when i order in April i would really appreciate it thanks

Fail...posted in the wrong forum section "/

//Si

 

[JSG10]

Lol no problem, one of the mods will be able to move it for you

Heres a spec with one of the SB i5 CPUs for you to think about. It comes in a little over budget but could be bought down with some tweaking.

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8P67 (NEW REV 3.0): USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX™
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE Need For Speed™ World Starter Pack with any Nvidia® GTS450 or above!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£78)
Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1155/1156 STANDARD CPU COOLER

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Price: £847.00 including VAT and delivery.

This also comes with Win7 and free trials of Office and Bullguard.

I'll do an AMD spec for you in a min

 

[Sie]

Sweet thanks, and yea that is one of my key problems with pulling out a spec..AMD or Intel, and im not too up to day with the GPU's these day..which is quite bad considering im a Computer science student and im wanting to go into building computers some day

 

[JSG10]

If you go for AMD you can use the Phenom II X4 970 CPU (a perfectly able CPU, its what I use ) and get the next GPU up the GTX570 which would be better for gaming and it'll cost you just a couple of quid more


Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 970 (3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - DX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE Need For Speed™ World Starter Pack with any Nvidia® GTS450 or above!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£78)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Price: £849.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[Sie]

awesome man, thanks alot now ive got 2-3 weeks to simmer over the specs and decide which i will go for probably the AMD build though personally, always been a Phenom fanboy due to a few friends using them

 

[Randomthom]

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 970 (3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
2GB AMD RADEON™ HD6950 - 2 DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Price: £803.00 including VAT and delivery.

My alternative;
You're dropping a little bit of processing power from JSG's 1st build but you're getting it back in the graphics card. I know this is a lot like JSG's 2nd build but with an AMD card.

One big factor to point out is the Hard Drive, I don't know if JSG doesn't know or just forgot to pick it but for a gaming rig you should be choosing the black edition hard drives, not the green edition. Black is faster, green is... greener (lower power usage).

Any of the above builds should serve you well for gaming purposes, I'd personally choose the graphics power over the processing, most games seem to be graphics limited, not processor limited. GTX 570 or AMD 6950, either card will rock, I'd personally have the 6950 as it can be bios flashed into a 6970 and has a dual bios feature in case that goes wrong so it doesn't get bricked!

 

[LFFPicard]

Just to point out a couple from the above..

Bios flashing the 6950 will void the warranty so you wont get it replaced under warranty if the card fails.
Green is a perfectly capable hard drive for gaming, it will just take a tad longer to spin up for use. They are mainly considered a backup drive but once the drive has spun up it is more than capable of performing for gaming.

Personally I would go for the Nvidia cards, CUDA cores and more reliable drivers. If you did ant to save some money and you dont plan to overclock you can drop the cooler to a stock or drop the hard drive to a 640GB.
You could if you want to go drastic on the intel build drop the motherboard to the micro ATX board. As your not ordering for a few weeks the new revision boards should be in. This may fit better in your beloved case but it will limit your ability to upgrade in the future.

Hope this helps.

 

[JSG10]

I specifically chose the green drives for a couple of reasons, while in use there is no notable difference between the two, it's cheaper and it also performs perfectly well as a main hdd, I use one and have no problems. If you truly want a difference in boot times then you'll want a SSD but that will put you way over budget.
I prefer nVidia GPUs to ATI as I think they're more versatile and robust at present.

 

[Sie]

Well too be honest, im not planning on OC'ing my new rig reason being as stated in many posts I've read...voiding warranty, but i am looking to have a rig that is viable to upgrade in the future, this is just kinda a starting point for me as the machine im running on currently is quite old, 5 years or so... and if anyone has a better option for a case please go ahead and give some tips. my current machine also sounds like a jet and gets very dusty on the inside...

also dont let my AMD fanboy-ness deter you from giving tips on what YOU thing would be a good choice im totally open to suggestions.

 

[NilSatis]

I have always had Nvidia graphics cards until this build. I have a 2gb AMD/ATI Radeon 6950 card. Its excellent. The drivers out now for them are brilliant. Rock solid and stable, running Catalyst 11.2 at the moment but there is another one out now; which squeezes even more performance out of the ATI 6*** series cards. At the moment their drivers seem very good.

You cant go wrong with either this; or a GTX 570 imo. They will both; with a decent cpu like above; walk all over most games out there at the moment on very high/highest settings.

You like the case....go for that one; its a nice case. Your old machine will be sounding like a jet because of the dust build up inside, coupled with fans running close to their max rpm in order to cool down worn out hot old graphics card and cpu. As SLI still causes some problems; and is not fully utilised by some games; run a single card until there is another one out that is a big step up in performance and upgrade to that. Should last you a good few years if you pick either the Nvidia, or the ATI card.

My old machine sounded similar to a jet too; or at least one that had swallowed a few birds into its engine midflight :helpsmilie:

 

[tornandtwisted]

My old one sounds like a spitfire taking off. Truly ridiculous.

 

[Sie]

Yea the 570 looks nice though ive been checking the 560ti out and it seems quite decent but im not up to scratch on the GPU's these days sooo...

I'm just looking for something to run some up coming games i.e Crysis 2, BF3... wow and rift ofc the last GPU i bought was a 9400 which im still running with currently, cant complain for the 30 quid i payed for it

Anyone know if HP wireless keyboards/mouse are compatible with non HP platforms ?
as Ive got a media PC keyboard/mouse (both wireless) with the receivers..Im quite sure its possible to download the drivers from them from the HP site but Im just wondering if anyone already knows the answer to this

im currently arguing with my self to see if i can squeeze a little more into the budget, shame the VAT absolutely rapes the price

 

[LFFPicard]

Using HP peripherals is fine on another system just grab the drivers.

The 550 and 560Ti cards are the budget 5 series cards but still good performers, the 550Ti was released as a budget Crysis 2 card and the 560Ti is very popular with WoW players.
For futureproof if you have the budget get the 570 or even better the 580 as it will out perform anything at the moment and suit you for years to come.