First Gaming build
Hey guys I'm going to be building my first gaming pc in a couple of weeks. I went down to the local parts shop and got a quote for all the parts I wanted. What do you guys think of this system? Any suggestions?
Intel Core i5 3570k LGA1155 CPU 3.4Ghz 6mb cache Ivy Bridge Asus P8Z77-V LX P8Z77-V LX.Z77 4XDDR3 2xPCI-E16 GBL SATA3 USB 3.0 RAID G Skill 16g(2x8g) DDR3 1600MHZ PC3-12800 CL10(10D-16GBXL) Seagate SATA3 1TB 7200RPM 64mb cache eVGA PCIe GTX660Ti 2GB Samsung 22x DVDRW Black SATA(SH-5223C-BL) Antec Sonata IV - USB3.0 Piana Black Mid Tower Case with 620W PSU Microsoft Windows 7 64bit Asus VS248H 24" 2ms wide LED w/DSUB DVI-D HDMI Microlab FC330 Finecone audio speaker Logitech K200 Media USB Keyboard CoolerMaster Storm Spawn Gaming Mouse TP-Link TL-WN781N Wireless 150M Lite-N PCI Express adapter I have been quoted $1450 for the parts. Thanks all cant wait to hear your thoughts |
03:54pm 25/10/12 Permalink
maybe a better keyboard, mechanical
and ditch the speakers, and get a good headset till you can drop some cash on a good set of speakers, rest seems ago the only other thing i would think about changing is the mobo, it wouldn't be much difference price wise to get a mobo with wifi inbuilt |
04:12pm 25/10/12 Permalink
Any suggestions for a good keyboard for gaming?
@ Red. I am a little bit of a newbee with hardware im just learning about it now as I research and build my pc. Why would you suggest not using wifi? Also if I chose to overclock my CPU would I need to upgrade my cooling? |
04:53pm 25/10/12 Permalink
while wifi is fine for most things, it is the speed (time taken for info to get from one place to the other, called ping) where wifi isn't as good at a cable,
as for the keyboard, it is best to do a little web searching some are loud, some feel stiffer than other, but long term they are great, my advice is some solid, and not plasticy as for brands, IBM made a good one, otherwise steelseries, but there are alot on offer as for the overclock, tbh, while it might should cool, leave it for the moment, you'll find that the rig you have will have enough grunt as is, and no point taxing the thing if you dont need to if you really want to over clock, the standard cooler will cope with a mild overclock, however there is a shed load of options, i myself have a water cooler (a small all in one system) and that keeps my stock i5 cool, under heavy load, it peaks at a whooping 43 degrees (which is cool) |
04:59pm 25/10/12 Permalink
If you're a newbie with hardware I wouldnt go overclocking your first rig. Maybe wait until you get your next one, then use your old rig as a tester.
|
05:07pm 25/10/12 Permalink
If you don't have other options, then wifi is fine. If you can connect via a data cable, that is obviously faster. My whole online gaming experience for the past decade has been over wifi and I kick arse. I moved over to a gigabit ethernet switch and cat6 data cables last week, but I haven't played anything yet.
Any keyboard is good if you're used to it. The one you picked is fine. If you wanna look up "mechanical gaming keyboard" they seem to be popular right now, but since you're building an awesome new system I wouldn't make it a priority. Personally I would get a better CPU with the 2011 socket (and mobo to match), and about a 1/4 of the amount of RAM you've got there. Most people tend to go the way you did though, but I don't understand why. I do a lot of memory intensive stuff and have never had a problem. I only recently upgraded from 1 gig to 4 gig RAM, and I've been running the i7 chips for a while. I've been building PCs since 1995, and I have never overclocked anything. I don't understand what drives people to do this. Unless clicking the 'run at maximum' in the fancy new BIOS GUI is considered overclocking. last edited by thermite at 17:10:59 25/Oct/12 |
05:08pm 25/10/12 Permalink
thermite, hate to tell you, but socket 2011 is pretty unloved, costly, and limited in range (and i doubt it will be around much longer)
socket 1155 has been good, and has all the newer intels personally, he makes a good point re ram, 8 is fine, maybe not as low as he recommends, I run 12gb, but the difference between 4gb and 8gb is rather noticeable, but the difference from 8gb to 12gb isn't as noticeable |
05:15pm 25/10/12 Permalink
Alright thank you very much for the help everyone great to see the community is thriving. I will leave overclocking alone for now. I was originally going to get the Intel Core i7 3770K/3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/LGA1155 Ivy Bridge but where I got my quotes the guy there said I would get next to no performance increase when gaming. What do you think was he correct, is it worth the extra $100? Yea I might nerf the RAM for now down to 8GB, I can always buy another 8GB stick if I need to. |
05:24pm 25/10/12 Permalink
save the $100, unless you're getting like 2xgtx680's, the video card will be the bottle neck, so there will be no benefit gaming wise
|
05:33pm 25/10/12 Permalink
yeah he was right, not much difference at all between i5 and i7 when it comes to gaming. The i5 is a hell of a chip.
Toms Hardware has some awesome benchmark charts if you're interested. This one shows CPU performance in a gaming benchmark, as you can see the i5 is right at the top. |
05:33pm 25/10/12 Permalink
any thoughts on a sound card? necessary?
|
06:01pm 25/10/12 Permalink
a) not with those speakers
b) not with most modern systems, unless your uber hardcore on your sound and have the speaker system to match |
06:06pm 25/10/12 Permalink
i would buy an ssd From what I have heard so far SSDs have limited a negligible impact on gaming performance as games rarely access your hard disk. I may be wrong I would love more information if anybody is knoledgable in this area |
07:57pm 25/10/12 Permalink
how do you expect to load the map first bro?
|
08:03pm 25/10/12 Permalink
Seagate SATA3 1TB 7200RPM 64mb cache Make that a WD 1TB (specifically the model: WD1002FAEX) for something more reliable. Also as mentioned get an SSD to house your OS and most frequently played games. Makes a huge difference. From what I have heard so far SSDs have limited a negligible impact on gaming performance as games rarely access your hard disk. Many games load maps on the fly as you enter new areas, etc. You'll avoid stutters with the SSD in this situation. Also, loading times are immensely improved - great for multiplayer games with frequent map changes. This is from experience with both types of games - can't imagine playing a game frequently without it running from an SSD. |
09:01pm 25/10/12 Permalink
any thoughts on a sound card? necessary? Save your cash the onboard sound would more than suffice they typically come with 5:1 set up on the mainboard anyway. Highly recommend SSD I have just installed one in my rig as an after thought and could not beleive how fast my OS runs and I am always one of the frist ready in BF3. 16gb Ram is just a waste of money by the time software/games come out that would need that much ram you aould have upgraded your PC at least once for sure. The main things you want to pay top dollar for are: Mobo GPU CPU The rest you can settle for second best and upgrade as you can afford it.... This way you know you have the best platform for upgrading in the future. I would rate the mobo as the most important IMO... You have to think about your options ie.. will you be going SLI/Cross Fire or buying new GPU's everytime they release the new chipsets. For example I bought a GTX580 about 6 months ago and will run this sli as soon as i find a second hand one that is cheap and run this till the GTX 7 Series come out. Then repeat the process... Always think about the future when building your Rig because technology moves faster than a sweating rapist... Good luck bro building your rig is one of the most fun things you can do after loading your first game on it :) PS... Feck overclocking bro, there is no real need for it especially considering the risks involved...just not worth the non noticable increase anyway. |
01:59pm 29/10/12 Permalink
What risks are involved with overclocking?
Risk that your computer reboots itself? |
02:44pm 29/10/12 Permalink
What risks are involved with overclocking? or you cook something, over voltage something, f*** the whole thing. Sure the risks have lowered somewhat, but there is still a risk |
02:55pm 29/10/12 Permalink
or you cook something, over voltage something, f*** the whole thing. Sure the risks have lowered somewhat, but there is still a risk Current BIOS menus are so noob-friendly that you'd have to try fairly hard and ignore a whole series of extremely visible warnings to get even close to cooking anything even with manual tweaking. Thing is, you don't even need to fiddle with anything for a basic overclock. Simply select the Turbo/Auto option in a typical BIOS menu and it'll pick some conservative settings for a dynamic overclock. Haven't seen a motherboard in quite a while that didn't have such an option. What risks are involved with overclocking? If you're manual overclocking and not patient enough to do incremental overclocking, then you'll be going through a lot of reboot cycles. Unlikely to damage anything, but the mere process of an unclean shutdown may result in data loss. Generally I overclock a new machine first and stress test it from a scratch OS drive, and then install a clean OS once I'm happy with the stability. However, for gaming with a modern Intel CPU .. I wouldn't bother with overclocking. It'll be fast enough. |
03:10pm 29/10/12 Permalink
that counts as overclocking?
not even a soldering iron involved? |
03:12pm 29/10/12 Permalink
Overclocking for gaming makes no sense. There's essentailly pretty close to zero risk of burning something though.
The CPU plays such a minor part after reaching any quadcore level of CPU that it's all GPU limited. Then overclocking a GPU can give good results but extended play sessions will likely cause grahpics drivers to crash (as the card starts calculating things wrong). TBH if your only focus is gaming, just get stock bits and put them together in a well ventilated case. No real reason for uber high end 2011 socket. Just don't cheap out on a 1155. I'd get an SSD no matter what you think it has as for performance on a game. Here's how I play: Get home, turn on PC, load game, get into game. All under 60 seconds. It's faster than a console. Without the SSD that process is a lot longer. Talking several minutes usually for waiting for tiny windows services to load and games to load etc. |
03:43pm 29/10/12 Permalink
that counts as overclocking? Clock multipliers are set in hardware registers in silicon and configurable by software these days. There haven't been switches / resistive-dividers in over 7 years .. |
04:34pm 29/10/12 Permalink
Make sure that you get a decent PSU. Afaik default case PSUs are generally rubbish, though yours being Antec might mean that it's fine. Also get extra fans if the case comes with two or less, my first case was where I cheaped out, and it resulted in my computer getting scorch marks the first summer. Cooling via good airflow is very important, but if you do it right then it's generally fine. You may need to get a non stock standard CPU cooler, and they can be amazingly difficult to put on in my experience. Also make sure that you get a large enough case to fit the crazy video cards of this generation (I haven't checked yours).
If you want to cut costs, I game with 4gig of mismatched ram and don't have significant problems for it, so 16 might be overkill for now. |
06:15pm 29/10/12 Permalink
Afaik default case PSUs are generally rubbish ive always used coolermaster cases and psu's, never had a drama. |
07:42pm 29/10/12 Permalink
