Getting a new PC - help and thoughts welcomed please!

[Deleted]

Hi all,

I’m thinking of buying the following pre-built from the Overclockers website https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=FS-125-OG. It’s called the “Titan Gladius” and the whole thing will cost around £1375, inclusive of operating system. The specs are as follows:

- Case: Cooler Master HAF X Gaming Tower Case
- Power Supply: SuperFlower Leadex 750W 80+ Gold Rated PSU
- CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K Quad Core Skylake Processor overclocked to 4.5GHz
- Motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming (Socket 1151) ATX Motherboard
- Cooler: OcUK Techlabs 240mm AIO Liquid Cooler with Noiseblocker Fans
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit
- Primary Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB 850 Evo Series Solid State Drive
- Secondary Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
- Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB Graphics Card
- Sound: 7.1 Channel Sound (On-Board)
- Optical Drive: OcUK DVD+/-RW SATA Drive
- Operating System: Windows 10.0 64 bit

I’ve got a few questions that I could really do with help on though so I’d be obliged if any of you more knowledgeable heads could point me in the right direction. I want something that’ll be future-proofed for the next 4-5 years. I’ll mainly be playing WoW, in 20-30 man raids, and want something that has high FPS whilst on Ultra settings, which isn’t anything I can do on my current PC. I’m also planning on maybe getting into The Witcher 3 and so again would want something that can handle Ultra settings.

1. I get that it’d be cheaper if I built it myself, but I have no idea how to overclock and build PCs in general, so I’m more than happy to live with paying out for the peace of mind of having something that works (and has a warranty) as it’s a considerable financial investment for me and not one I want to practice PC-building on. That said, is this reasonable (I’m assuming it’s about £100 above buying the individual parts cost, which I’m pretty fine with).
2. RAM – I’m planning on getting 16GB rather than 8GB, but I don’t understand the difference between 2400, 2666 and 3000 Mhz types. Which do I get? Is it a marginal increase in performance, or is it for things like streaming or using multiple GPUs, which I don’t intend to do. Do I even really need 16GB – I just assumed why not, considering from a future-proof point of view.
3. The graphics card should be fine for what I’m after – is that right?
4. The case is a decent one isn’t it – there are a few others to choose from in the drop-down for this pre-built, but I read good things about this one and thought it looked pretty cool.
5. Am I over-speccing considering what I want to use the PC for?
6. Am I right in thinking I want to put my games (as well as operating system of course) on the SSD, then anything else, e.g music, films, etc on the secondary drive?
7. Is there any reason to hold out in purchasing this? As Skylake is so new I’m assuming that the CPU and MOBO aren’t going to get cheaper anytime soon, so was thinking waiting for Black Friday, for example, might be a bit pointless. Any other reason not to go ahead at this moment in time?

All insights are very gratefully received – apologies for being a novice. Cheers guys!

[Nellah]

1. Not being familiar with UK pricing I can't say for sure, but it looks... reasonable... for a pre-built PC.
2. Memory speed only matters in a few very select situations, and once you get past a certain speed there is no benefit. Games are not one of those few select situations. Once you're at 1600MHz you're pretty much alright. 16GB is fine, great for futureproofing, I have already seen a lot of benefit to running 16GB in my PC compared to 8GB.
3. GTX 970 is a great mid/high-end card. You'll probably have to upgrade that down the line, but it'll probably be the only thing that feels a bit slow. Having done the long upgrade cycles myself, with the way modern tech is GPUs are the only things that are likely to really advance in performance over time.
4. It's a great case, and as a side effect can be used as a house foundation support or car jack in a pinch. If they have an option for a cheaper, smaller case I'd personally go for that, you really only need a huge case if you're running huge numbers of hard drives or graphics cards, but that's personal preference.
5. No, not really. If you can nudge the SSD size up in return for a cheaper case, do that. My wife's SSD is 240GB, but only because she JUST plays WoW. My 750GB SSD is almost full, to the point where I have a lot of less-played games installed to my secondary hard drives. At that price I'd have expected to see a 480GB SSD.
6. Yep.
7. Nope. Skylake is brand new, but since Sandy Bridge pretty much murdered the need for CPU upgrades, CPU and motherboard pricing really resist dropping over time. Unless you know for sure that a sale is coming, might as well pull the trigger now.

For reference, what specs are you running right now? Just to make sure you're not getting ready to drop almost 1400 quid when a new graphics card and some RAM could do the same thing for you.

[Deleted]

This is more or less what your pc's worth:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£199.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler (£47.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£129.99 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£75.99 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£66.85 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.50 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card (£268.80 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case (£52.12 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£57.35 @ Aria PC)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£9.00 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) (£72.94 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1019.52
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-15 22:51 BST+0100


I understand you said you are willingto pay extra, but 300+ pounds is alot. I mean you could get a gtx980ti with that difference or just save the lot.