The PC Building Thread

I was just about to say the same thing. You've spent £200+ on the CPU at least get a Hyper Evo 212 (£25-30) or something similar that will do a better job than the stock cooler.

I've found the Noctua to perform better than a h100i water cooler with overclocking so definitely give it a look.
 
Hi guys,

Can you recommend any good, not really expensive PC case? My current one is not a big enough as it was mainly used for my first PC with completely different, previous components.

It is a good time to give all hardware some more room and chance to get some more air :- )

I would like to avoid overhated mostly, so there should be enough fans or an open space where an air can get into PC thorough.

In my signature, there are more details of my current hardware. It is an ATX power supply.

If more information is needed, just please let me know, I will add this up then.

Ah! What I forgot about is the price. I think I wouldn't like to spend more money on it than £50 - £70.

Thanks!
 
I had a Zalman Z11 for a while. It cooled really well and had 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0 ports on the front. Plenty of room inside and has a bunch of fans as standard. You can also fit any sized fan cooler in (including the Noctua above). £53.81 at the minute on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-Z11-...TF8&qid=1404671097&sr=8-1&keywords=zalman+z11

The only reason I eventually upgraded to another case was that I wanted a H100i which doesn't fit the Zalman without modification. Also the C70 I currently have has a lot of more room for watercooling and more fans. The Zalman is also half plastic, half metal. The C70 I have is all metal, heavy duty. That's the reason the C70 is £90 though.
 
ok lads I will, might as well, least then I can OC in the future and not have to worry about heat.
 
Dazfeeder said:
Im currently building my first gaming pc, its really fun doing research for parts, I sold my ps4 and xbox one to fund it, I hardly used them tbh, this is the what im building:

I7-4770k
Gigabyte G1. Sniper Z87
Kingston Fury 16GB RAM
EVGA GTX 780 SC 6GB
Corsair RM850 PSU
Samsung Evo 120gb SSD
2TB WD Hard Drive
Blu ray optical drive
Thermaltake Urban S31 case
Click to expand...

I would change the CPU to the new 4790k hardly any price difference and better performance, no point in the old Haswell i7 now.
I personally don't like Gigabyte boards, always had bad experience in the past with them + you should now be looking at Z97 boards and not the old Z87 chipsets.
Would also change the RAM the latency timings could be improved over the Kingston Hyper X Ram - Corsair Vengeance is normally pretty cheap Low Profile and have low timings @1.5v.
SSD I would change to 256GB, as you will soon regret getting a 128GB, as space will soon run out - But brand is very good drive - have not checked at price of the Sandisk Extreme drives, but they are currently the quickest on the market.

Other suggestions:
Do you need an 850W PSU? That is probably overkill and would get away with 650+, but personally would go with a 700 or 750.
Do you think you need a 6GB Graphics Card? Unless you running several monitors there really isn't any benefit to having so much VRAM.
Have not looked into Case but they are always personally preference over performance..
 
Vadim said:
Hi guys,

Can you recommend any good, not really expensive PC case? My current one is not a big enough as it was mainly used for my first PC with completely different, previous components.

It is a good time to give all hardware some more room and chance to get some more air :- )

I would like to avoid overhated mostly, so there should be enough fans or an open space where an air can get into PC thorough.

In my signature, there are more details of my current hardware. It is an ATX power supply.

If more information is needed, just please let me know, I will add this up then.

Ah! What I forgot about is the price. I think I wouldn't like to spend more money on it than £50 - £70.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I had a Bitfenix Shinobi which is a pretty good mid-tower case in your price bracket. One to consider.
 
Jamezinho said:
I had a Bitfenix Shinobi which is a pretty good mid-tower case in your price bracket. One to consider.
Click to expand...

The Corsair R300's also score pretty well when reviewed.

But normally with cases it is normally all down to personal preference on the look of the case rather than how good it actually performs and how well it reviews.
 
Also in regards to coolers the Noctua NH-D15 is out now and is apparently even better than the D14.

If your going for complete silence I would get an air cooler, but if you want performance I would get the H110 - not the H100i the performance is quite a lot better as the H100i isn't any better than a top air cooler.
The only problem with the H110 is the default fans it comes with are pretty noisy and need to be replaced instantly during installation with quieter fans or Fractal Design or Aerocool Dead Silence Case Fans either are the quietist available on the market.

Should also mention the Haswell isn't a great overclocker anyway, but you can very easily get 4.5Ghz out of one.

I can't comment on the new Devil Canyon CPU's as not personally going to buy one, but since they have replaced the TIN, you should be able to get 4.8GHZ easy and probably 5GHZ stable at a push.
 
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bsmaff said:
I would change the CPU to the new 4790k hardly any price difference and better performance, no point in the old Haswell i7 now.
I personally don't like Gigabyte boards, always had bad experience in the past with them + you should now be looking at Z97 boards and not the old Z87 chipsets.
Would also change the RAM the latency timings could be improved over the Kingston Hyper X Ram - Corsair Vengeance is normally pretty cheap Low Profile and have low timings @1.5v.
SSD I would change to 256GB, as you will soon regret getting a 128GB, as space will soon run out - But brand is very good drive - have not checked at price of the Sandisk Extreme drives, but they are currently the quickest on the market.

Other suggestions:
Do you need an 850W PSU? That is probably overkill and would get away with 650+, but personally would go with a 700 or 750.
Do you think you need a 6GB Graphics Card? Unless you running several monitors there really isn't any benefit to having so much VRAM.
Have not looked into Case but they are always personally preference over performance..
Click to expand...

I got the I7-4790 you mentioned, I had already purchased the Motherboard but im happy with it anyway. I got 1866mhz ram so I think that will be fine. Ive already purchased the SSD too but I might get another and run them in RAID.

I went with the 6GB graphics card because I will be using 2 monitors but mainly because I play a heavily modded Skyrim and Fallout with shit loads of high textures that need the VRAM. plus new games like Watch Dogs although poorly optimized use 3.6GB Ram on the highest settings so I think future games will need more than 3GB, and I can always SLI it.

I probably didnt need an 850w PSU but if im going to Sli in the future I will need the extra power.
 
Hey, so I don't know much about PC building and need help. Seeing as FIFA and PES are moving NEXT-Gen (Apparently PES less so), I need to upgrade.

The only pieces of my old computer I am keeping is a 650watts PSU, my Nvidia Geforce gtx 760 I bought last year, a 500 GB SATA HDD that is filled to the top, and a 21.5" HP LCD monitor that I plan to use as a second monitor.

I currently have $850-900 and would like help finding out what to buy? Should I get an i5 or i7, seeing as I mostly play sports games (2k, PES, FIFA, FM) but I'd like to try some stuff like the Batman Arkham series and GTA when it comes out. It would be nice if the computer lasted longer than 3 years, the current one has lasted me since 2009 (Upgraded PSU and GPU along the way). How much ram is the norm? Windows 8.1 or 7? Cases or Motherboards? Any help on anything would be great.

I'm an expat in America BTW.
 
banbenbin said:
Hey, so I don't know much about PC building and need help. Seeing as FIFA and PES are moving NEXT-Gen (Apparently PES less so), I need to upgrade.

The only pieces of my old computer I am keeping is a 650watts PSU, my Nvidia Geforce gtx 760 I bought last year, a 500 GB SATA HDD that is filled to the top, and a 21.5" HP LCD monitor that I plan to use as a second monitor.

I currently have $850-900 and would like help finding out what to buy? Should I get an i5 or i7, seeing as I mostly play sports games (2k, PES, FIFA, FM) but I'd like to try some stuff like the Batman Arkham series and GTA when it comes out. It would be nice if the computer lasted longer than 3 years, the current one has lasted me since 2009 (Upgraded PSU and GPU along the way). How much ram is the norm? Windows 8.1 or 7? Cases or Motherboards? Any help on anything would be great.

I'm an expat in America BTW.
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I would recommend the new Devil Canyon i5 4690k, 8GB Ram and make sure you get yourself an SSD. 250GB are pretty cheap these days.
Windows 7 and 8 is personal preference, I personally prefer 8 as once you get used to it, it is so much simpler and faster to use.
Motherboard I always buy ASUS these days, but MSI also make very good and very well priced motherboards(but these depend on budget - I personally would never buy a motherboard under £100 but I know most people buy the cheap Z87 boards).
Case is all personal preference, so just get the one you like the look off.

If you need any actual help selecting components I would use then just let me know and I will give you a few pointers.
 
Placebo said:
What's the hap with DDR4? Was tempted to add an extra 8gb to my existing "G.Skill 2x4GB 1866MHz" but then remembered DDR4 is supposedly on the horizon?
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DDR4 is being introduced with 'SkyLake' but it is probably still a couple of years away - as Intel decided to re-hash Haswell this year with Devil Canyon instead of releasing Broadwell.

But there are big changes coming with 'Skylake':
New CPU socket
DDR4
PCI Express 4.0
also Thunderbolt 3.0 - even though this isn't really used in PC's

But with all new Technology DDR4 will be very expensive.

But PC systems should see a big increase in performance when 'Skylake' is introduced.

I will know a lot more though in October when I go to the Intel Conference at the England Training Camp in Burton in October.
 
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Aha so maybe I'm best off buying the extra 8gb (especially if I find a good price say second hand) then looking again in a couple of years? Will it definitely require replacing everything or just Ram + Mobo?
 
Placebo said:
Aha so maybe I'm best off buying the extra 8gb (especially if I find a good price say second hand) then looking again in a couple of years? Will it definitely require replacing everything or just Ram + Mobo?
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You will require new CPU, RAM and mobo.

Skylake will be a massive upgrade - two years time will see Gaming PC's massively evolve in power.. With the Nvidia scheduled to release Pascal architecture at around the same time in 2016 which according to their roadmap will be 3 times the power of the current GPU's on the market, also with the rumours of DX12 being able to increase the performance of GFX cards, 4K will be an absolute possibility in 2 years with pretty much all new cards available at the time capable of running 4K resolutions at 60FPS.

But then all the PC tech will be massively held back because consoles cant even get 1080p @60FPS right and PC games will never be pushed to the limits of the machine.
 
DDR4 is getting released at the end of this month and prices are going to start at £70 for 8GB and £135 for 16GB.

So as far as pricing goes it isn't too expensive at present.
 
Currently running intel core i5-3570 @3.40GHz with 8gb ram and GeForce GTX 560 Ti and looking to upgrade part by part, would upgrading the processor first be best?
 
aitken said:
Currently running intel core i5-3570 @3.40GHz with 8gb ram and GeForce GTX 560 Ti and looking to upgrade part by part, would upgrading the processor first be best?
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Nothing wrong with that system at all. That CPU and 8gb ram will see you good for a while yet. If you want to upgrade then get a new GPU as the 560 Ti is probably showing its age a bit now and you will get a considerable gaming performance boost.
 
I see, well i've been looking at GeForce GTX 780 Ti as a potential upgrade which seems to be good value.
 
That would be a mighty upgrade. I believe the 800 series cards are coming soon so maybe wait for them or pick up a cheap(er) 780 as retailers sell off old stock.
 
Jamezinho said:
Not much of a jump then. Same as last time.

So I guess the 870 will be a rebadged 780.
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This is an early revision of the board with beta drivers, but yes not much too much of a performance increase..

But it is the 900 series where Nvidia has stated there will be an absolute massive jump up in performance.
 
Just about to upgrade to SSD, anyone have any good tools/experience to share? I'd rather not do a clean install, want to run all progs/win on SSD, files on HD. Have backed everything up now, just need to install it.
 
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