are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

hello everyone i am new to the forum and would first like to say hi to everyone, ok to the question are thses specs good enough for a gaming pc because i know nothing about PCs:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit – English £68.15
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791

Pioneer DVRS19LBK 24x DVD±RW DL & RAM with Labelflash SATA Optical Drive - Retail Box Black with Software £17.18
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/250228

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz (Sandy Bridge) Socket LGA1155 £159.98
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...23I52500K.html

Corsair Vengeance 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Memory Kit CL9 £40.00
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...650TXV2UK.html

Samsung Spin Point F3 SATAII 1TB 32MB Cache Hard Drive <8.9ms 7200rpm – OEM £40.98
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...b/HD103SJ.html

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Dual DP Out PCI-E Graphics Card £210
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253397

Asus P8Z68-V Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard £132.84
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/268480

and a tx 750w with nzxt phantom white case which i already have

ok so are these specs good because this will cost me around £830 so is it even worth that much?
this will be my first build and i just need a little help so any suggestions on parts i could have instead of the ones i suggested would be a help, also i have reached the top end of my budget so no parts that would cost over the prices of the parts listed please. thanks you

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

i7 & more RAM......imo

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

Looks good, more ram would make it a bit more future proof, but ram is easy to add later.

If you don't have the budget I see no reason to push to an i7

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I'll be radical and say do you need a £200 GPU? What about an HD 68x0 for around £150 and up the RAM to 8GB. Or add a WD Velociraptor (or even small SSD) as system drive to speed up program access.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I must disagree, for a gaming pc fast hard drive access has limited uses. Sure it's beneficial for loading times (assuming you can fit your games on the SSD) but once the game it loaded it ceases to contribute.

I have 6GB of RAM on my gaming pc and rarely approaching maxing that. Oddly enough I have 8GB on my laptop but that's because I have to process huge data files.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

first of all :welcome: First Timer.

the rig itself is good and would be alright for a couple of years of good gaming, out of interest which games are you playing or planning to play on the rig itself?

I also have to agree with Aragorn and suggest a cheaper card like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/244474 and invest in either more ram or SSD for OS drive and depending on the size of SSD put some of the most played games on it.

---------- Post added at 12:53 ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 ----------

okay change of mind go with the 6870 and get a water cooling block for the I5... http://www.ebuyer.com/product/234187

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

It's a good spec for the price as I recently built one similar in spec for a fellow clan member, but with a 5870 instead.

The ram will be fine at the moment I have 8gb and I never seem to go above 2 or 3gb of ram being used.

As has been mentioned the price difference between the I5 2500 and the I7 2600 is not worth it unless you are going to start doing video and audio work on the pc as well.

As has already been mentioned though what games are you going to play at what resolution and what detail level do you want to run them at?

As for the HDD and SSD there are benefit's when loading windows and games but after that there is no difference in general game play when using a SSD over a HDD.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

The i5 2500k will overclock like mad, my new system is overclocked to 4.5Ghz

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

Have you factored in the cost of a good power supply and case. I don't see that mentioned.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

;)

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

Oops, next stop specsavers..

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I don't think you need to go overboard these days, PC gaming seems to be going backwards. My 2-3 year old machine with a HD5850 will still run everything there is out at the moment all on max as games today seems to be mainly console ports.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I see nothing wrong at all with that spec. Indeed my next CPU upgrade is mostly likey to be the i5 2500. i7 2600 is just not worth the extra pounds for the marginal increase in performance. If in doubt check sites like anandtech.

In practice the 6950 card should also work very well. I've been a little confused as to the difference in the ATI 5xxx and 6xxx series cards and believe mostly is't about the physical sizing of the things on the chip with 6xxxx being more recent ech, thus buy a 6xxx card over a 5xxx card, but both are good enough for now.

SSD or HDD, I do see those with SSDs loading their maps quicker, but it's only 2 or 3 seconds. And a SSD is going to cost a lot more, for less storage so most people will still need a HDD as well as a SSD for their other data.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

hello thanks for all the replies, the games i will be playing will be shogun 2 and other total war games (want them maxed out) , the sims 2,3 for the girlfreind :rolleyes:, ermm just games like that really and maybe games like black ops and bc2. i just want a system i can max out games on because i've never really had a computer that plays many games :(

max res will be 1920 x 1080 on this monitor http://www.ebuyer.com/product/241902

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

For someone not knowing much you have picked a fairly well spec'd PC there. It will certainly have a lot of zing to it and have no trouble running the games you desire.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

The Total War games won't stress that computer. I've been playing Napoleon Total War a lot recently on an i5 based laptop with no issues.

Black Ops will also more than comfortably play on that as would any current Battlefield game.

We do know that the estimated recommended specs for Battlefield 3, due in October (ther trailers show some excellent graphics) are quite high but even that only needs a quadcored CPU and direct-x graphics. I really can't see any issue with the PC specs you have chosen, but if you want to ramp anything up then go for graphics rather than the CPU as it will be that whcih can determine the quality of what you see on your screen, and if that is a big one at high resolution that is where your demands will be.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

thanks everyone i have taken note of getting an ssd when i get the money, i just want to ask before buying anything will everything be compatable together because i don't want to spend all my money and later get components that don't work together.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/260771 will this motherboard do the job too because i need to save a little bit of money.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

Ram and cpu are fine id go for a better gpu (nvidia is a personal preference)

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

The 2500k will overclock pretty well with a decent motherboard and cooler, I've got the following winging its way to me, tomorrow hopefully, pre-overclocked by Scan

Intel I7 2600K 3.4GHz OCd to 4.7
Asus Sabretooth P67
8GB Corsair Vengeance
OCZ SATA-3 60GB SSD

The GFX card I have at the moment is an ATI Radeon HD 5750 which doesn't have any problems running the games at the resolutions etc I want them to run at for the moment.

The main difference between the 2500k and the 2600k is the amount of cache and a couple of features which boost the speed I believe

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

The main difference between the I7 2500 and 2600 is that the 2600 run's a little faster at stock speed I think, but also it has more cache and hyperthreading so windows will think you have 8 cores rather than 4.

Graphic's is a sticky issue Nvidia do generally perform better but they do use more electric and cost more, but if you want to max out games then you will need the ATI 6970 or the Nvidia GTX 580.

The 580 is the best performing single gpu on the market but it is outperformed by the dual gpu cards such as the ATI 6990 and the Nvidia GTX 590.

If you decide to overclock the cpu the 2500K and 2600K models are the ones to get and they will overclock to 4.8ghz without a issue 99% of the time, with a good motherboard and cooling.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

The new upgrade packs are out for crysis 2, this may give you an idea about the spec needed for future games.

https://secure.mycrysis.com/forums/v...p?f=27&t=32062

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

For anyone with suitable DX11 hardware the new textures and effects look truly awesome.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I shall be getting that pack one of the days this week and finally stress my pc :D

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

Teaser DX11 video here:

http://www.fpsadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23006

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I've always stuck with AMD running a quadcore 3.4ghz machine at the moment.

I'll have to note though that I tried playing Black ops with my geforce 260GTX and a 7850 BE dualcore running at 2.8ghz and the game was running in freeze frame about 5 FPS even on the lowest settings.

I did consider the GPU but all was fine when I upgraded to the CPU I have now so a word of warning the game might not run on a dualcore CPU

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

I think the only game i can remember that actually stresses 4GB RAM was ARMA II maxed out AAx16, etc. Haven't been on the computing scene in a while but i doubt much has changed. 4GB is more than enough unless you're one of those people who have every single program on their computer open simulatinously while trying to game.

Re: are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?
 

4GB is indeed still more than enough for most gamers worst case senario you have to buy another 4GB kit in a couple years time. As for your spec it looks great however I would go for low profile ram (If you go with a big air cooler),a decent aftermarket cooler and overclock it. And for the SSD I have one as a boot drive and its great if your budget allows it.