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Building to a budget - My first build

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Usb is more convenient but pci should give you a stronger signal. Not sure how good that board is. I'm on my phone again so cbb researching it lol.
 
Mount&Games said:
Yep
"Motherboard
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
£77.99/$109.99
Good value for a Z68 board, and fully featured for everything bar dual graphics."
sound alright? fairly future proof?

EDIT Ive just remembered the one feature i need that this rig doesnt have, wifi. Would a PCI card or usb adapter be better? This is campus wide wifi, so not close to the router, but the wifi built into my laptop picks it up easily. Any specific adapters to recommend?
Click to expand...

Is it a PCI Gen3? If not, then not future proof. If you really want to have an upgradeable board, make sure its got PCI 3.0 and if you may do SLI with some PCI 2.0 cards, you may want to look at a ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 with the PLX PEX8608 chip. It gives you more PCI lanes so you can do 16-16 or 16-8-8. If you're not going to do sli/crossfirex, just make sure it has PCI Gen3 for when you upgrade your gpu.

Only thing else I would add to this thread is maybe a bigger case (not to say anything bad about the 300, i've used it several times). Mid-towers can be a hassle if you're upgrading. Hell I've had times where the guy had a full-tower and I had to pick a different upgrade for him cuz what I was going to recommend wouldn't fit. When you're building from scratch you know all the components and can then find a case that will fit. But when you already got the case, all you can do is hope the new part you want to buy will fit. If the new part won't fit... well then you gotta upgrade to something else or buy another case, either way not fun. One simple thing to to make sure its a Three Hundred TWO. The TWO has a little more space in each direction.
 
Haha cheers, but i think ill stick with this board, im just desperately trying to keep the price down at the moment, if i decide i 'need' anything even more expensive ill just end up stuck with this laptop for another year or so, which isnt acceptable. I can think about owning cutting edge equipment once ive finished college, but this will be based largely around small savings, money i can make doing odd work at the local stables in my holidays, money from selling old computers and as much as my parents are willing to sub me for... they'll be much more willing to help if i can show im keeping realistic with the costs. Ill have to pay them back anyway so id rather not be owing too much.

I know its irrelevant, but i will need headphones with this, im in a block of rooms at college so no speakers. Obviously opinions of headphones online are dominated by audiophiles.... i love good audio, the better mass effect can sound on this machine the better, but ive never owned anything worth more than £30/40. I could either go with creative fatal1ty for £25 or pcgamers recommended Steelseries Siberia's for £50... worth the difference? Anything else to recommend? i dont need a mic, itll be taken off straight away if possible, as i cant game online here and when i do i just dont bother getting involved in whatever crap goes on in the voice chat
 
Hmm i see what you mean now, its not on amazon uk as far as i can tell, ill have a quick shop around
 
PCIe 3 is kind of marketing stuff for now, and certainly for the 2 coming years as the PCIe 2 bandwidth is not even saturated by a 7970 overclocked. I doubt the Kepler will take any advantage as well.
 
okay cheers, well i cant find it for sale on uk sites, but this is my lack of knowledge speaking, the names of motherboards are a bit overwhelming.

Anyone ever used PCKombi.com, great deals on there, but no reviews or opinions online, so doubtful of trusting it. Found through google shopping.

To clarify, im now looking at the Bitfenix Outlaw case, veery cheap, well thought of, but admittedly small. Still, its so cheap i wouldnt feel bad buying a new case later on. Just how much hassle is it to transfer to a new case? Anyway, this pc WILL be moved 80 miles every 5-9 weeks as college rooms have to be emptied in holidays. So although im concerned about cheap cases being potentially fragile, i CANT go with a full tower, even if i had table room for one (i dont)

If i buy two case fans, which mounts should they be for? both 120mm?

Another of the endless edits, sorry. Does this look alright?
Other than that, done the maths and if i was to buy today (ie sites that have it in stock, current offers), id spend £696.15 for the whole rig and a wireless card, minus monitor, keyboard, mouse and headset. Ill need to buy headphones but the rest is sorted. But until i know whether im spending £25 or £50 i dont want to add it in. Still, the Creative's look decent, was going to get them back when i was looking at the new alienware, before i realised how much better value i get for custom-built.
 
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manu2b said:
PCIe 3 is kind of marketing stuff for now, and certainly for the 2 coming years as the PCIe 2 bandwidth is not even saturated by a 7970 overclocked. I doubt the Kepler will take any advantage as well.
Click to expand...

What you say is true, but let my try to make an argument for looking forward.

If your're just playing games, a good cpu will last you a couple generations of GPU's. I think the HD8000's or higher will probably have a noticeable difference when running on PCI2 vs 3. I would also stake my money that Maxwell will be noticeably better on 3. And this it what it sounds to me is what Mount&Games plans to do.

Crossfire/SLI reasons
The final generation of PCI 2 cards (gtx580 hd6970) would run a little slower on x8 than x16. PCI3 x8 = PCI2 x16. So, obviously the 7970, 680 and up will have a greater performance hit at PCI2 x8.
HD7970 on 3.0 x16 = 2.0 x16 (= as in no performance improvement), therefore = 3.0 x8.
So, 2xHD7970 at 3.0 x16-x8 (lga1155 limitation), = 2.0 x16-x16.
 
Much as the idea of xfire/sli is tempting, i have to be realistic here... considering the fact that the majority of games are still designed around the spec of the current console generation. It looks to me as though a single gtx5** should perform comfortably with the vast majority of games, and even if i do need an upgrade i dont see myself needing xfire/sli for a fair while. Considering the improvement ive already made to what i was orginally planning to buy (i3 2120 and a HD 6850), im not going to start considering the possibility of upgrading to xfire or sli. By the time i ever consider multiple gpu's the whole machine will likely be different to what im buying now. Im not interested in power i dont need. Even with a 4.5GHz processor and a gtx560 Ti i dont see myself having much trouble gaming for a fair few years, and i dont splash out on new games too often, i spend much more time revisiting old games, and in the next few years ill be doing lots of revisits to 2007/8/9 games due to the current cost of games. Obviously i still buy at least 2, usually 3 or 4, new games a year but the bleeding edge isnt my target. For example, i wouldnt be able to play battlefield 3 online, as my college uses a proxy on the wifi connection to block anything other than browsers... i cant even get videos on iplayer or windows/avg updates through the connection here, let alone steam or origin, or any other online games. They just dont connect. So as much as id love to be playing battlefield 3 on high settings i wont buy it for at least the next year and a half. The only 2011 games i own are Deus EX HR, Portal 2, and Dragon Age 2. The only 2010 games i own are ME2 and Fallout New Vegas. Im not playing bleeding edge games here. Xfire/SLI are entirely unnecessary.
 
You're right about the console being the design point. Where multiple gpu's help is when you're adding more pixels (multiple monitors) and post processing.
 
Well i can assure you im not at all tempted by multiple monitors, im more than happy with one or connecting up to a hdtv. Post processing being like enbseries mods and etc? well im sure i can live without it, whatever it is :p

EDIT: Okay guys, seriously i cant increase cost any more. Im currently just floating between £30 and £5 under £700, and i cant go over, particularly now ive realised ive been forgetting the OS... thats another £70, unless there's any way to get a disk and use the license from this laptop which came with win7 installed but no OS. I have an xp cd, but as much as i love xp its pretty redundant now. So yeah, with win7 im now looking at spending £750... so thats pretty much the cap for me. If you think i should make an improvement, itll have to be either the same price, or you'll have to think of where to shave money off the cost. But is there anyway to save myself having to shell out £70 for another copy of win7? as a family we own 2 copies as part of laptops, dont particularly want to buy another copy.
 
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I believe you will be very happy with your setup. And TBH, grab the best rig you can within your budget, as you don't know what tomorrow will be made of.
I just give you an example: 4 months ago, I burnt my Asus p67pro. Thinking of IvyBridge, I bought a €240 Asrock Fatality. 3 weeks ago, I've been in urgent need of cash and I had to sell my whole 2600K rig...
 
surely a single card can cope with AA? im not bothered about 16x/32x or whatever ridiculous amounts are possible. Surely GTX560 Ti will be capable of 4x/8x AA?

EDIT: Ah bummer mate, that must be painful to think about... It really is the most expensive form of entertainment. Think of all the tvs/films/prostitutes :p/consoles, booze, etc we could have for the money we spend on pc gaming... but worth it, i suppose. Still, real life has to come first, and losing a gaming rig (ive been without for almost a year now) can really do wonders for whatever else you want from your life. My riding, work, and general life HAVE improved, but ill be happy to get back to having a nice pc. Ultimately im thrilled with the improvements you guys have helped me make over what i planned on buying. For £699 on the new alienware id only have got i3 2120 and a gt 550 or somesuch, im not sure it even had 8gb ram.

Im not planning on supercomputer gaming, and if cuts need to be made ill find somewhere to make them, worst case scenario is i fall back on the i5 2400, but shouldnt need to if im smart in my spending, and diplomatic with my family of course!
 
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4X for sure, as soon as you don't enable UbberSampling (an enhancement in some games like The Witcher 2).
 
Okay ideal. Well hopefully be able to start buying up parts as early as thursday, or maybe in the week after. I repeat what i said in my earlier edit, thanks for all the work you guys have done, i think ill be fine from here. Im really sorry for you having to give up your pc, it can be tough to budget sensibly for entertainment. If anything comes up ill pop back, but as long as prices dont change dramatically and my budget stays as planned i should be alright. Cheers all!
 
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