New Desktop questions

[abigsmurf]

There's always a parts could fail, HDD, RAM and PSU being the most likely ones. They should test it before sending it to you though and you'll be garenteed. Presumably, although their PSU won't be a name brand, they also won't use one that's prone to failing (and frying everything connected to it) as it costs them.

Near zero chance of you having issues with overheating, most of those parts are fairly low powered, unless you overclock. The only difference upgrading the fan will make is that it'll make the PC quieter. That could be moot though because it's more likely the PSU will be louder than the CPU fan.

[Matt]

I'm partly tempted to just spas out and buy the intel i5 2400 quad core, with the amd radeon 6770 graphics card and 4gb ram.

I figure that if I'm spending near ?400 i may as well spend an extra ?100 and get something i'm really happy with/can play the games I want to really comfortably, rather than just bordering on the 60fps mark for source games.

Any idea what sort of games/fps counts i'd get with the set up i've just mentioned.

imo, if you're spending that much, you may as well sink the extra ?100 into it. I'm not up on PC specs right now, but if I were buying I'd be keeping one eye open for upcoming games. Battlefield 3 especially looks astonishing on PC and significantly better than the console versions, and Skyrim will be a smoother experience as well I imagine. I can appreciate you're into the Source games, but with those two coming out, you have to figure the extra money on spec will probably be worth it

[Malc]

You mean I should consider putting in another ?100 on top of what i'm going for now; the intel i5, 4gb ram and radeon 6770?

[eastyy]

after various comparisons ...cpu differences i find are really little from say a phenom II a i3 and i5 i think gaming terms talking about 10 fps for a game

in the end i personally dont believe in spending a fortune for perhaps a extra few frames a second

graphics cards are a pain from what i can gather the radeon 6XXX range the equivalents in 5XXX are no faster (for example the 6770 is roughly similar performance wise to a 5770)

i would say check out here...http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/313?vs=330 and compare

[Malc]

The AMD phenom II X4 is cheaper than the intel i5, but it consumes a lot more power than the i5, that I may as well get the intel for an extra ?30 after you factor in an increased psu in to the cost with the AMD.

As for the graphics card, I'm not sure how much cheaper (or where) I could find the original 5770? I understand the 6770 is pretty much a rebranded 5770 but for an extra ?20 or so I can just get the latest one built in when I buy my system.

[speedlolita]

You should get a 5870 instead of a 6770..

Might have to shop around for one for around ?110 though.

[Brad]

Scan have the 6870 Black edition (4600MHz GDDR5, GPU 940MHz) for ?138. The regular clocked 6870 is marginally slowere in FPS than the 5870 but the higher speeds of the black edition bring it really close and if you ever want to crossfire then the 6870 does so amazingly. All the figures I've seen show about a 95% increase which is pretty amazing. Also the DX11 Tesselation is better on the 6870 (this may become important for future titles but I don't know).

[abigsmurf]

Another victim of budget creep ;_;

Look at how much extra you're going over budget, will you use that extra functionality or will you be wasting that money. An i5 with a 58xx is massively overkill for Source games. Will you actually buy games that need the extra horsepower?

You can always spend a bit more, get something a little bit better. The key thing is will you be getting value out of how much you're spending. If you're going to play these games, go ahead. Conversely, if you stick with a cheaper system, will you just be setting yourself up for an expensive upgrade in 9 months?

Also: remember the PSU! A 5870 for example needs a 500W PSU.

[speedlolita]

Is it just for source games?

My 5 year old Q6600 / 8800GTX can max everything.. That's like ?100 for both there.

[Malc]

I think I need to rethink about what I'm really looking at playing on the PC. In the end I can only think of a few source games like Counter Strike Source, Left 4 Dead 2, TF2 being the only games I'm really interested in.

However, when abigsmurf said a less powerful card like the 430 *should* play at 60fps, I was already worried, as I don't want to border on the edge of 60fps, as then as soon as I play a mod or whenever the gameplay gets hectic it will immediately drop and become choppy.

So maybe an Intel i3 would be a more sensible choice, but I'm honestly not sure which graphics card to get to ensure I always get 60fps.

[eastyy]

Is it just for source games?

My 5 year old Q6600 / 8800GTX can max everything.. That's like ?100 for both there.

my system at home is a q6600 with a 460 (used to have a 8800gts) which i am just downloading a load of stuff once that has done i plan to take it apart and put the power supply and 460 into my current system ( a phenom II) then probably sell the 6600 motherboard processor and my 5770 graphics card

have to be really really careful with budget graphics cards aso some are frankly awful i think with source games though not worth going overboard i think aslong as its a quad core something and a graphics card thats anying from a 8800 gts onwards cannot really go wrong

[eastyy]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3973/nvidias-geforce-gt-430/10

[Malc]

So no doubt the intel i3 2100 can cope with the source engine according to another anandTech benchmark comparisons.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3973/n...orce-gt-430/10

This shows the 430 is too close to the 60fps mark with the source engine, as I know that as soon as the game gets busy it will start dropping to noticeable levels of fps.

[Malc]

How about the intel i3 2100, 4gb ram with the same 1GB radeon 5770?

More even specs and saves me about ?50.

[speedlolita]

That'd run Source games really well.