Gaming PC Spec?

[mildmannered]

Hello everyone,
I'm posting on my dads account. I need a little bit of advice, Im looking at getting myself a gaming PC that is good value for money and playing fast action games such as Call of Duty & Battlefield. Im new to it and know little about it and would like a thumbs up or down at the specs of the computer that I may get:
Case- BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Case
Memory- 16GB (X2 8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz Dual Channel
Graphics Card- Radeon R9 270X 4096MB Graphics Card
Primary Hard Drive- Samsung 120GB 850 EVO Series Solid State Drive
Secondary Hard Drive- Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
I dont want to be bamboozled by specifications but have i made any glaring errors?
Thanks in advance.

[bazza white]

Im no expert in graphics cards but ive been looking at the Radeon R9 285 as it goes on offer at a similar price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/663141-msi-r9-270-gaming-2gb...

Also keep an eye out on hotdeals, some good offers about.


What processor you using.8gb may be enough for gaming.


Be interested to what others say as I'm doing similar.

[The Nur]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Can always add another drive at a later date and a terabyte regular drive would only be 50 quid or so?

[RobinBanks]

The Nur said:

Can always add another drive at a later date and a terabyte regular drive would only be 50 quid or so?

He has included a 1TB Seagate drive.

[The Nur]

Sorry, not sure how I missed that.

[FourWheelDrift]

Alternatively, you'll be surprised how quickly that 1TB HDD will fill up if you're installing games.

[The Nur]

Indeed, space is at a premium these days

[MissChief]

Fit 8GB instead of 16, use spare cash towards graphics card. Most games are still GPU limited or have smaller increases as clock speed rises compared to GPU over locks.

[TheEnd]

Processor?

A lot of games still don't utilise all cores, but remember that will play a part too.
Not as much as a decent GPU and SSD would for games.

There are game moving programs, like steam mover, so you can put you main steam games on you D drive, and shift over some into the C SSD.

That will do stuff like spawn you into multiplayers between maps faster than others (if they haven't set a spawn timer for example) and it can be good for hi-res 4K texture packs in mods.

The set up you have mentioned looks like it'll handle any game on Ultra settings in 1024 HD, or maybe even higher without framerates dropping too much.

[Bullett]

mobo?
CPU?

[ZesPak]

Bullett said:

mobo?
CPU?

Get the best vfm i5

MissChief said:

Fit 8GB instead of 16, use spare cash towards graphics card. Most games are still GPU limited or have smaller increases as clock speed rises compared to GPU over locks.

8GB is plenty for a nice gaming rig, there will be no speed increase with 16GB.

[mildmannered]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'm glad I suggested she posted on here as upping the memory was one of my ideas which seems to be a unanimous 'no' (which is a unique miracle on this site!)

It was my suggestion to go small SSD and larger secondary hard drive for data, which seems to be a good performance/cost solution.

The motherboard and processor is: AMD FX-4 4300 3.8GHz CPU, AMD 760G Motherboard
AMD seem to be better VFM than Intel, but would value your input/opinion. Last time I dabbled in building PC's was the socket 7 era, so, a little out of date with current tech. Can AMD/Intel use the same motherboard?

[funkyrobot]

AMD are cheaper than Intel. Intel do tend to build slightly faster CPU's (in some cases).

I would go with AMD with overclocking in mind. You could get a cheaper processor and then make it quicker (as long as you have the correct cooling). You can do the same with RAM.

[funkyrobot]

mildmannered said:

Can AMD/Intel use the same motherboard?

Others may know more than me, but I'm pretty sure they can't. It's the CPU and Motherboard socket that need to match.

AMD have different sockets to Intel and both have a range of processors with different sockets.

[bazza white]

Yep sockets need to match, think that's a am3+ socket so you will need a mobo with a am3+ socket.


What's your budget for the build, may be easier just building to your budget from suggestion's or buying a prebuilt and whacking in a graphics card and second hard drive.

[bazza white]

This is also a good site for picking parts as it matches them up for you

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com

[Monty Python]

An idea of your budget would help.

[ZesPak]

funkyrobot said:

mildmannered said:

Can AMD/Intel use the same motherboard?

Others may know more than me, but I'm pretty sure they can't. It's the CPU and Motherboard socket that need to match.

AMD have different sockets to Intel and both have a range of processors with different sockets.

Socket number is important. Amd and Intel have separate ones.
I've had reliability issues with several AMDs almost ten years ago and I never got over it tbh. Never had an Intel fail on me, but I do get you'll probably get better vfm at the AMD side of things.

[TheEnd]

Also remember that most CPUs often come with little programs to overclock them a little and boost the power.

Often just a couple of presses, and it'll auto run some tests and bump things up a little.

[ZesPak]

Having done some overclocking in my day and must say it's a fun hobby but hardly worth it in terms of real world performance. If you want to keep it stable, you're going to have to work on cooling, which will require money that could just as well go to a better CPU.