My first PC build

[Zona]

Hey guys,

I'm Zona, from the UK and I have a budget of £1000 to build a gaming/video editing PC. The main use will be for gaming, most of the games that I will be playing will have Fraps running at the same time as I am starting YouTube as well. I will also be using it for video editing (after effects CS6, Vegas 12 etc) and graphic design. The main games that I will be playing will be Skyrim, Watch Dogs, Battlefield 3, GRID 2 etc... so it needs to be pretty powerful.

I already have a copy of Windows 7 (free from College), Logitech z506 5.1 surround speakers, advent c112 keyboard and mouse (but will be upgrade to Razer Blackwidow Ultimate and Deathadder at Christmas). I plan on running 3 monitors, but I will start off with one monitor which I'd like to be 24" 1920x1080 with HDMI.

This build will be an upgrade from a 2 year old Dell XPS L702x laptop (i7 @2.2ghz, 6GB ram, nvidia geforce 555m 3GB).

Here's what I have come up with so far:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor (£139.49 @ Dabs)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£68.39 @ Aria PC)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£53.35 @ Amazon UK)

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£101.86 @ Amazon UK)

Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card (£309.98 @ Amazon UK)

Case: Corsair Vengeance C70 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£98.35 @ CCL Computers)

Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£70.38 @ Scan.co.uk)

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£11.79 @ Amazon UK)

Total: £853.59

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-23 20:21 GMT+0000)

I'm not really bothered about the case, but I would like to have a nice looking one with a window on it so I can see the bits on it. I am currently unemployed (having finished College last year and looking for work in IT Support) so funds are pretty tight as I'm on £112.50 every two weeks so it's gonna take me a while to save up for the Rig (currently have £310 saved up).

Thanks for the help,

Zona.

[Theo]

I'd pick another cpu for the use that you are going to do, specially for video editing and recording/gaming at the same time id chose a 8350 over that i5

[MTT]

8350 is way better for editing

[christoi]

I'd agree with Theo and MTT here, FX-series may be a better choice given the usage, editing programs will definitely benefit from the extra cores. Gaming performance will drop a bit, but it's not much of a problem as you are nearing a GPU-bottleneck anyways (especially if you overclock it).

Anyways, after shuffling a couple of things around with your build, I'd recommend this:

[url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74]http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74]

In this very rare occasion, I'd recommend upping the memory to 16GB. Speeds don't really matter performance-wise, but AE does use up a lot of memory. I've swapped the i5 for the FX which works rather well here, there was room for a nice motherboard and a decent cooler, so 4.2-4.5ghz shouldn't be a problem at all. Swapped the power supply for a slightly cheaper modular unit that's of similar quality, also saved £50 off the hard drive, which is equally as good as the one you originally chose. Ended up slightly cheaper, but it'll perform slightly better overall.

Lastly, I didn't include it because it went a bit over but an SSD may be worth considering. It's always recommended to record footage to a separate drive, so it may help a bit in terms of that. You don't need anything fancy - this unit[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sandisk-internal-hard-drive-sdssdp128gg25] should be more than enough. Might not be as fast as some alternatives in terms of sheer performance, but as a boot drive the speed differences are hardly noticeable anyways.

Also one last thing: be aware that prices of pcpartpicker are rather inaccurate with the UK version. I've checked the ones on the list I recommended and they are fine except for the 212 evo, which is actually £25.

[Zona]

I'd agree with Theo and MTT here' date=' FX-series may be a better choice given the usage, editing programs will definitely benefit from the extra cores. Gaming performance will drop a bit, but it's not much of a problem as you are nearing a GPU-bottleneck anyways (especially if you overclock it). Anyways, after shuffling a couple of things around with your build, I'd recommend this: [url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74]http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74] In this very rare occasion, I'd recommend upping the memory to 16GB. Speeds don't really matter performance-wise, but AE does use up a lot of memory. I've swapped the i5 for the FX which works rather well here, there was room for a nice motherboard and a decent cooler, so 4.2-4.5ghz shouldn't be a problem at all. Swapped the power supply for a slightly cheaper modular unit that's of similar quality, also saved £50 off the hard drive, which is equally as good as the one you originally chose. Ended up slightly cheaper, but it'll perform slightly better overall. Lastly, I didn't include it because it went a bit over but an SSD may be worth considering. It's always recommended to record footage to a separate drive, so it may help a bit in terms of that. You don't need anything fancy - this unit[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sandisk-internal-hard-drive-sdssdp128gg25] should be more than enough. Might not be as fast as some alternatives in terms of sheer performance, but as a boot drive the speed differences are hardly noticeable anyways. Also one last thing: be aware that prices of pcpartpicker are rather inaccurate with the UK version. I've checked the ones on the list I recommended and they are fine except for the 212 evo, which is actually £25.

Thanks. What GPU would you recommend I use to reduce the chance of bottlenecking? I will be playing games for long periods of time whilst recording so I would like as little interference's as possible. Also, do you have any suggestions for monitors? I was thinking of going with Asus. Also, would you recommend getting one of those temperature controlling devices for the case?

[Zona]

I'd agree with Theo and MTT here, FX-series may be a better choice given the usage, editing programs will definitely benefit from the extra cores. Gaming performance will drop a bit, but it's not much of a problem as you are nearing a GPU-bottleneck anyways (especially if you overclock it).

Anyways, after shuffling a couple of things around with your build, I'd recommend this:

[url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74]http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LH74]

In this very rare occasion, I'd recommend upping the memory to 16GB. Speeds don't really matter performance-wise, but AE does use up a lot of memory. I've swapped the i5 for the FX which works rather well here, there was room for a nice motherboard and a decent cooler, so 4.2-4.5ghz shouldn't be a problem at all. Swapped the power supply for a slightly cheaper modular unit that's of similar quality, also saved £50 off the hard drive, which is equally as good as the one you originally chose. Ended up slightly cheaper, but it'll perform slightly better overall.

Lastly, I didn't include it because it went a bit over but an SSD may be worth considering. It's always recommended to record footage to a separate drive, so it may help a bit in terms of that. You don't need anything fancy - this unit[/url=http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sandisk-internal-hard-drive-sdssdp128gg25] should be more than enough. Might not be as fast as some alternatives in terms of sheer performance, but as a boot drive the speed differences are hardly noticeable anyways.

Also one last thing: be aware that prices of pcpartpicker are rather inaccurate with the UK version. I've checked the ones on the list I recommended and they are fine except for the 212 evo, which is actually £25.

Any suggestions on a GPU like a 7870?

[iSuzak]

You can go with the HD 7870 XT/HD 7950/HD 7970 personally i don't think the 8350 will bottleneck, also if you're using cuda go for nvidia cards

[Zona]

You can go with the HD 7870 XT/HD 7950/HD 7970 personally i don't think the 8350 will bottleneck, also if you're using cuda go for nvidia cards

Ok, so would I be good with something like a 660ti?

[iSuzak]

You can go with the HD 7870 XT/HD 7950/HD 7970 personally i don't think the 8350 will bottleneck, also if you're using cuda go for nvidia cards

yep no problem