# Build good gaming pc



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

Hi

I am willing to build a pc, i need it to be suitable for gaming (be able to play modern games like crysis 3 but not on very super high graphic just normal not low neither high )

here i gathered some information and wanted ur ideas whether i buy them or not or choose between two

Graphic card:
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 470 - OR - Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti 
(if 470 can handle today games i would prefer saving $ )

Power Supply:
GP650B-OC
OR
gp600a_eu

RAM
16GB DDR5

Hard Drive: 
Silicon Power Sata III SSD V60 - 120GB
OR
ADATA SSD SP600 - 128GB
OR
Adata SX900 SSD Drive - 128GB
OR
Adata SSD SP900 - 128GB

(Is it wiser to buy SSD instead of HDD for more speed and performance regarding to gaming? otherwise i want the cheap HDD like 1 TB instead of those expensive SDDs)

Mother board:
Got nothing in mind 
as long as it is compatible, Strong and around 150$

Please guide me

thanks


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

both those power supplies are inadequate and low quality have a look at our recommended builds http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f255/tsf-hardware-teams-recommended-builds-2014-a-668661.html

An ssd provides faster loading times but thats it. Usually you put your OS and games on the SSD and everything else on a normal hard drive. You wouldn't get away with a 128GB SSD without a normal hard drive as the OS would take up nearly half of it and your games would take up the rest.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Same recommendation as greenbrucelee. Use our Suggested Build List as a guide to top quality known compatible components.


----------



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

Thanks alot for the replies

Though those guides are really helpful, but i cannot buy the ones listed in the "Suggested Build List", coz in my region Green Power is fully supported

i found another PS please help me toward it:
Green Power 1035

also i need Main board Z series (Z85,Z58,Z88 and ...) but i dont know which of them are best suited for the case and also less in $ 
(saw the one in the guide  ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 @ $149.99 is it fit for me?)

P.S: CPU -> i7-4770K


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

what do you nean green power is fully supported. Any ATX power supply will fit in the system but the psu should always be a good make and green power are not a good make.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

As noted above, any ATX PSU will physically fit into the case but using a lower quality PSU is not recommended.
All the components we list on our Suggested Builds are known to be top quality.


----------



## navyjax2 (Mar 6, 2005)

Just a follow-on to what's already said, if you don't buy a good power supply, you'll have the computer overheating/shutting down spontaneously while you're in the middle of something - I've had it happen. You want to gauge the PSU's wattage against what you are driving - i.e. the cards in your system, number of hard drives, CD/DVD-ROMs, etc., along with that all-important graphics card. This site:

HowStuffWorks "How PC Power Supplies Work"

has some very basic, low-grade estimates for all that, but what I would recommend is buying everything first, before the PSU. That way you can better gauge the wattage you really need. Don't go for brand or cost, necessarily - but get the wattage that fits. But also, as a gauge, I've ran an Athlon XP 4000+ CPU, ATI Radeon 9200 video card with 4 SATA hard-drives connected in RAID to a SCSI card, a network card, a USB card, a sound card, 2 2GB RAM sticks, and 2 DVD-RWs on a 450W PSU. You might not need all that.


----------



## MPR (Aug 28, 2010)

Modern GPUSs consume less power than those of only a few years ago and the 750 Ti is one of the better ones in terms of low power consumption.

Nvidia GTX 750 Ti 2GB “Maxwell” Graphics Card Review | eTeknix - Part 17


The GTX 470, being of an older generation requires considerably more power. According to the GeForce site, the GTX 470 requires a minimum 550 W PSU, whereas the 750 Ti requires a minimum 300 W PSU.

All in all, and considering that the two cards are about equal in performance, I'd choose the one that required less power, which means less heat, lower fan speeds and less system noise.

As far as PSUs go, of course your consideration must include what is available in your region (I see that the store is in Iran). However, if you can purchase Seasonic or Seasonic-made XFX PSUs locally they are some of the better consumer-level ones on the market. If going with a PSU of unknown quality because it was the only one available, I'd get something at least 100W over the recommended for a known quality brand just to be on the safe side.


----------



## mckenzm (Nov 10, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> both those power supplies are inadequate and low quality


Both these PSU's are fine for power output, especially if using the GTX750Ti, which I would only recommend for resale value. A GTX470 is a better card, and will play everything. If you buy a nastier PSU you may want to buy a spare. There is real wisdom in avoiding low quality as unscheduled swap outs are a royal pain, but you should get 3 years out of them. 

The GTX750Ti has a number of benefits, it is good for Phys-X, is powered from the slot (less cable porn), and most importantly is *short*. Gaming performance is still driver reliant and skewed to favour post-processing. Older, gruntier cards are preferred by most. I regularly play BF4 on 2 GTS250's and they are comparable. If the GTX470 is cheaper, get it. 

If the rig is only used for gaming, and your games are cloud sourced - go for SSD and diarise to replace it in 4 years. It will make a difference where content is loaded on demand (BF4, WD's), and get 1TB or you will not have space for many games. It will help your reboot times as well.

Motherboards - buy the best possible popular MB you can, these are the most painful core components to replace, and getting a spare must not be an issue. Particularly if using Windows, you don't want to be buying another license.

Largely I am looking at the downsides here, you may not have these issues.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

mckenzm said:


> Both these PSU's are fine for power output, especially if using the GTX750Ti, which I would only recommend for resale value. A GTX470 is a better card, and will play everything. If you buy a nastier PSU you may want to buy a spare. There is real wisdom in avoiding low quality as unscheduled swap outs are a royal pain, but you should get 3 years out of them.
> 
> The GTX750Ti has a number of benefits, it is good for Phys-X, is powered from the slot (less cable porn), and most importantly is *short*. Gaming performance is still driver reliant and skewed to favour post-processing. Older, gruntier cards are preferred by most. I regularly play BF4 on 2 GTS250's and they are comparable. If the GTX470 is cheaper, get it.
> 
> ...


I am not talking about the wattage I am talking about the fact they are made by a low quality manufacturer and therfore should be avoided.


----------



## MPR (Aug 28, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> I am not talking about the wattage I am talking about the fact they are made by a low quality manufacturer and therfore should be avoided.


Did you see the address of the link he provided?

*Green* .No. 215, Between Garani Ave & Nejatollahi St., Somayeh St., Tehran, IRAN

If he is in Iran, he might not be able to order from Newegg or Amazon. Sometimes you have to buy what's available to you.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

You can get seasonic in Iran I know someone in Tehran and he gets them all the time.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Overall power requirements should be based on the GPU requirements. If you have a "good quality" PSU that can supply sufficient clean power, plus some head room, to the GPU you have sufficient power for the entire system.
Using lower quality PSU's, i.e. Green Power, is asking for problems/damage.
If SeaSonic-XFX-Antec HCG aren't available-

Also made by SeaSonic.
Antec- 
True Power Classic 450 - 550 - 650 - 750.

True Power Trio 430 - 55 - 650.

Neo Power HE380 

Neo Eco 400 - 400C 450 - 450C 520 - 520C 620 - 620C . C units are being replaced with CWT.

True Power New 550

Some PCP&P but are expensive -
Silencer 610 - 760 - 910
Silencer MKIII 400 - 500 - 600.

BeQuiet, also expensice-
Dark Power Pro 850 - 1000 - 1200


----------



## barribow (Jul 13, 2008)

I know that in Iran you can go to some computer shopping malls and buy most brands. He basically meant Green power manufacturer will support their products. Other *better* brands don't provide support or warranty that's why he was trying to avoid it.

Still I recommend choosing a preferred brand over this one.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Good quality PSU manufacturer's support their product and their PSU's will come with a 5 to 7 yr. warranty supported by the manufacturer.


----------



## Tumbleweed_Biff (May 6, 2011)

I cannot begin to guess what others have been smoking to tell you that 600+ watts is not enough power. To see how much power you really need, go to a power calculator site, such as www.thermatake.outervision.com and enter your parts and it will tell you how much you need. If you used a card that doesn't need a separate power cable, like a non-overclocked version of the GTX750 Ti which sips a mere 60 watts of power, you could readily get by with a 300 watt power supply.

There is no reason to get more than 8 gigs of RAM unless you are doing some extremely intensive data work - which gaming does not. The most even the heaviest games need is 8 gigs, most don't need more than 4.

SSD vs HDD -- a lot of people think that an SSD will make things faster. It does increase boot time, that is certain. And it will decrease the length of time it takes for large programs to load, but the price per gig makes it unreasonably expensive if you start looking at 250+ gig drives. So many advocate getting both, a smaller SDD and then a large HDD. The pain there is that you have to constantly deal with keeping track of what is on which drive and keeping some free on the SSD, etc. A solution to this conundrum of which I have heard surprisingly little, almost nothing in fact - I only learned of this by stumbling on to it looking for a software solution - is a hardware controller card to which you connect both an SSD and an HDD with initially installing everything to the HDD. The controller automatically stores everything on the HDD but caches the most common data/apps to the SSD. Ultimately this puts most of your OS on your SSD and you never have to deal with deciding (or remembering) on which drive is used, etc. Search for something like "hybrid SSD controller" and some variants of that to find them. Newegg has several for decent prices. Some are made by silverstone, highpoint, addonics, and siig. This gives you all the performance of an SSD without the limitations. And you save money getting something smaller in the SSD realm, nothing more than a 250 gig is needed or overly useful.

Motherboard? Depends upon the CPU - Intel or AMD?


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

Tumbleweed_Biff said:


> I cannot begin to guess what others have been smoking to tell you that 600+ watts is not enough power. To see how much power you really need, go to a power calculator site, such as www.thermatake.outervision.com and enter your parts and it will tell you how much you need. If you used a card that doesn't need a separate power cable, like a non-overclocked version of the GTX750 Ti which sips a mere 60 watts of power, you could readily get by with a 300 watt power supply.
> 
> There is no reason to get more than 8 gigs of RAM unless you are doing some extremely intensive data work - which gaming does not. The most even the heaviest games need is 8 gigs, most don't need more than 4.
> 
> ...


Nobody has said that he needs 600w. What people have said is that the make of psu the OP linked is not a good make and he should get a better make.


----------



## bshipper (Dec 10, 2008)

My two cents - If cost is an issue, you can save $100 or more if you went with amd fx series 8 core, They are not as strong as intel i7 but the performance per dollar is much better. check out these links for reference -

Intel Core i7 4770K vs AMD FX 9370

AMD FX-9370 Vishera 8-Core 4.4GHz Socket AM3+ 220W Desktop Processor - Black Edition FD9370FHHKWOF - Newegg.com

Intel Core i7-4770K - Newegg.com

Motherboards/Ram/CPU - the main thing to pay attention to in my experience is the speed of the RAM. Get the fastest RAM you can afford, then you need to make sure the CPU and MB can run the RAM at that speed. I'm a budget builder and have only ddr3 1600 and it works fine. You may have to do some research online to figure out if cpu and motherboard can run RAM at high speeds. As other people have said you don't need 16gb for gaming. I had a friend that didn't want my help when buying his computer and he spent top dollar on 2133 RAM(when ddr3 was new) but went cheaper on cpu and mobo cause he heard RAM speed was key. His cpu and mobo would only let his RAM run at 1600 without overclocking and he didn't even know it until I showed him. 

Motherboard and PSU and Graphics card - If you don't plan on overclocking, WHO CARES, do not overspend(assuming cost is an issue). I use a rosewill psu 450w with no bells or whistles, I played all 3 crysis games, borderlands 1&2, guild wars 2, diablo 3 and a few others with good fps 40+ on average settings with some games on high settings even. The "cheap & low quality" psu is now 5 years old and running strong, my computer does not shut down or overheat or any of that stuff and my graphics card(radeon 7850) says i need 500w to run. I did research on the graphics card and power requirements and found that I need a combined 26amps on the 12volt rails, mine has 30 amps combined, sufficient. Wattage means almost nothing nowadays with power requirements going down(although I do use a power supply calculator Newegg.com - Recommended Power Supply Calculator. to give a general idea if i have enough wattage). 

Graphics card - whatever graphics card you get, make sure it is gddr5. If you want to play some MMO games or action rpg's like diablo then go for 2gb gddr5 or better. Also amd generally has better performance per dollar but i have had some funky driver issues to deal with. The current amd driver made my computer lag spike every 30 seconds or so down to 10fps in diablo 3 for about 10 seconds. I rolled back the driver to previous version and problem fixed. You might want 256 bit or above on the graphics card memory as well. I hear it helps but haven't looked into why on that one quite as much. Oh, and I do recommend getting the newest generation of cards if you can afford it. Check out sites like this one to see performance compared to price

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

according to benchmarks, the two cards you posted cost more and perform worse than my 7850.

HDD vs SSD - the more space you have the more games you can store. As other people have said SSD will open programs faster and the computer will boot faster. The SSD would not affect performance while in game very much. So cost being an issue, go with a HDD. Maybe when you can afford it later on get the SSD.

I think that covers everything you've asked about and those are my 2 cents. I have been told numerous times that my power supply advice is stupid but I have built many many friends gaming computer over the last 10 years and every single time they have no problems. GOOD LUCK!


----------



## MPR (Aug 28, 2010)

The problem with multi-core processors and gaming is finding games that utilize the cores. Many popular games still only use two or three cores. Thus a faster quad -ore is oftentimes a better gamer than a slower hex or octo-core processor.

I believe that the later Battlefield, Crysis, Far Cry and Skyrim games can use multiple cores, though whether they are optimized for more than four I don't know. I do know that all the (albeit a few years old) strategy games I have use no more than two cores.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

skyrim only uses multiple cores if the enhancement for it is installed. Not sure if it is included in the last patch but before that you have to manually install it. Skyrim only ever used one core until this enhancement.

As for Crysis it used 2 and lots of the gpu, battlefield 4 uses 4 cores.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

bshipper said:


> I have been told numerous times that my power supply advice is stupid but I have built many many friends gaming computer over the last 10 years and every single time they have no problems. GOOD LUCK!


If your reference is to Rosewill, they are not recommended as they are all supplied by lower quality manufacturer's. 
We recommend top quality PSU's to help insure sufficient clean power and to assist in a longer trouble free component life. :smile:
Following out Suggested Build List insures you get top quality known compatible components.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

rosewill are one of the lowest quality of psus out there as Tyree said this is why we recommend top quality units.


----------



## Tumbleweed_Biff (May 6, 2011)

greenbrucelee said:


> Nobody has said that he needs 600w. What people have said is that the make of psu the OP linked is not a good make and he should get a better make.


I was going by your comment of it being totally inadequate ... there is nothing *inadequate* about it at all. Regarding quality, I have never seen or used those supplies but they do come with a 5 year warranty which is better than most of the brand names I know which typically have a 1 or 3 year warranty. I have to wonder how a company making a low quality product can stay in business offering a 5 year warranty ...


----------



## MPR (Aug 28, 2010)

Rosewill is Newegg's in-house brand, like Rigid is for Home Depot, thus their reputations go hand-in-hand. Some really bad PSUs have been sold under the Rosewill name in the past but their latest, high-end, units have been getting better reviews. Unfortunately, a re-brander is always looking to maximize profits and will oftentimes switch manufacturers without notice to keep prices low and maximize sales. Sometimes this results in poorer quality and it's hard to recommend a company when the quality of its offerings is not consistent.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

Tumbleweed_Biff said:


> I was going by your comment of it being totally inadequate ... there is nothing *inadequate* about it at all. Regarding quality, I have never seen or used those supplies but they do come with a 5 year warranty which is better than most of the brand names I know which typically have a 1 or 3 year warranty. I have to wonder how a company making a low quality product can stay in business offering a 5 year warranty ...


What MPR said is true and because many people dismiss the importance of a psu. How are kingwin still producing power supplies when they are known to explode when pushed within 1% of their claimed maximum power? How are kingwin still a company when they have known to pay reviewers to give their power supplies good reviews?

Rosewill have in the past always used low grade aluminium capacitors in their units which means they degrade faster and don't work as good as a quality unit which would use high grade Japanese capacitors which are made from gold for superior conductivity.

Just because a product offers a 3-5 years warranty doesn't means it's a good product.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

greenbrucelee said:


> Just because a product offers a 3-5 years warranty doesn't means it's a good product.


Neither do good reviews posted on a vendors site. :smile:
Rosewill are still be supplied by the same lower quality manufacturers.
Simple solution, use a good quality brand and alleviate any concerns.


----------



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

Thanks for the whole information

may i know your opinions on these:

VGA: Nvidia GTX 770 2GB GDDR5
CPU: Intel Corei5 4690
MB: Gigabyte H97-Gaming
RAM: 2xDDr3 Kingston 4GB 


Thanks


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

If you're going to spend the money on a 770, might as well get 8GB of RAM. See if you can stick with G.Skill.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

if you have that kind of money you should be going for a better series of motherboard to go with that graphics card such as a z79 you don't really want a H series board if speed and decency is what you are after.


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Definitely go with G.Skill or Corsair RAM.


----------



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

Thanks all

and about power
would Corsair 750 TX a good choice?


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

It depends. Which model of the TX750. Is it the v2?


----------



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

pardon me what is v2?

all i can see is:

"CORSAIR", "ENTHUSIAST SERIES", "80 Plus BRONZE", "EUP" and 750 watt

These help?


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

Do you have a link to the product?


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

I "think" EUP refers to European. It's doubtful you have a V2 (Version 2) since they have been out of production for some time but considering your geographical location it is possible.


----------



## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

salar said:


> pardon me what is v2?
> 
> all i can see is:
> 
> ...


Searching the Corsair site I found the CX, TX and RM series all comply with European standards.
They are all 750W and 80plus bronze, out of 5 listed, three are Modular.


----------



## salar (Oct 20, 2009)

Masterchiefxx17 said:


> Do you have a link to the product?


Unfortunately no, but considering others replies it seems to be v2, it has TX labeled tough.

can i rely on such a power supply ?


----------



## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

The Corsiar TXV2 will be labeled as such. If it says TX2, it's a lower quality unit.


----------



## T_Rex (Oct 21, 2012)

greenbrucelee said:


> if you have that kind of money you should be going for a better series of motherboard to go with that graphics card such as a z79 you don't really want a H series board if speed and decency is what you are after.


 

Well it's the Z97, and an H97 is every bit as fast, just barely overlcockable, and for a reason most "B" and the tad higher "H" series boards (not to be confused with the very basic H81 non overclockable boards) are made for one thing mainly. Core "stability" instead of "tweakableness". However in default clocks they are every bit as fast as a Z97 motherboard, and quite decent. Lately there are several H97 boards of the main brands/vendors that offer gaming features, higher end sound codecs (amped) and nice heatsinks designed for gamers, because lots of gamers don't really spend time tweaking they mostly want a stable system that might look nice in a windowed case and nice onboard sound with an AMP built in so they don't need to purchase a PCie or PCI sound card. The Z97 series is more for the tweaker in mind. Gaming too, but more of a tweakers board.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

They have less lanes though don't they?


----------



## gcavan (Aug 13, 2009)

> They have less lanes though don't they?


PCI-E lanes? They all support 16. 

Note that on all but the highest end (and most expensive) Z series boards, the PCI-E slots share the same 16 lanes; ie one card at x16, two at x8/x8, three at x8/x4/x4

The following excerpt from this GamersNexus articleIntel Haswell Chipset Comparison: Z87 vs. H87, H81 | Gamers Nexus - Gaming PC Builds & Hardware Benchmarks expands on what chrono is saying above. It refers to the last generation chipset (H87/Z87) but the information is still relevant.



> *Z- or P- Prefixes:* "Performance" Class. Although the P- series is now deprecated, Z- and P-prefixed chipsets are Intel's branding for "performance computing." This is what overclockers and not-quite-enthusiast-class enthusiasts opt for, making most of its demographic dedicated to gamers with an interest in OCing. The performance-series chipsets also make for great render/encoding machines, for those producing YouTube videos or other home footage with some regularity.
> 
> *H- Prefixes:* "Mainstream" computing. The H-series of chipsets is dedicated to non-K SKU CPUs, so it feels most at home when in an HTPC or other "living room" type of computer. Overclockers and enthusiasts should stick to Z and above, but anyone building a pure gaming machine with no interest to overclock at all (and no interest in multi-GPU arrays) should seriously consider H-class chipsets. We'll talk more about why below.
> 
> *Q- or B- Prefixes*: These are for biz-client users. Q-prefixed chips offer options for those working in professional environments that require specific features -- like identity protection -- while B-prefixed options are more budget-friendly, slimmed-down versions.


----------



## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

I suppose its my interpretation of it, unless a motherboard for me anyway has the full workings and can take non k and k and can be pushed then I would class it as low end.


----------

