Best £1,000.00 gaming rig please?

[Atuleon]

Hi all,

What do you think of the below quote? I was toying with the idea of blowing another £100.00 on an SSD too, but first question is: keeping the price under or very very close to £1000, can I change anything to increase gaming performance, (GPU/processor).

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3550 (3.3GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)
Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £997.00 including VAT and delivery.
Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-ivy-bridge-pc/

 

[Wolvo7]

Haven't you bought a PC a couple of months ago? Looking for another one I see, one can never have enough PCs I know ^^

Your spec is really good as it is, upgrading the CPU won't help for gaming, the 3550 is perfect for that, and the GPU will max out any game on a single screen. Upgrading to the 680 is not worth the money for the minimal performance difference.

Only thing is that if you stick with a HDD as a main drive upgrade to the Caviar Black it's not as fast as an SSD but it's a performance drive so it's a good compromise.
You don't need 1600Mhz RAM either unless you're OCing, you won't notice a difference in a real life situation.
Lastly I'd get the super quiet CPU cooler just to keep the temps a bit lower.

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3550 (3.3GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-M: MICRO-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,064.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unless you need the additional PCIe and 2 PCI slots, you can drop the mobo to the Z77M. It's 64£ over budget but I'd go with that rather than a small SSD and a generic HDD with your budget.

 

[Atuleon]

Thanks, yes I was waiting for the new Ivy Bridge CPUs and the 680 to come out and bring down the price of the components I originally had my eye on. So as I was waiting for 4-5months, I lent my wife half of my PC fund, so she could get her own budget gaming PC in the mean time and pay me bak whilst I continue to save and add to the my pot for a beast. By the time she has paid me back in 5months I should have £1500.00 in my PC fund. Better than her getting one on finance. However seeing the good performance of her £550.00, i5, HD 6850 PC, I am starting to think blowing £1500 on a PC is too much. I could almost get three of her PCs... I am therefore trying to keep my budget to £1k if possible.

I appreciate your reply. The mobo you suggest is actually £2.00 more. My mistake on the CPU cooler. I normally pick the superquiet one, but simply missed this when putting the spec together. My ownly area of concern is that I am not sure how noticably better the caviar black will be compared to the standard. They are both SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm), how noticable can the difference be between them? A couple of seconds on loading windows, games and characters in MMORPGs in the best case scenario?

I got the blue-screen of death on my current 4yr old PCSpecialist PC a couple of times, with my picture freezing and my mobo beeping like crazy, so I think my graphics card is on the way out. I did a system restore and reinstalled up to date drivers for the GPU and that seemed to sort it out *fingers crossed*. I hear there was a windows update this month that cuased a lot of people to have the same problems in Vista, so am tempted to put it down to that. Eitherway I haven't been happy with the quality of my graphics for a while now, which is why I am considering getting a new PC sooner, but on a lower budget. I think I am going to wack a HD6850 into my current machine for £85 to replace to 9600GT(1GB) to drag the life out another 6-12months.

 

[Wolvo7]

Yeah there's no real need to spend 1500£ on a gaming PC, it would be worth it if you plan to edit videos and stuff like that. Games don't use hyperthreading so getting an i7 won't help you with gaming performance.

My bad for the mobo, I noticed that a few days ago but I forgot this time, defo get the LX then it's got more PCI slots too

For the Caviar Black I think it's because it's a performance drive, so it should work faster than the generic one, plus it appears that it has a very good reliability. One of the first suggestions to anyone posting a spec here is to upgrade to the Caviar Black, I don't own one myself but if it has such a good reputation among the users of this forum I guess that would be the reason. Best to ask someone who owns one if you want more info ^^

I'm on Vista and I've had no problem with the update recently, but I've never really had any pb with Vista in 4 years so I'll just consider myself lucky

 

[lady0sheep]

I think I am going to wack a HD6850 into my current machine for £85 to replace to 9600GT(1GB) to drag the life out another 6-12months.

I've got a 8800 GTS in my current PC (waiting for the delivery of my new one currently) which is around the same age as yours and I've been able to run BF3 on it (albeit not maximum settings by a long stretch) and recently plugged my new monitor in which is a 120hz one, and the card coped with the 3D conversion... so, unless it's Vista compatibility I'm not sure spending £85 is really worth it for a few months. I'm just worried you'll spend £85, not really deal with the issues on your old PC and then have £85 less for a new PC! Updating the graphics drivers usually does the trick... my brother used to have some crazy crashes but with some new drivers he's not getting them anymore. However saying that, if you can wait 12 months then I guess as usual there will be some new stuff out as there always is Think I'm woffling now

Agreed on the not really needing to spend £1500 though, mine was £1100 but the extra £100 was pretty much because I wanted a blu ray drive, a wifi card and extras like a surge proof adapter due to not trusting the wiring in the house I'm renting currently