The PC Building Thread

My three year old PC is on the blink, so I thought I'd buy this for an upgrade: _

Intel i7 3700K Quad Core 3.5GHz CPU (overclocked to 4.4GHz)
Asus Maximus V Extreme Intel Z77 Chipset Motherboard
Phanteks CPU Performance Cooler
8GB Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600MHz RAM
EVGA 2GB GeForce GTX 670 NVIDIA GFX Card
Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion Sound Card
1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm HDD
850W Corsair HX CMPSU-850HXUK Modular 80 PLUS Silver PSU

I've got a Cooler Master HAF case from the old PC, plus a couple of optical drives (BD writer and a DVD-RW). I could have got a faster GFX card but the newer NVIDIA cards are rather pricey, and I got fed up of Radeon's having had the 9800 Pro, X1800 XT, HD2900 XT and then the HD5870.
 
chaps , is this a decent spec to play pes 2013/fifa 13?

Case : Galaxy 3 Gamers Style Midi Tower Case
Motherboard : Gigabyte H61M Motherboard Technology
CPU : Intel Quad Core I5 2380P 3.1Ghz CPU
Hard Drive : 1tb Sata Hard Drive
Memory : 8gb DDR3 1333 Memory
Graphics Card : ATI Radeon 6670 2gb DDR3 with HDMI Hyper Memory Upto 3.8gb
Optical Drive : 24x Dual Layer Sata DVD Writer

selling on ebay for £395
 
Is a very nice machine but I would skip the sound card the new creative Recon cards have been massively slated and are apparently absolutely awful.

But must be costing around £1000 as he is buying top quality components, also wouldn't get the i7 over the i5 your paying £100 for 100mhz, unless your like me and just like saying you have an i7.

£70 for a CPU cooler is also abit extreme, could get water cooling for a few quid more, then you could overclock to 5GHZ easily.
 
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danhammer said:
chaps , is this a decent spec to play pes 2013/fifa 13?

Case : Galaxy 3 Gamers Style Midi Tower Case
Motherboard : Gigabyte H61M Motherboard Technology
CPU : Intel Quad Core I5 2380P 3.1Ghz CPU
Hard Drive : 1tb Sata Hard Drive
Memory : 8gb DDR3 1333 Memory
Graphics Card : ATI Radeon 6670 2gb DDR3 with HDMI Hyper Memory Upto 3.8gb
Optical Drive : 24x Dual Layer Sata DVD Writer

selling on ebay for £395
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Not really depends if you happy to play it on medium settings, the graphics card is just a major down point.
But with a £400 budget unfortunetly you won't be able to play PC games the way there meant to be played.

I will price up a PC tomorrow for £400 but the motherboard and processor will suffer for this price.
 
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bsmaff said:
Not really depends if you happy to play it on medium settings, the graphics card is just a major down point.
But with a £400 budget unfortunetly you won't be able to play PC games the way there meant to be played.

I will price up a PC tomorrow for £400 but the motherboard and processor will suffer for this price.
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cool, i'm just checking stuff on ebay

another one selling here for £375 again

yeah i'm quite restricted


AMD FX-4170 4.2GHz Quad Core CPU8GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM2TB Hard Drive Storage SpaceATI Radeon HD 6670 2GB Graphics CardHigh Performance MotherboardFree Game Included (WORTH £29.99!!)Mars Gaming Case & 450W Standard PSUWindows OS Not Included (Link to Upgrades Below)FREE 1 Year Warranty (Link to Upgrades Below)
 
The difference is I will be downgrading the CPU and motherboard, they downgrade everything.

Games mainly rely on graphics cards so I would never downgrade the graphics so you will still get a 5870 everything else will be built around that.
 
bsmaff said:
Is a very nice machine but I would skip the sound card the new creative Recon cards have been massively slated and are apparently absolutely awful.

But must be costing around £1000 as he is buying top quality components, also wouldn't get the i7 over the i5 your paying £100 for 100mhz, unless your like me and just like saying you have an i7.

£70 for a CPU cooler is also abit extreme, could get water cooling for a few quid more, then you could overclock to 5GHZ easily.
Click to expand...
Costing me £800, but only because a mate runs a computer shop and got me some money knocked off. As for the sound card I know there are lots of better cards out there but I was offered it for £40 (was £100), couldn't say no.

I was considering watercooling, but my water bill is bad enough as it is.
 
Hi,

Can somebody let me know if this is any good to run pes 2013


System Specification

Total Processing Power
12Ghz
3.0Ghz x*4 Cores
3870K APU
System RAM
8GB
DDR3 Dual Channel
1600Mhz
Motherboard
ASUS FM1*
USB3
2 x PCI-Express X16 2.0
Optical Drive
DVD Writer
DVD Player
CD*Writer
Hard Drive Space
2TB / 2000GB
Quiet Spin
Energy Saving
Power Supply Unit
300 Watts
Quiet Operating
Efficient
Graphics Processor
Radeon HD 6550
400 Cores

DirectX*11 / SM5
Total Graphics Memory
2GB*
Total
*Available
 
I don't think the graphics card is much cop and the power supply seems inadequate.

I still think you would be better off saving a bit more and doing a build in order to get a better value for money and more future proof rig.
 
There is so much info out there for self builders. I'd personally check out some of the shorter guides on YouTube and written guides on the net. They may be easier to digest as an introductory overview.

As has been said many times, it's mostly common sense putting one together.
 
Anyone got some tips for building a mac-mini style PC? By that, I mean something cheapish with decent power, but with a small footprint.

Just thinking out loud for now but I have a Windows XP machine that I custom ordered 6 years ago. ASUS P5LD2 Delux motherboard with inbuilt wifi and TV tuner. Pentium 4, 3gig, with 3gig Corsair ram, a 250gig WD 7200 hard drive, 500W PSU and Lite-on DVD burner. Has served me well until now and it's still going strong for what I need.

I got all these features I've never really used like firewire 400/800, e-sata ports, inbuilt TV tuner, 2 PCI-E slots, a few drive bays. I never got my music suite setup, nor any real video editing done so I wouldn't mind something a lot smaller now that I could potentially throw PES 2013 onto and play at good settings.

All I really know is that I'd want an SSD drive for programs, my current hard drive as a data drive, possibly a blu-ray drive so I can convert my blu-rays to DVD or AVI (so my dad can watch them on his TV) but even a plain ol' DVD burner would be ok. Would be good if it was quiet and ran cool. My room gets hot in summer and turning on my PC on really hot days causes the PC to turn itself off because the CPU gets too hot.

Wasn't really sure what specs I should go for in terms of case, CPU, ram and PSU. Or maybe I can wait til the new mac-mini is out and just dual boot that with Windows - I assume you can install games to the window partition afterwards?
 
jackarmy said:
I was considering watercooling, but my water bill is bad enough as it is.
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Forgive me for being dumb but how is adding a watercooling system going to cost you more on your water bill? You fill up the reservoir with some special cooling liquid dont you its not actually just water?!
 
SuperSonic said:
Forgive me for being dumb but how is adding a watercooling system going to cost you more on your water bill? You fill up the reservoir with some special cooling liquid dont you its not actually just water?!
Click to expand...

Yeah I have got a picture of the computer hooked up to the water mains :LOL:

I don't know how it works either though :COAT:
 
danhammer said:
Gonna build this mofo!!

Will this run PES 2013 and FIFA 13 smoothly?
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Pretty good system there, I'd imagine it'll run both games fine. They're not hugely demanding anyway, and anything that bsmaff recommends is going to be a good setup.
 
Well I have just done you a build for £350 which includes a 5870 but the mobo could maybe do with a slightly better one and the CPU isn't great but can be replaced when you can afford £150 for the new 3570K.

Just go on ebay and add a 5870 for £80.

 
There is a build for £550 if you are def thinking about pushing the price to that.

That will again be a 5870 off ebay.



And don't be worried about building a PC although I have built loads, it really is one of the easiest things you will ever do, just make sure you have a few plasters near you on the ready.
 
Cheers mate, also can you recommend a decent soundcard for 7.1 as I'm gonna hook it up to my av amp for films and music
 
danhammer said:
Cheers mate, also can you recommend a decent soundcard for 7.1 as I'm gonna hook it up to my av amp for films and music
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Not really most onboard ones do a semi decent job these days, the X-FI is still a really good sound card and so are the XONAR ones but I have no experience with these, they just have good reviews.

Just don't buy the new creative recon cards they hsve just had really bad reviews and sound absolutly terrible.

But sound cards aren't as important anymore due to the way Windows processes the sound, when it switched from XP to Vista Microsoft for some bizarre reason removed hardware acceleration so the need for add-on cards has pretty much disappeared.
 
Wow good to know, almost bought a creative sound card earlier....glad I didn't

What about windows , what version should i buy? I'm a novice....windows 7 32 or 64 bit?
 
danhammer said:
Wow good to know, almost bought a creative sound card earlier....glad I didn't

What about windows , what version should i buy? I'm a novice....windows 7 32 or 64 bit?
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You won't need a sound card unless you have a set of 5.1/7.1 headphones knocking about, in which case you may benefit from a cheap soundcard like an ASUS Xonar DG for around £25.

Your graphics card will output the audio signal over HDMI and the amp will do all the surround processing. It's more than semi-decent - it's very good.

Regarding Windows - you will want the 64 bit edition as I think the 32 bit version has an upper limit of system memory you can use. I think it's 4gb of RAM max, and for how little memory costs you would be better of getting 8gb for your system.

You could always look into Windows 8 but then again the user interface isn't everyone's cup of tea as it seems to be aimed more at tablets.
 
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