Working on a Gaming Rig Build - Any help/advise appreicated

[Nimrod]

Hello All,

I've just been working on a 'possible' Gaming Rig build I'd like to do this year. I say the word possible, as I'm still not 100% sure if it's really time to replace my old working iMac (Running Windows), however I thought it be best to price one up and see the options out there then make a decision

I've made the below build, It's missing a power supply at the moment which I'll add once I've got all the other components confirmed then I'll pick one up that can run it all. Does anyone have any feedback or any suggestions for changes? The budget is getting a little bigger than I hoped, considering I'm close to being able to buy both an Xbox One and Playstation 4 (and soon a Wii U to) at the current price tag, but at the same time I do want to buy a gaming rig (which will also be my day to day PC) which will last a good 3-5 years (So if I need to spend to get a longer life, than that's also fine with me).


Case:
Lian Li PC-Q08B USB3.0 Mini-ITX Case - Black
Lian Li PC-Q08B USB3.0 Mini-ITX Case - Black [PC-Q08B]
£84.95

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WIFI Socket 1150 HDMI DVI-I mini-ITX Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WIFI Socket 1150 HDMI DVI-I mini-ITX.. | Ebuyer.com
£105

Processor:
Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache.. | Ebuyer.com
£172.53

Memory:
Crucial 16GB DDR3 1600MHz Ballistix Sport Memory
Crucial 16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800.. | Ebuyer.com
£99.36

Graphics:
MSI GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
MSI GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E.. | Ebuyer.com
£136.00

Storage:
OCZ 128GB Vector Series SSD
OCZ 128GB Vector Series 2.5" SATA-III SSD | Ebuyer.com
£95.50

To be added:
Power Supply

Total cost so far:
£693.34

I know I'd added a bit to the cost by getting a Mini-ITX sized rig, but after living with Mac Mini's, iMac's and other apple products which are compact, I don' really want a massive PC gaming tower. It needs to be something that can fit nicely on the desk next to my screen

 

[Dark Scyth]

This CPU is a bit more expensive but does support Hyper Threading, which I highly recommend if you're taking the Intel route. Intel Core i7 4771 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache.. | Ebuyer.com

As far as the RAM, 16GB is a really good amount but you might want to try and find RAM that runs at 2133MHz or 2400MHz. They're a bit expensive but you'll actually seem an increased frame rate in a few games (maybe 3-5FPS~) with the faster RAM. Some cases, faster is better than how much you have available. It's not a huge issue at all but I figured i'd bring it up.

Also that SSD seems a little expensive, there are other SSDs that are a little bit cheaper. An SSHD could be a rather good alternative as well, you'll get much more memory out of it and the most frequently used things on the hard drive will move to the SSD hybrid space, which the speed is the same as an SSD more or less, just take a couple of uses for the hard drive to cache it.

Also, while the graphics card is decent, I recommend going for something a little bit stronger, that card will really only get you by on medium to high with solid framerates, if you're looking for Ultra setting, you're gonna need something with a little more power.

If you have an specific questions about anything I said, I might be able to give an answer.

 

[Nimrod]

I have debated a strong CPU, at the moment I have an i7 in my iMac (but its from 2010 so I'm sure the Haswell's blitz it) but my query was do I need so much power? I don't do video encoding but saying that I have a Plex Server running on a Mac Mini with an i5, and it seems to handle 4 different people transcoding at once so an i5 must be pretty powerful. If an i7 is worth it though, I'll likely get it it as the last thing I want is a PC bottlenecked by CPU.

I should note out of all of this, I'm not likely to go pick up Crysis on Ultra settings at full resolution, my current PC has an ATi Radeon HD 5800 Mobility and all the games I throw at it in 1080p seem to run on high settings at a good frame rate so I guess even the one I picked should be a welcome improvement. How much of a budget would you recommend for graphics card? I could bump up a bit if the price v power is a good enough reason.

Much appreciated

 

[InsaneNutter]

So far the spec i would choose, still working on bits of it:

Case: Lian Li PC-Q08B USB3.0 Mini-ITX Case - Black - Owned this myself, can take a full size ATX PSU and dual slot graphics card. £85

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WIFI - I have the Ivy Bridge version of this in my home server and its a great board, has everything on it you will ever need. £105

Processor: Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB - Faster than you will ever need it to be, as its the K series you can overclock. For what you use a PC for i dont think an i7 will ever be of any real benefit. It really depends if you wish to go for extreme performance or best value for money. £172

RAM: Corsair 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz - 2x 8GB sticks (CAS 9-9-9-24) the lower the CL the better. £138

GPU: Sapphire R9 270X OC DUAL-X 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort - Looks a great high end card without spending £200 or more on a really high end gpu.

SSD: Corsair 128GB Force Series GS SSD (£90) Or Corsair 240GB Force Series GS SSD - £140
Depends how much space you want on your boot drive, i personally find even with a 120gb SSD drive and all my apps (including Adobe Creative Suite) installed on the SSD i have 52gb free.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 1TB Green SATA III 6Gb/s - Energy efficient 1TB drive for Steam games and to map your documents folder to. £45

PSU: Corsair CS650M Modular 650W ATX PSU
Note: having built a mini itx gaming pc without a modualr PSU i would not do that again, you just end up with a mess of wires inside the case. Learn from my mistake and be sure what ever PSU you get is modular. £75

Optical drive: I question if this is even required, i have a Blu-ray drive in my PC which has been used twice. Probably never will be now i have an Xbox One that can play blu-rays. Would probably get a cheap Lite-On DVD burner if you want an optical drive.

 

[Dark Scyth]

Chances are that CPU you have listed will work quite well for sometime when it comes to gaming but if you're interested in emulation for PS2 or Wii, Hyper Threading is really recommended. I personally use emulators quite a bit just because you can such a better native resolution out of emulation as compared to the original console. If you're not really one for emulation, that i5 should work quite well anyways. Hyper Threading is really good for getting a task done quicker though, such as unRARing and heavy tasks like that though.

That graphics card is pretty good, if you're not worried about playing everything at Ultra and a 60+FPS and don't mind playing games at say medium to high with about 55+FPS that card should work fairly well for a few years to come. When you go for the best cards that can run games at Ultra at a really high frame rate, it gets pretty expensive. So I would stick with the graphics card you have listed until the more expensive cards become a little obsolete and prices come down.

Also, checked out the motherboard some more and it can't support RAM that runs at 2133 or 2400 so I would definitely go with the RAM that Nutter recommended.

 

[MasterChief]

Gaming these days is limited by the GPU, even a cheap Core i3 at 3ghz+ should eat up most of the games out today, very few games actually take advantage of 2+ cores. Its only very recently we have started to see native 64bit builds of PC games, for example the new NFS game.

I would still personally want at least an i5 in a gaming PC, with un-raring or video encoding i agree hyperthreading should provide a good boost in performance. Gaming is still limited by the GPU i think, not the CPU, that could change now we have a new generation of consoles. Some new games out on next gen consoles recommend 6gb+ ram and a 64bit OS for the PC version of the game.

Chances are that CPU you have listed will work quite well for sometime when it comes to gaming but if you're interested in emulation for PS2 or Wii, Hyper Threading is really recommended. I personally use emulators quite a bit just because you can such a better native resolution out of emulation as compared to the original console. If you're not really one for emulation, that i5 should work quite well anyways. Hyper Threading is really good for getting a task done quicker though, such as unRARing and heavy tasks like that though.

I could be wrong here but does hyper threading not essentially create another virtual core? I thought a lot of emulators actually worked better without it? Dolphin can only use two cores at the most if i recall correctly.

 

[Dark Scyth]

While the best performance is from two physical threads, logical threads work with those physical cores, as far as I know the emulators are updated to work with Hyper Threading as you'll get improved parallelization which will in turn make the emulator faster as it's able to get the commands from the emulator calls quicker. I do know when HT was still new Dolphin had an issue with it putting one physical core and one logical core running locked and that would cause issues since it wasn't running two actual cores. It has since been fixed though. And PCSX2 supports MTVU which will for most games only improve speeds of games but I do believe it will crash a very small amount.

 

[spirosronto]

You could get something better than that 660 right now from the AMD side,their new series has lots of better options imo.

 

[MrNurbtastic]

A 270x, or even a 7870 Ghz edition would be a great option. I have a 7870XT and I love AMD haha. You could also go AMD with the processor, maybe an 8350 with a 990 fx motherboard. then you should be able to spare a couple bucks for even a 7950 or a R9 280x. But that is all preference haha.