I'm looking to build my first rig at around the £700-£800 mark. I'm currently running a dell which I have modified as far as the motherboard will allow. The only part worth salvaging is the Sapphire HD 7850 2GB which I will crossfire at a later date if the need arises.
First and foremost I want the rig to be powerful and stable. I want to minimise on things I don't need but at the same time give myself a little room to upgrade in the future. I'm not interested in a multi-monitor set up, just playing games on full graphics fluidly on a single 1080p 1920x1080 monitor..
The list as it stands at the moment:
Case:
Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed
Motherboard:
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0
PSU:
Corsair GS800 2013 Edition
CPU:
AMD FX8350 8 Core 4.0 GHz
CPU Cooling:
Corsair CW-906007 H60 Water Cooler
Case Cooling:
Corsair Air Series 120 Quiet Edition X2
RAM:
Corsair LP Vengeance CML16GX3M4A2133C11B 16GB (4x4GB)
GPU:
Sapphire HD 7850 2GB (11200-07-22G) (Possible crossfire at some point)
SSD:
Crucial M4 128GB
HDD:
Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue
Optical Drive:
Asus DRW-24B5ST
The case was an easy choice for me, I went with the 300R because I wanted something of a good quality but not flashy or expensive. Some people might call the case ugly but I think it looks fantastically minimal and sleek.
The main thing I’m struggling with is deciding on a motherboard. The ASUS ones look good to me however I’m more or less completely uninterested in all the software packaged with them.
Currently I can’t decide between the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 (LE, Standard and EVO) and the M5A99X R2.0 (EVO and FX PRO). I also looked at the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 but as far as I can tell it doesn’t support 2133MHz memory, so I’d have to go for slightly slower memory if I went for that. 16GB of 2133MHz RAM might seem a little over the top considering the rest of the build but it’s going dead cheap on Amazon at the moment so that’s why I’m considering it. I don’t know anything about ASrock and MSI boards so any suggestions in that department would also be appreciated.
One last point on the motherboard - I'm looking overclock a fair bit and I'll need decent cooling. The case supports one back fan, two front fans, two top fans and two side fans and comes with a 140mm on the front and a 120mm at the rear. I was looking at replacing the rear 120mm with the Corsair H60 fan and radiator and moving it to the top to keep my RAM cool. I also want to put two Corsair 120mm Quiet Edition fans on the side panel to keep the GPU/s cool. This would be especially important if I went for the crossfire configuration. That makes 1 CPU fan and 4 Case fans and as far as I'm aware all the ASUS boards I'm looking at only support the 1 CPU fan and 3 case fans. Again I could use some advice here on how to set up the cooling and fans. I also wanted to ask is it worth going for the 4 pin fans that you can manually control?
Another decision I still need to make is the PSU. Realistically the required wattage for the build, even with the potential crossfire, shouldn't exceed 600w. However If I’m going to buy a decent PSU I’d like to give myself a little headroom should I decide to further upgrade the other components in the future. I was thinking about the Corsair GS700 but you can get hold of the GS800 for only a couple of quid more on some sites so I was swayed towards that. I went for this PSU because my build is going to made up from predominantly Corsair parts and I’m trying to keep an electric blue and black aesthetic theme. Aesthetics are not too important however, the focus is on quality, not frills. Any advice on PSUs would be helpful.
Overall I'm looking for any advice at all on making this rig better. Particularly I need help choosing a motherboard. At the same time bear in mind I'm building on a budget so if something won't make much of a difference I'd rather go with the cheaper option. Thanks!
First and foremost I want the rig to be powerful and stable. I want to minimise on things I don't need but at the same time give myself a little room to upgrade in the future. I'm not interested in a multi-monitor set up, just playing games on full graphics fluidly on a single 1080p 1920x1080 monitor..
The list as it stands at the moment:
Case:
Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed
Motherboard:
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0
PSU:
Corsair GS800 2013 Edition
CPU:
AMD FX8350 8 Core 4.0 GHz
CPU Cooling:
Corsair CW-906007 H60 Water Cooler
Case Cooling:
Corsair Air Series 120 Quiet Edition X2
RAM:
Corsair LP Vengeance CML16GX3M4A2133C11B 16GB (4x4GB)
GPU:
Sapphire HD 7850 2GB (11200-07-22G) (Possible crossfire at some point)
SSD:
Crucial M4 128GB
HDD:
Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue
Optical Drive:
Asus DRW-24B5ST
The case was an easy choice for me, I went with the 300R because I wanted something of a good quality but not flashy or expensive. Some people might call the case ugly but I think it looks fantastically minimal and sleek.
The main thing I’m struggling with is deciding on a motherboard. The ASUS ones look good to me however I’m more or less completely uninterested in all the software packaged with them.
Currently I can’t decide between the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 (LE, Standard and EVO) and the M5A99X R2.0 (EVO and FX PRO). I also looked at the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 but as far as I can tell it doesn’t support 2133MHz memory, so I’d have to go for slightly slower memory if I went for that. 16GB of 2133MHz RAM might seem a little over the top considering the rest of the build but it’s going dead cheap on Amazon at the moment so that’s why I’m considering it. I don’t know anything about ASrock and MSI boards so any suggestions in that department would also be appreciated.
One last point on the motherboard - I'm looking overclock a fair bit and I'll need decent cooling. The case supports one back fan, two front fans, two top fans and two side fans and comes with a 140mm on the front and a 120mm at the rear. I was looking at replacing the rear 120mm with the Corsair H60 fan and radiator and moving it to the top to keep my RAM cool. I also want to put two Corsair 120mm Quiet Edition fans on the side panel to keep the GPU/s cool. This would be especially important if I went for the crossfire configuration. That makes 1 CPU fan and 4 Case fans and as far as I'm aware all the ASUS boards I'm looking at only support the 1 CPU fan and 3 case fans. Again I could use some advice here on how to set up the cooling and fans. I also wanted to ask is it worth going for the 4 pin fans that you can manually control?
Another decision I still need to make is the PSU. Realistically the required wattage for the build, even with the potential crossfire, shouldn't exceed 600w. However If I’m going to buy a decent PSU I’d like to give myself a little headroom should I decide to further upgrade the other components in the future. I was thinking about the Corsair GS700 but you can get hold of the GS800 for only a couple of quid more on some sites so I was swayed towards that. I went for this PSU because my build is going to made up from predominantly Corsair parts and I’m trying to keep an electric blue and black aesthetic theme. Aesthetics are not too important however, the focus is on quality, not frills. Any advice on PSUs would be helpful.
Overall I'm looking for any advice at all on making this rig better. Particularly I need help choosing a motherboard. At the same time bear in mind I'm building on a budget so if something won't make much of a difference I'd rather go with the cheaper option. Thanks!
