are these good enough specs for a gaming pc?

[first timer]

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

[Ramrod]

i7 & more RAM......imo

[downquark1]

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

[Aragorn]

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.

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Aragorn

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.

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.

[DocDutch]

first of all 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

[damien c]

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.

[swoop101]

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

[Dai]

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

[Aragorn]

Originally Posted by DaiNasty

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

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

[Dai]

Originally Posted by Aragorn

Oops, next stop specsavers..

[peanut]

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.

[MovedGoalPosts]

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.

[first timer]

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 , 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

[Stephen]

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.