Suggestions / tweaks to a £1000 WoW PC

[Sharptalon]

Hi,

I'm putting together a new PC for 5.4 and was planning on building a system based on the Narwhal system. The system will be mainly for warcraft and RTS games, though it would be nice if it lasted a few years. Aim is to get good fps in 25 man raids on decent settings, though I'm realistic about what I can do for this money. I was planning on getting the components from Amazon (UK), but if you have suggestions for other vendors please let me know. If you think I could use my budget more effectively please state how.

Monitor
Dell S2740L 27 inch Widescreen LED Monitor - £239.00

Case
Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus USB 2.0 ATX Case - £67.50

Power supply
Corsair Builder Series CXM 750W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU - £76.90
Wanted a little future-proofing with a slightly higher supply than needed

Motherboard
Asus Z87-A USB 3.0 Motherboard (4x DDR3, ATX, 2x PCI Express 3.0/2.0x16, Intel, 6x SATA 6.0Gbps) - £117.00

CPU
Intel Core i5 4670K Quad Core Retail CPU - £192.50

Heatsink
Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooler - £45.00

Graphics Card
Gigabyte 7950 3GB AMD Radeon Graphics Card - £235.00

RAM
G.Skill 8GBXL Main Memory DDR3 8 GB PC1600 CL9 Ram Kit 2x 4 GB - £55.00
or
G-Skill 8GB Ripjaws X DDR3 2133 Dual Kit - Red - £59.10

is there any point getting the faster memory?

Hard Drive
Western Digital Black - 3.5 inch 1TB Desktop SATA Hard Drive - OEM (not caviar, is this an issue?) - £66.80

DVD
Asus DRW-24B5ST 24x Internal SATA DVD Drive - £19.00

OS
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 64-bit - £66.00

any point getting windows 8?

Total budget = £1080

I wasn't planning on getting a sound card or SSD on this budget. I'll get a ~£40 keyboard and some thermal paste for the heatsink (I have a decent mouse), but wasn't planning on getting anything else.

Any help / advise much appreciated.

[Schmeebs]

in terms of ram there isn't much of a different, i think haswells support DDR3-1833 Ram but the difference between 1600 and that is neglible at best, really depends if its worth the 4 quid to you.

In terms of windows 8, I like windows 8, once you get used to metro it functions just as well as windows 7 and a little bit better in other areas. but a bunch of haters are going to talk about how windows 8 will probably impregnate your sister if you install it.

[Djinni]

Personally I always always buy computer components from a distributor/vendor that actually has a physical shop. There is on a sticky link somewhere a "Where to buy PC Components" thread I made a while back.

Personally I always use Novatech where possible, excellent after sales support and a proven track record with stores round the UK you can actually walk into and return stuff. Although I've only ever had to go in to get a replacement twice. (1 was for a 1 yr old HDD, the other was for a Cyborg R.A.T 7 which somehow got a rusty screw. both got replaced same day.)

Personally if you have to buy a copy of windows, I would buy 8 rather than 7. It takes a little getting used to, but there are several improvements for those of us with digital lives, and 8.1 is promising a few optimizations and performance increases. Should also usually be cheaper.

The Frio comes with pretty good paste, and since your obviously not too bothered about any major overclocking I wouldn't bother spending £10-£20 on a potential 0.5C thermal difference IF you manage to get it exactly right before you run out of paste.

Do you not have a previous older machine you can salvage HDD's/ ODD's from?
The Western Digital drives are great but in the current market they are rather over priced. The seagate counter parts are just as good, IIRC they come out of the same factory now that the two have started their merge.

I'm not overly sure about the PSU, I'm sure someone else will probably point it out, but Corsair doesn't always mean quality. They do have some ... questionable PSU's.



Daum thats a lot of personally's

[slasher0161]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£179.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£87.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£116.06 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£52.00 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£65.00 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (£220.79 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£76.51 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: OCZ Fatal1ty 550W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£56.98 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SN-208DB/BEBET DVD/CD Writer (£9.99 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.59 @ Aria PC)
Monitor: BenQ RL2455HM 60Hz 24.0" Monitor (£149.99 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1084.88
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-29 22:57 BST+0100)

Far superior cooler, few other slight tweaks, much more elegant case (67 quid for a haf 912 is criminal). Plus a red and black theme to boot.

The main reason the blacks are chosen over the seagates for a boot drive is the 5 year warranty, for a 7200 rpm storage drive a seagate does a nice job (though them and the caviar blue are usually the same price so brand preference can come into play personally I have 4 seagate and 6 WD drives on my desk as well as an assortment in rigs (some still rocking IDE) and they are all still functional, i've only have 2.5" drives die however heat was the killer there as they were baking away at near 70c for quite a while due to cooling solutions in the laptops they were from dying.

As for the CX power supplies, I haven't heard anything about them of late I still won't advise the 430w version outside of specific situatiuons, however they are only like revision 3 or something now days and it seems only the v1 units had the dying all the time issue. The main thing to note about PSU's is your 12v rail (or rails) is your bread and butter, if the power supply can deliver at least 90% of its rated output on the 12v rail its not worth the money (imo), (V x A = W) the CX have weak 12v rail. Honestly unless your going sli a 500w is more than capable power consumption is pretty good these days, if you still wanted a higher rated unit there is plenty of others I would be advising at that price point before the cx but that is mainly the weak 12v rail and the V1 fiasco still has me bitter enough to not put my name to them.

That CX seems to be a black sheep in the CX line delivering 744w on the 12 rail, still 76 quid seems a bit rich for it but it isn't what I first though (though the fact I couldn't look on the corsair site for the amps on each rail without downloading pdf's was a bit rich).

[Sharptalon]

Thanks for the responses. My current PC is ~4-5 years old, so although some of the components could be salvaged I'd prefer to replace them in general. I wasn't planning on any heavy overclocking, so the more expensive cooler seems like overkill, though your other suggestions look useful. I should probably add that my initial maths was a little out, and that the system I listed came to £1180 rather than £1080. My current monitor's 22.5 inches and works fine, so the plan was either to get something significantly better or keep the current one.

Regarding the CX PSU I'm happy to go with a lower rated one, as I won't be running 2 £200 graphics cards for WoW. The general consensus seems to be to go with Windows 8 which makes that a clear choice.

Thanks again for all the input. I'll be placing the order on Wednesday, so any more suggestions will be gratefully received.

[slasher0161]

What you may wish to do is stick with you current monitor for now and then down the line change it, unless you jump to 1440p 27" hasn't really appealed to me, having said that you can get a decent 1440p monitor from korea for about 270 usd (I think it was don't quote me) + vat will sit it around 350 USD after shipping. Which isn't bad when you convert back to pounds. So long as the drives in your current rig are sata I would probably bring them across as storage drives, more strorage never hurt anyone and the same for the optical drive since optical drive tech hasn't moved far at all and is almost redundant now days.

With windows 8 I would say give it a go for at least 3-4 weeks and if the metro ui and lack of start button is still doing your head in then you can use options like classic shell (I think its called) to restore the appearance to similar to windows 7.

[Djinni]

With windows 8 I would say give it a go for at least 3-4 weeks and if the metro ui and lack of start button is still doing your head in then you can use options like classic shell (I think its called) to restore the appearance to similar to windows 7.

Windows 8.1 Preview is out now, which brings back the start button and merges the charms/smart screen UI with the desktop a little better.
Although since the new start button only opens the Smart Screen I'd rather not have the button, I've grown quite used to not having it on my home PC.

LG have a good range of affordable IPS displays I've been watching for some time, I've been meaning to buy 1 or 2 more of them for a while, just never had enough free cash to spend on a PC I only get to use 3 hours a day.