41 replies to this topic

[Rob]

If you're able to assemble IKEA furniture, you are more than qualified to assemble a PC. There's so many resources available on the web to help you, every step of the way. One of the easier parts is applying thermal paste to a CPU and assembling your heat sink/fan. Good cable management is probably the hardest part.

 

A downside to a pre-built PC from somewhere like Chillblast or PC Specialist, in addition to the higher cost, is that they use very cheap components to increase their profit margins and often have long lead times if you want specific components. The default graphics cards that they will use are generally bottom-of-the-range cards, with poor warranty and usually have cheap reference coolers. This also applies for the other components (PSU/RAM etc...). 

 

I'm a strong advocate for building your own PCs - it saves you money and gives you an actual understanding of what's going on, so you can then replace/upgrade components on your own at a later date to save on additional computer repair costs.

 

Edit: If you only game with your PC and don't do any CPU intensive stuff, don't waste money on an i7 - it doesn't make a worthwhile difference.

Edited by Rob, 24 June 2016 - 03:43 pm.

[Gamblers_Luck]

If you're able to assemble IKEA furniture, you are more than qualified to assemble a PC. There's so many resources available on the web to help you, every step of the way. One of the easier parts is applying thermal paste to a CPU and assembling your heat sink/fan. Good cable management is probably the hardest part.

 

A downside to a pre-built PC from somewhere like Chillblast or PC Specialist, in addition to the higher cost, is that they use very cheap components to increase their profit margins and often have long lead times if you want specific components. The default graphics cards that they will use are generally bottom-of-the-range cards, with poor warranty and usually have cheap reference coolers. This also applies for the other components (PSU/RAM etc...). 

 

I'm a strong advocate for building your own PCs - it saves you money and gives you an actual understanding of what's going on, so you can then replace/upgrade components on your own at a later date to save on additional computer repair costs.

 

Edit: If you only game with your PC and don't do any CPU intensive stuff, don't waste money on an i7 - it doesn't make a worthwhile difference.

 

Ikea doesn't cost thousands of pounds or water cooled though, but I get your point though.  I'd feel safer if it was premade :-)

[VoidInsanity]

Use PC part picker and build something, get the parts all ordered in then pop it down to Vision and have them build it for 30 quid.

[Salamol]

Want to apologise for this lazy post, first of all, not going to provide links

As others have said, really not worth the extra cash for an i7 just for gaming purposes. The i5 6600K got really good reviews with many likening it to the 2500k in that it should last a long time, overclocks well, is a decent jump up from the previous generation and sits at a good price/performance. For many still on the 2500k, THIS is the one that's got them to finally leave it behind. If you're going to OC, you'll need a cooler better than the stock one that is bundled with the chip.

As the 6th Gen uses the 1151 socket, you'll have access to DDR4 RAM - Previously RAM speed has been a bit of an afterthought, but benchmarks have shown that this latest iteration has a really positive impact on frame rates. I'm seriously considering going right the way up to 3000MHz this time, 16GB of it.

For a motherboard you'd need a 1151 socket again, so a Z170 would be the best choice. You will need the Z model to OC the CPU and run the faster RAM.

GPUs aside from the CPU, is the biggest choice (and most expensive). The new Nvidia cards look great, as do the AMD cards. Given the cost of everything else I've mentioned, plus a case and PSU, we're probably halfway through your grand. It makes little sense to spend it all on a GPU if you've got one small 900p monitor. For Nvidia, there's a big gap in price and performance between the 970 and the £400 1070. The new AMDs might fill the performance gap with a price comparable to the 970 (approx. £230). It could be worth seeing how they perform before pulling the trigger.

Personally I would never leave a 2(+) monitor setup. So if I didn't have anything suitable I'd pick up 2x 24~ inch monitors (approx. £100 each) and then either a 970 or one of the new Polaris (AMD) cards, depending on benchmarks. I feel a 970 (or Polaris) and a one fancy (4k or gsync, you'll struggle to afford both) monitor is probably also doable, but possibly tight. The monitors are still quite pricey and I've never had one to see if they are really worth the cost. If you have a decent monitor already, consider the 1070. It's around £400 though, which is a good deal higher than I would personally pay (maybe... ) as the price to performance ratio ordinarily drops off at around £250 for GPUs. The benchmarks are impressive and it outperforms the similarly priced 980Ti.

EDIT: So I forgot Hard Drives. Even SSDs have dropped significantly in price recently, but my personal favourite (if we reserve £200 for the GPU) is the ridiculously fast range of PCIE SSDs. Not cheap, at £300~ for 400GB, but ridiculously fast. At over 2GB/s read speed... it's ridiculously fast.

More seriously though, half a TB of SSD should be around £100, look for decent read/write speeds, and a further £100 will get you around 3TB of traditional spinning HDD, 7200RPM is optimal. I personally have a hybrid, but given how much lower the prices are at the moment, I wouldn't recommend it.

Edited by Salamol, 26 June 2016 - 12:52 am.

[DiBBz]

Want to apologise for this lazy post, first of all, not going to provide links

As others have said, really not worth the extra cash for an i7 just for gaming purposes. The i5 6600K got really good reviews with many likening it to the 2500k in that it should last a long time, overclocks well, is a decent jump up from the previous generation and sits at a good price/performance. For many still on the 2500k, THIS is the one that's got them to finally leave it behind. If you're going to OC, you'll need a cooler better than the stock one that is bundled with the chip.

As the 6th Gen uses the 1151 socket, you'll have access to DDR4 RAM - Previously RAM speed has been a bit of an afterthought, but benchmarks have shown that this latest iteration has a really positive impact on frame rates. I'm seriously considering going right the way up to 3000MHz this time, 16GB of it.

For a motherboard you'd need a 1151 socket again, so a Z170 would be the best choice. You will need the Z model to OC the CPU and run the faster RAM.

GPUs aside from the CPU, is the biggest choice (and most expensive). The new Nvidia cards look great, as do the AMD cards. Given the cost of everything else I've mentioned, plus a case and PSU, we're probably halfway through your grand. It makes little sense to spend it all on a GPU if you've got one small 900p monitor. For Nvidia, there's a big gap in price and performance between the 970 and the £400 1070. The new AMDs might fill the performance gap with a price comparable to the 970 (approx. £230). It could be worth seeing how they perform before pulling the trigger.

Personally I would never leave a 2(+) monitor setup. So if I didn't have anything suitable I'd pick up 2x 24~ inch monitors (approx. £100 each) and then either a 970 or one of the new Polaris (AMD) cards, depending on benchmarks. I feel a 970 (or Polaris) and a one fancy (4k or gsync, you'll struggle to afford both) monitor is probably also doable, but possibly tight. The monitors are still quite pricey and I've never had one to see if they are really worth the cost. If you have a decent monitor already, consider the 1070. It's around £400 though, which is a good deal higher than I would personally pay (maybe... ) as the price to performance ratio ordinarily drops off at around £250 for GPUs. The benchmarks are impressive and it outperforms the similarly priced 980Ti.

EDIT: So I forgot Hard Drives. Even SSDs have dropped significantly in price recently, but my personal favourite (if we reserve £200 for the GPU) is the ridiculously fast range of PCIE SSDs. Not cheap, at £300~ for 400GB, but ridiculously fast. At over 2GB/s read speed... it's ridiculously fast.

More seriously though, half a TB of SSD should be around £100, look for decent read/write speeds, and a further £100 will get you around 3TB of traditional spinning HDD, 7200RPM is optimal. I personally have a hybrid, but given how much lower the prices are at the moment, I wouldn't recommend it.

 

yeah pretty much agree with this. if you just plan on gaming and not utilizing the core potential of i7's then there is no real need to get one and i5 is best suited for gamers and purely gamers.

 

if you tend to do alot of lets say rendering / simulations / concepting etc etc then a i7 is a must!

 

also yeah i dunno where all this nonsense is coming from saying ram is the least of the worries id say its quite up there.

 

GPU on the other hand its personally down to preference. AMD sure is cheap for what they provide however they still have not sorted the driver situations as of lately. also we will need to wait for benchmarks to be released to see if the new AMD card actually competes with the 1080 which i don't think it will.

 

Nvidia pushed hard for VR optimization and great features for many gamers that do & don't use VR

 

ive personally never had an enjoyable experience with AMD but ever since making the switch to nvidia (primarily due to work) i found them to be better overall... also Sal id say at this point a 1070 is the best option compared to the 980. sure its £30-£50 more expensive depending where you are looking but the power efficiency and the little extra jump in performance is all work it id say. also youd be able to take great advantage of those new features and VR experience if he does decide to get a vive / occulus etc

 

now it comes to storage space which i feel is the #2 priority in terms for me at least

 

also yeah a 1TB SSD costs around £220 and the 500GB costs half that > https://www.amazon.c...eywords=1tb ssd

 

so depending on what exactly it is you are wanting to do with that storage then a SSD either way is a great choice! me personally i have 120GB for OS & a 500GB for games and a 2TB HDD for pictures/music/movies etc at least that's how i plan to make it when my new PC is finished!

[Gamblers_Luck]

Got some awesome ideas now. Deffo will be an i5 skylake...tempted to get the GTX 1080...I know the new ATI cards are imminent but can still see the 1080 being better. 16gb ram@ 2600, Samsung evo ssd or pci one if I've got the £££''s. Just need to find someone who sells it. Been using a few build configurators...with the case I want it's coming out at £1600.Ouch!
Plus liquid cooling for the cpu probably. I'll post a full spec list a bit later
 

Edited by Gamblers_Luck, 27 June 2016 - 04:30 pm.

[Gamblers_Luck]

This the wired to fire site proposes after using the build config:

 

1 x NZXT H440 Red/Black Gaming Case (No DVD Drive Bay)

1 x Intel Core i5 6600K Quad Core (3.5GHz, 6MB Cache, overclockable 4.4GHz+) Socket 1151 

1 x Fractal Design Kelvin T12 CPU Water Cooler

1 x Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste

1 x Wired2Fire Overclocking (non-standard cooler required)

1 x Wired2Fire Tuning (BIOS, Driver and OS Tweaks)

1 x nVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition 8GB GDDR5X

1 x 16GB Corsair DDR4 2666MHz C16 Dual Channel Memory Kit (2 x 8GB)

1 x Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Intel Motherboard (10 Phase Power, SLI and CrossfireX)(Free DOOM)

1 x Samsung 500GB 850 Evo Series SATA III 6Gb/s Solid-State Drive

1 x Seagate 2TB Barracuda 7200 64MB Cache SATA III Hard Disk Drive RAID Option 1 x No RAID

1 x FSP Non-Modular 750W Power Supply (Silver 80 Plus Certified)

1 x Wired2Fire Cable Management Case Fan Upgrades (choose quantity)

1 x Standard Case and Radiator Fans Sound Card

1 x Onboard HD 7.1 Audio Operating System

1 x Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit) Build Options

1 x Standard Build (5-15 working days) Warranty

1 x 3 Year Return to Base Warranty (2 years parts and labour 3 years labour)  

 

£1663.00 inc delivery and tax.   Again just my first decent search.  Still looking and might wait a bit .  Way over budget but meh my dream machine

 

Still need to consider a monitor to get, that will show what I've invested.  Any recommendations also appreciated. 

Edited by Gamblers_Luck, 27 June 2016 - 04:39 pm.

[Donkzy]

OHH my god I want, buy 2 gamblers I can come to some arrangement for payment. Love the card, the processor hard drives yup think you got full package for me

[Gamblers_Luck]

OHH my god I want, buy 2 gamblers I can come to some arrangement for payment. Love the card, the processor hard drives yup think you got full package for me

 

Assume the position!  We dive in five!

[Salamol]

tempted to get the GTX 1080...I know the new ATI cards are imminent but can still see the 1080 being better.

The new AMD cards are supposed to be on par (or slightly better than) the 960/970/980. The 1070 and 1080 are MUCH better but are also much more expensive. They're not aiming to put out the best cards in the world, they're targeting the mainstream gamer.

[Fozzies]

save some money on the ssd, go for approx 200 gigs, that's more than enough for the OS, and quite a few games too, HDD for games that don't need fast load times. SSD's make their biggest difference having the OS on them, games, although faster to load, rarely give massive benefits by loading 2 seconds faster than they would do on a hdd. there are also some hybrid ssd /hdd drives out there that learn the most used parts of your hdd, and swap those files over to their ssd side, although i would say 2 drives is better than one

[Gamblers_Luck]

Yeah looks like the AMD RX 480 Graphics Card is being released tomorrow so I think wait and see if it effects the prices and how it compares.

[SonicTHI]

I wouldnt bother with water cooling. Too expensive for barely a few % OC room.

Again: get a gold rated PSU. They are one of the most overlooked components of a PC and usually the first to fail if the build quality is shit.

Also i would never spend that much on a GFX card. They are currently the fastest aging PC component and utterly overpriced with nvidias high-end monopoly and low yields.

The 480 seems like a sweetspot for current gen 1080p gaming. If the 1070 was priced like the 970 it would be the winner though when you consider future proofing.

[SonicTHI]

General consensus on the 480:

Dx11: relatively equal to 970

Dx12: faster than 980 although sample size of games on this might be biased

 

The price of the 970 dropped so both cards cost about the same. Although prices currently vary wildly ATM from store to store.

The 970 has the 3,5GB issue, the 480 seems to have some issues with PCIE power according to toms.

Also nvidia announced the 1060 coming out on the 14th, specs on the 7th. Expected to fill the gap between the 970 and 1070.

Worth waiting for? Up to you.

 

Edit: another note on the 480 is that currently only the reference AMD cards are out. The stock cooler is shit. Also the card draws as much power as a 1070.

Edited by SonicTHI, 30 June 2016 - 03:16 pm.

[VoidInsanity]

If you don't mind waiting a little then delay on the 1080 since the founders edition is stock fans with an extra hundred or so quid pricetag on it for being "founders". Give it a month and buy a version with better fans and stuff on it.

[danielcoles1989]

he says his limit is about a grand, a aftermarket GTX1080 is gonna take up a massive chunk of that.