Putting new gaming pc together on budget

[Evildeffy]

Then there is absolutely no need for getting a black anyway, save the money or put them elsewhere.

€20 saved on the HDD can make him get a 7850 2GB instead of 7850 1GB.

Which gains him absolutely zilch unless he decides to play on 2560x1440 or 2560x1600.

However, considering his student position, and obviously his situation about not being rich, €20,- will not alter anything in the scheme of things.
For that money he buys a more reliable drive, 5 years of warrantee on it and unless he managed to win the lottery will not be playing at a resolution higher than 1080p or 1200p, in which case the 1GB card will do without any issue.

Really though, it looks like you're so hung up on not getting a Caviar Black, is there any actual reason to this or you just don't like spending more for hardware that is sold more expensively than a similar (but still inferior) item?

[n0cturnal]

Which gains him absolutely zilch unless he decides to play on 2560x1440 or 2560x1600.

However, considering his student position, and obviously his situation about not being rich, €20,- will not alter anything in the scheme of things.
For that money he buys a more reliable drive, 5 years of warrantee on it and unless he managed to win the lottery will not be playing at a resolution higher than 1080p or 1200p, in which case the 1GB card will do without any issue.

Really though, it looks like you're so hung up on not getting a Caviar Black, is there any actual reason to this or you just don't like spending more for hardware that is sold more expensively than a similar (but still inferior) item?

I think it is pointless for him to spend €20 on something he will not notice a difference about, and there are plenty of games that use more than 1GB of vRAM at 1920x1080, Skyrim can use more than 2GB at that resolution with a few mods.
BF3 at ultra settings use around 1.8GB of vRAM at 1920x1080.

Running out of vRAM is something he surely will notice but the difference in a Caviar Black vs Blue he would only be able to tell with a benchmark.

If you are so hellbent on him getting a higher quality drive why don't you suggest a RE4 instead?

[Evildeffy]

I think it is pointless for him to spend €20 on something he will not notice a difference about, and there are plenty of games that use more than 1GB of vRAM at 1920x1080, Skyrim can use more than 2GB at that resolution with a few mods.
BF3 at ultra settings use around 1.8GB of vRAM at 1920x1080.

Running out of vRAM is something he surely will notice but the difference in a Caviar Black vs Blue he would only be able to tell with a benchmark.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6359/t...50-ti-review/6

Somewhat dated, but still with games you mention.

As you can see, Skyrim is the only thing (IF the High Res Texture Pack is used) that benefits from it at any point in time.

BF3 requires more firepower then a single 7850 to run @ ultra so that's kinda invalid.

Really it makes no difference.

Regardless it is in the end the OP's decision what to go for, he can choose to save €20,- and get a 2GB variant which will do him little to no difference unless he solely plays Skyrim, maintain the same 2 year warrantee on and go for a cheaper and slower HDD, or he can go with a HDD that has 5 year warrantee and does most deffo make a difference when the drive is being filled and doesn't require a benchmark to notice the difference.

to quote AnandTech on the link:

On a final note, AMD sent over XFX’s Radeon HD 7850 1GB card so that we had a 1GB 7850 to test with (thanks guys). As this is not a new part from a performance perspective (see above) we’re not doing anything special with this card beyond including it in our charts as validation of the fact that the 1GB and 2GB 7850s are nearly identical outside of Skyrim.

Edit: i see a ninja-edit placed in during writing of the post:
http://www.salland.eu/product/889467...d1003fbyx.html
The RE4 is also a possibility if he so desires, but last i read is that seek times and switch modes on fragmented writing is slower due to the dual actuators, but it comes aswell with a 5 year warrantee yes.

It's funny you are mentioning "me being hellbent" on things when you are doing so in a much more active manner.

[Deleted]

I wasn't particularly clear if you needed a monitor or not?

This is a build based on a PC i've built recently for a sibling and it runs things beautifully. The only thing I've changed is the case (my sibling has a Corsair 300r and in my opinion it is terrible for mATX boards) and the graphics card (I bought him the VTX3D 7870 Black edition - fan is a little loud)

CPU i5 3470 - CPU of choice if you're not going to overclock. It performs better than my i5 2500k at stock.

GPU Club 3D 7870 Joker Card - with the most recent drivers this puts up an excellent show against a stock 7950 and the GTX660ti. Its a beastly card for an amazing price.

Motherboard Gigabyte B75M 3DH - probably the best B75 motherboard for games. It has only one Chassis fan header and one Sata III interface. Still if you're not planning on running more than one SSD this is not a huge problem and you can always get PSU adapters for your case fans.

RAM Kingston Hyper Blu - I've just ordered these myself for my sibling's build since the Corsair XMS3 8GB twin sticks I originally ordered had a faulty one. This is also listed on the Motherboard's Memory QVL list.

PSU XFX Corsair 450 - My sibling has the OCZ Modxtreme 500W. Not a PSU I would recommend if people want tidy builds. This XFX is a better PSU. I'm not 100% sure if it has 2xPCIe connectors - you'll need it for the 7870XT. The manuals I've read says that it does. You could always get the 550W version, which costs just over 10euros more, just to make sure.

HDD Western Digital Blue

Case: Antec One Gaming Case - It was my original case of choice for my sibling's build, but he fell in love with the Corsair 300r, which we found on sale.

DVD Drive: Samsung



Total € 750.42 inc VAT

If you're not planning to overclock but want very good gaming performance, I highly recommend this build. Like I said before, it's pretty much identical to my sibling's build and performs amazing well with his current MMO - Tera Online (argh!). You should also get some great bundle game deals with that card as well, such a Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider.

Further reading

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/C...ard_Tahiti_LE/

and

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/B75M-D3H/

[slasher0161]

I was only saying the WD blue over the black because I know as a former student 20 in your pocket at the end of the day can go a long way and I don't think a very minor performance hit is going to be something to bother him that much knowing full well he had a budget that wasn't allowing for top end everything (Honestly I think the opposite will be the case where he is impressed with the bang for the buck).

[Deleted]

Learning a lot here by just asking for a pc idea! Just hope things won't get out of hand cuz of me!

Anyways by reading the posts so far I concluded that there is a difference between the black and blue HDD and I just read through everything concerning that topic and I came up with 1 question.

Will the vRAM really matter in WoW so much that it is worth spending more money on the 2GB one than spending it on the Black HDD which I will use sometimes for video recording?

As I mentioned in the OP, I only am interested in WoW for the next 4 years, as I got 4 busy uni years that I won't have any time for anything else than my WoW raids and video editing. So conclusion: Wouldn't the 20 euro be better invested in the HDD for video recording than putting it into more vRAM? Remember I won't play any other game than WoW, but does WoW really require so much vRAM?


Thanks!

[Evildeffy]

Seeing as you won't be playing Skyrim or play at a resolution beyond FullHD the Caviar Black HDD is the better choice.