First Build, UK, £900 budget, Advice please?

[Deleted]

Hello, I've been planning on building a pc for a while and having just finished my exams have decided to do so. So here I am seeking your advice

• Country: United Kingdom
• Budget: £900 give or take
• Resolution: 1920/1080p
• Games / Settings Desire: The plan is to use this instead of a next gen console. Ideally I would like it to play games at better settings than them or at least as good as. (I understand that's somewhat difficult to figure out seeing as they aren't released yet) / Current games i.e. Metro Last Light at ultra at least 30fps (AA turned down) It also needs to last for a good few years (turning down settings is fine) considering i'll be at uni soon and most likely too broke to afford upgrades lol
• Any other intensive software or special things you do (Frequent video encoding, 3D modeling, etc): Nope
• Parts that can be reused: None currently using a laptop
• Do you need an OS?: Yes
• Do you need peripherals (e.g. monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc)?: The PC will need to have wireless connectivity as my room's on the 2nd floor and the line on the ground floor , I also have a separate budget of about £150 for a monitor (as a late Birthday Gift) so some suggestions there would be appreciated.

I also plan on having a go at overclocking, free extra performance and all that.
With this information in mind and lurking this and numerous other forums I've come up with this: h t t p : / / uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/166fr
CPU: i5 3570k (£155.99)
CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo (£24.10)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£99.52)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (I believe it's low profile) (£52.99)
SSD: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£71.99)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM (£49.99)
GPU: XFX Double D Radeon HD 7950 (Comes with Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 3 & Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon) (£218.99)
Wireless Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN781ND 802.11b/g/n PCI Wi-Fi Adapter (£8.76)
Case: Xigmatek MIDGARD II (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£56.83)
PSU: SeaSonic 520W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V (£64.10)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer (£14.99)
OS: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£67.19)
Total: £885.44


I went for Ivy Bridge instead of Haswell, as combined with a Z87 motherboard I was looking at about a £60-70 price increase and from what I've read the increase in performance isn't that extensive especially when considering that I'm going to be overclocking on air and Haswell's heat issues. And went with the 7950 as it came with all those games which i was probably going to buy at some point anyway, and seems to handle the games at the settings I want for a decent price.


So with that said and my thought process explained, are there any glaring errors in the parts I've picked?, Anything / The whole thing you would do differently?

Thanks in advance,
Jao

[yurano]

Go for a P8Z77-V LK at the very least. Gigabyte Z77X-D3H $100 is also a good choice.

Seasonic M12ii 520 is a higher quality PSU for $5 more.

Your case is a little expensive for your tower budget.

[Deleted]

Lol can't quote you because of the links :P

Thanks for the advice, I've changed the motherboard and the PSU to your suggestions and the case to a cheaper one,(it looks pretty nice and seems to have good reviews), also resulted in the total cost falling £10 which is nice

Out of a desire to learn more, what is it exactly that makes those motherboards better?, features / component quality?

[yurano]

Out of a desire to learn more, what is it exactly that makes those motherboards better?, features / component quality?

For overclocking motherboards, VRM quality takes precedence and ATX size motherboards will invariably be chosen. Z chipset motherboards with high VRM quality also tend to have acceptable quality everything else.

For non-overclocking motherboards, the generally recommended chipset is B75 since its cheaper than H77 and doesn't sacrifice many features. mATX is generally chosen for non-OC motherboards as a cost cutting measure. I tend to pick non-OC motherboards by onboard sound DAC quality (ALC 887 or better). I also choose certain brands over others (ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI) to ensure sufficient motherboard quality.

It all comes down to tried and true motherboard recommendations of ASUS P8Z77-V LK or better, ASRock Extreme 4 (mediocre) or better, Gigabyte Z77X-anything or better. /r/buildapc community also believes in the quality of Biostar TZ77XE3 or better, but its not as well received on mmo-champion computer forums. For non-OC, the go to motherboard tends to be MSI's B75 motherboards starting at B75MA-E33.