Help an ignorant build a new PC?

[Delta-1138]

I've got a bit of money on hand, and a copy of Battlefield 3 on pre-order. I also have an extremely outdated laptop, and nothing else.

I'm looking to build a new beast of a machine from the ground up, but beyond picking the hardware with the biggest numbers on the end I don't have a clue how to construct a beyond decent compatible machine.

To set a baseline, can someone give me an idea of what I'd need - and how much everything would be to buy - to handle the Witcher 2 on highest graphical settings? Then onto Battlefield...

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

A good setup might run you $1000 or more including Windows 7. You can save some money by going with an AMD CPU, which are still good quality, but are much cheaper than Intel. I'd recommend Nvidia for a graphics card; the GTX 560 Ti is a very nice card for the price.

 

[Palfreyfish]

Basically this:

It would really help to get a price limit and I mean that.

I can make a pretty expensive PC...

We'll need budget and requirements first

 

[Delta-1138]

Basically this:

It would really help to get a price limit and I mean that.

I can make a pretty expensive PC...

We'll need budget and requirements first

Well, I'll be saving for a couple of months, but hopefully around £1000, which at current is $1500.

Go! =]

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

Basically this:

It would really help to get a price limit and I mean that.

I can make a pretty expensive PC...

We'll need budget and requirements first

Well, I'll be saving for a couple of months, but hopefully around £1000, which at current is $1500.

Go! =]

I'd reccomend an i5 2500k and GTX 570 at that budget. I might try putting something together later if I get some spare time.

 

[Palfreyfish]

Well, this is what I came up with:

AMD Phenom II X6 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/249987] £153.15
ATI RADEON HD 6950 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/254950] £209.99
Asus CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA 890FX [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/206344] £147.10
Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172949] £34.54
Coolermaster HAF 932 Full Tower Case [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148685] £104.15
Enermax Revolution 850W PSU [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160295]£183.18
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253477] £18.76
WD 2TB 3.5" SATA-III [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264274] £60.95
LiteOn 24x DVD±RW Optical Drive [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176026] £13.98
Cart total inc vat: £944.86

With a Kingston 64GB SSD [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247005] @ £67.96 for insane boot time, total cost is: £1008.02, with 5 day shipping.

I take it you already have a screen and keyboard?

It should be able to run whatever you can throw at it, so yeah, that's what I recommend.

Spoiler

If anyone finds any problems with it, let me know so that I can fix my shit?

 

[Delta-1138]

Well, this is what I came up with:

AMD Phenom II X6 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/249987] £153.15
ATI RADEON HD 6950 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/254950] £209.99
Asus CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA 890FX [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/206344] £147.10
Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172949] £34.54
Coolermaster HAF 932 Full Tower Case [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148685] £104.15
Enermax Revolution 850W PSU [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160295]£183.18
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253477] £18.76
WD 2TB 3.5" SATA-III [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264274] £60.95
LiteOn 24x DVD±RW Optical Drive [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176026] £13.98
Cart total inc vat: £944.86

With a Kingston 64GB SSD [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247005] @ £67.96 for insane boot time, total cost is: £1008.02, with 5 day shipping.

I take it you already have a screen and keyboard?

It should be able to run whatever you can throw at it, so yeah, that's what I recommend.

Spoiler

If anyone finds any problems with it, let me know so that I can fix my shit?

That's exactly the sort of thing I was asking for; Thanks for being that precise lol.
For the future, how upgradable would that machine be?
I have a screen and keyboard, I was hoping to get a second eventually.

 

[Palfreyfish]

You wouldn't need to upgrade for a while, but should be very, just stick with the same brands of CPU and GPU and you should be fine. Also you may want to buy another fan with all that tech in there, one comes with the Coolermaster case, and I added in another one just to be sure, as I couldn't tell if the CPU came with one (I think it does) but to be on the safe side, I stuck the Arctic cooling one in there

Glad to be of service

P.s. When you come to install the Operating system, install it to the Solid State drive if you have it, as your boot times will be a lot quicker than if the OS was on the 2TB HDD.

 

[Archangel768]

Just a tip

This website has a benchmarking system where you can get the results of different parts and put them up against each other.
In this case, I put the AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T BE against the Intel 2500K
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/203?vs=288

Intel 2500K
http://www.ebuyer.com/251596-intel-core-i5-2500k-3-3ghz-socket-1155-6mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80623i52500k

The AMD has 6 cores running at 3.3qhz and 2mb level 2 cache. The Intel 2500K has 4 cores running at 3.3ghz and 1mb level 2 cache.

Despite the AMD having better numbers, the Intel surpassed the AMD in most tests.

Also, on the website that the AMD was listed on (posted by Palfreyfish) that same website lists the Intel 2500K for almost the same price. I'd go with the 2500K but it does mean that you'd have to find a motherboard that supports it because the one that Palfreyfish listed wouldn't work with Intel processors. The motherboard shouldn't cost anymore either.

EDIT: Cleared up some mistakes in my post. Steam can be placed on another Hard Drive. Other programs may not.

This is the original paragraph edited to be more correct.

Also be careful with installing Windows on the SSD drive since it only has 64gb of space which means that any programs that require that you install them to the drive which has Windows on won't have much space. Steam does this but there is a process that you can go through to get it on to another drive. Other programs that only install to the windows drive may not be able to be transferred to another drive.

Here's the link on how to do that.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7710-tdlc-0426

 

[Palfreyfish]

Just a tip

*Snip*

Also be careful with installing Windows on the SSD drive since it only has 64gb of space which means that any programs that require that you install them to the drive which has Windows on (like steam and all the games that run through it) will need to fit on that SSD 64gb. I wouldn't be able to fit all my Steam games on their at the same time, I'd need something bigger to do that. So just make sure that the 64gb will be enough.

This bit ^ Is that true? I was told that you only have to install windows to the SSD and then everything else can go on the 2TB HDD. And yeah, if that's true, don't buy the 64 GB SSD and pocket the money.

Also, so the 2500k is better? Oh, okay then. It's not much more expensive, though you will need a different Mobo. I'll find a link for that now
There's this one [http://www.ebuyer.com/241996-asus-sabertooth-x58-socket-1366-8-channel-hd-audio-atx-motherboard-sabertooth-x58]
or
this one [http://www.ebuyer.com/267772-asus-p8z68-v-pro-z68-socket-1155-8-channel-hd-audio-atx-motherboard-p8z68-v-pro] It's entirely up to you what goes in your PC, but yeah, this is what I've found.

 

[Palfreyfish]

Just a tip

*Snip*

Also be careful with installing Windows on the SSD drive since it only has 64gb of space which means that any programs that require that you install them to the drive which has Windows on (like steam and all the games that run through it) will need to fit on that SSD 64gb. I wouldn't be able to fit all my Steam games on their at the same time, I'd need something bigger to do that. So just make sure that the 64gb will be enough.

This bit ^ Is that true? I was told that you only have to install windows to the SSD and then everything else can go on the 2TB HDD. And yeah, if that's true, don't buy the 64 GB SSD and pocket the money.

Also, so the 2500k is better? Oh, okay then. It's not much more expensive, though you will need a different Mobo. I'll find a link for that now

You can install windows to the 64GB and everything else on the 2TB drive. I have windows on a 500GB HDD and steam and a few other programs on a 1TB HDD. It works fine.

The 2500K is a fantastic overclocking CPU so you may want to take that under consideration in the future.

Thank you for clearing that up And Overclocking's not something I think he'll need to worry about, as he only wants to play games, and the 2500K + the above GPU should handle all recent games quite well.

 

[Archangel768]

True, my mistake, it's just that installing steam and it's games on another hard drive isn't straight forward and I never googled it before. Turns out after a google search that you can have steam and it's games on another hard drive but it's a little more work than just installing it normally.

Here's the link on how to do it.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7710-tdlc-0426

It installs to the C: Drive by default but you can then move it elsewhere.

I've come across other programs that only install on the C: Drive but you may be able to transfer it to another drive.

 

[Palfreyfish]

That's not too much effort though, so he could get the SSD as well. At the end of the day, it's up to whether the OP wants the hassle of doing that every time he gets a new game.

 

[Delta-1138]

Really great help guys =]
I'm interested in the i5 2500k over the AMD, so if I changed Palfreyfish's design to have Asus Sabertooth X58/Asus P8Z68-V and i5, would I need to change anything else?

I think you people are underestimating my n00biness. =P

 

[MrTub]

Really great help guys =]
I'm interested in the i5 2500k over the AMD, so if I changed Palfreyfish's design to have Asus Sabertooth X58/Asus P8Z68-V and i5, would I need to change anything else?

I think you people are underestimating my n00biness. =P

You need Sabertooth p67(You can ofc choose another P67/Z68 mobo if you want) since Sabertooth X58 is another socket and will not work with Sandy Bridge (I5 2500/i7 2600) Everything else should work with Intel instead of AMD



I would recommend these:

P67:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157231&Tpk=ASRock%20P67%20Extreme%206
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130574
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131702&Tpk=Asus%20SABERTOOTH%20P67

Z68:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131759
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131730