New PC thoughts

Hey everyone

So I'm getting sick of this laptop I'm currently on, it's basically one of the cheapest available and it's struggling to do the things I want it to. I've decided I'm going to get a NEW PC but I don't really know much about... PCs, so I'm looking for some support. My budget is around £400.
All I really need it for is gaming, video editing (and rendering of course, at about 1080p?) and basic tasks.
I decided I'm going to get a custom built one, I'm a complete newb in PC building, but I've spent a few days searching for good parts for reasonable prices. I have no idea if this is going to work or do what I want it to but I was hoping for other peoples input on this.

Here's my current parts I've searched:

£174.9 CPU - Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K
£83.25 Motherboard - AsRock Z77 Pro4
£81.78 GPU - EVGA Nvidia GTX550Ti
£? PSU - (haven't dealt with that yet)
£55 RAM - Kingston 1600MHz DDR3 Non ECC CL9 8GB Kit
£0 Optical Drive - (already own one)
£0 HDD - (already own one)
£35.85 Case - CiT Vantage Midi Mesh Gaming Case

I don't really need to deal with mouse, keyboard, monitor etc. at the moment, I'm just focusing on the actual computer.

Please let me know if I'm doing this completely wrong, and if you have any suggestions or any ideas for better parts for better prices it would be greatly appreciated.
Also I'm not sure if I've left anything important out I'm not going for the PSU yet until I figure out all of the other parts first.
Someone said that the AsRock Z77 Pro4 won't fit into the case I picked. Any suggestions on a different motherboard? I'd rather not replace the case,
because it's small, cheap, looks good and has 4 fans which are apparently quiet and do well for cooling, it's the best I've found so far.
I'm not really talking about insane gaming, just full graphics on at least 60fps on games like Skyrim or Arkham City, if that's even possible?
That's about it I think... let me know what you think

The GPU should do 40-60fps without problems on Skyrim. Ultra settings, not sure, it seems split (some say yes, some say no, but the videos are great). Of course you will be limited in resolution. Too high and you'll experience a drop in fps.
Arkham City probably the same story. Note the card is great for DX10, but not so good for DX11. Also, it appears to be more expensive for what it gives.

I would've suggested the GeForce GTX 650 but apparently it's 40£ more. CPU appears to be good (from default memory, did not research) and don't know about the motherboard except I heard of it.
PSU probably 600-650W. RAM is good. Never heard of the case.

I'll do proper research Soon(tm).

Thanks for your reply.

I searched GeForce GTX 650 and it seems to be the same price as the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, did you mean GeForce GTX 650 Ti, because that's £40 more than the 550 Ti. Also any idea how many GBs I should have? Plus I forgot to mention that I'd be rendering at about 1080p, I edited my original post. Any idea how fast that might go? Usually when I render on this laptop it takes about 60 mins for a 1080p 30fps video that's about 3 minutes long.

Since I know you do a lot of video editing/rendering, go for an i7. I have one and the HD video rendering speed is remarkable.

But, of course, I don't know if that would be outside of your budget, but you should definitely look into it.

Jul 19, 2013, 12:48pm, uilleambeag wrote:I searched GeForce GTX 650 and it seems to be the same price as the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, did you mean GeForce GTX 650 Ti, because that's £40 more than the 550 Ti.

I did an ultra fast google search that's why I didn't go with it, but when I originally wrote the post I recommended the 650 instead of the 550 Ti because it beats the 550 Ti on every point except Bandwidth (GB/s) by 12.0-18.5 depending on your resource (I believe wikipedia's 18.5 in this case). You will get better tech and plus on everything except the bandwidth but dunno how important that is.

You can go 1GB no problems, it means how much VRAM you get. If they offer 2GB for same price, why not. AFAIK 650 comes with one, dunno if 2, can't remember right now.

I'll answer the rest later, sorry.

I did some more research. The GPU you can go GTX 650 quietly, because it comes as 2GB which is great. The 550 Ti does have better Bandwidth which helps with Anti Aliasing, high dynamic range and high resolution.

HD 7850 would beat both easily, but its power requirements are high (130W, vs 64W for 650).
The CPU if you go i7 it would be great because it has hyper-threading which is a world of difference when it comes to video editing and rendering.

To compare a laptop I use has i7 2.2ghz. It does in 3 hours a 42 minutes video at bitrate 5000kbps (very high!) and 1024x768 resolution. This is 4x times faster against my Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz.
Rest of laptop specs: 8gb ram, Radeon HD 7690M XT .

Search for i7 prices. Even if it's sub-3ghz it's still better than nothing.

PSU 600W should be good (? no idea really lol).. Case could be okay, but I'm not familiar with the motherboard. Note that the CPU, GPU and motherboard go together. If CPU or GPU don't fit, you need a different motherboard.
If the motherboard does NOT fit, then yeah you need a different case.

Thanks for all your help, I don't think I can afford i7, it's quite expensive. For now I think I'll stick with i5. What do you think of a more recent game like Tomb Raider 2013, any idea if that will be able to run smoothly on full graphics?

Jul 21, 2013, 2:12pm, uilleambeag wrote:Thanks for all your help, I don't think I can afford i7, it's quite expensive. For now I think I'll stick with i5. What do you think of a more recent game like Tomb Raider 2013, any idea if that will be able to run smoothly on full graphics?
From what i see here I could say certainly yes www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id...5&game=Tomb%20Raider

Okay, so I've been looking around for parts I could replace and so far this is what I've got.

£85 Motherboard - Asus P8B75-V
£139 CPU - Asus 2GB GDDR5 Nvidia GeForce GTX 650Ti
£55 RAM - Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600MHz CL9 8GB DIMM
£38 Case - ThermalTake V3 BlacX Edition (recommended by RDs.empire)

Matan, you suggested GTX 650, I looked up the 650Ti to see the difference and it looks like a better card. I'm skeptical about the card because I watched a review of it, and apparently it's almost perfect for games like WoW and Starcraft, but those are nothing like the games I'd be playing. He also said that it was not the best for First Person Shooters which is what I'd mostly be playing, but I don't know if his idea of not the best is what I would think of is great (around full graphics on at least 60fps).

Is there any way to find out if all the parts will fit together? I don't want to order everything and none of the parts connect with each other.
Also I'm unsure about the PSU, 600-650w is good, but I don't know which kind/brand to get.

Edit: There's a chance I might have more money soon, so if I get enough then I think I'll go for the GTX 660 ti 2GBs if I have enough, because its on sale for £190, around £100 off.

I talked on Steam for a while going i dont know until I realised you actually selected completely different parts.

Okay, so a FYI the more advanced/better the GPU is, the more power you need for PSU. I'm still going for 650-700W. The PSU of 660Ti is *only* 40W more than 650Ti. Get Corsair or Antec or really good well-known brand.

Motherboard: I'm split since I don't know much about either except you're restricted to 22nm as the best. So an i7 3xxx would be the best you can go.

CPU well it's gonna be the bottleneck. I'm gonna recommend i7 2xxx if you can find one. For video encoding it's gonna be great due to Hyper-Threading. If you get an i5 you will be happy with it, but do know it won't be *as* fast as an i7 for video encoding. Still, a huge improvement over what you have currently and I can guarantee you that you will be super happy with it.

RAM is okay

GPU 650Ti > 650 that I know. If you are gonna upgrade to 660 Ti you're gonna be super happy with it as it will deliver. That said, again CPU is gonna be bottleneck. With regards to the guy who reviewed WoW/Starcraft I'm not sure why you looked at that. You need to google up GTX 650 Ti skyrim and switch skyrim with arkham city and add FPS as a keyword and you'll get:
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo....106,3318-5.html
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo....06,3318-11.html
for AC/Skyrim

Swithing to 660 Ti?
www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphic....650-ti-review/7

Also, remember to check the specs they used. Example, the last link provides this setup:

Intel Core i5-2500K (operating at 4.2GHz – 42 x 100MHz and 1.275V vcore; speedstep disabled)
Asus Maximus 5 Formula (Intel Z77)
2 x 4GB Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3 memory
Samsung SSD 830 256GB SSD
Antec CP-850 850W PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

And when we switch 650Ti to 660Ti:
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo....iew,3279-9.html
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo....iew,3279-3.html
Note test setup uses i7 3930 iirc

www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08....ti-2gb-review/8

MORE LINKS:
www.hwcompare.com/13459/geforce-gtx-650-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti/

And I think you get the point
So can your 660Ti do very well? yes, according to the fact it was coupled with i5-2500 and still output very good fps.

I think that buying an HD 7770 will be best as the GPU because it's cost pretty much as much as the GTX 650 and it's a better GPU overall. It's a good pair with the i5, and it'll be able to run your games just fine. It'll be enough just to use a 500Watt PSU with the rest of your specs.

Personal opinion: don't care for ATI cards, had trouble in the past with them.

Uil, stick with NVidia GTX 550/650, both are awesome cards. You get what you pay for.

500Wat is way too underpowered. I have a 650W on a NVidia GT 640 and i5 @ 3GHZ. I'm very happy with my computer even with the card not being the GTX series. The GT was fine for me.

I think Uil went 660 GTX Ti, I'm not 100%.

He went 650 GTX Ti. confirmed it with him.

I went for the 650ti for my final decision. I was going to go for the 660ti but it was out of my budget. I've already ordered all the parts so I can't really change anything now. Thanks for the help everyone, especially Matan. I'll let anyone know how it goes if they're interested.

Of course we want a follow up. Let us know c: