Gaming Rig Help Please

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

No, I haven't come over to the dark side!

Diddums was giving some advice for my son who wants to build a gaming rig for ~£800 inc Win7 but excluding keyboard, mouse and monitor. As we all know, Dave has his own problems at the moment so I was wondering if some of you guys could make some comments or suggestions on the following spec:-

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor £79.99

CPU Cooler:Noctua NH-U12P SE2 54.4 CFM £49.88

Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 ATX AM3+ £129.00

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 £62.13

Storage:

OCZ Vector Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk £86.98

Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive £83.99

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 3GB £187.58

Case: Thermaltake Chaser A31 ATX Mid Tower Case £71.31

Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply £54.68

Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer £12.74

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) £65.99

Is the Windows 7 in 64bit overkill? Any other observations welcome

[DaveCator 4]

More in depth reply later but you NEED a 64bit operating system as you are using more than 4Gb of ram. If you were to build this and use a 32but version windows would only see 4gb.

[H3iman 14]

I'd suggest taking a look at Logicalincrements.com, they're a great resource when picking out the hardware for a new gaming PC. And at that price, you've just about hit the sweet spot for affordable PC gaming that will still blow the next-gen consoles away.

 

 

[Diddums 4,346]

Dave is your son intent on any overclocking? If not, that motherboard and cooler are overkill. You could easily save that £50 off the cooler and use the supplied one with the CPU. Also, has he thought about small form factor? I built my wife a SFF pc a while back and it's awesome, it has great components in it and is pretty small. 

 

This is the case I used for my wife's PC:

 

 

 

Bear in mind that it needs ventilation on the sides though. Obviously the sides will be covered up. Don't think you'll be compromising on performance either, you can pack a whopper into these tiny cases, and PC enthusiasts are lapping them up. 

 

Also, is he really going to need 3tb of storage? That's a lot of storage. I have a 2tb drive in my PC and even with my entire games library and my prolific support of shady download sites, I've never gone over 1,5tb. 

 

Another thing to bear in mind is whether he'll be using a wired or wireless connection, if he's going wireless, he'll need a wifi card too. 

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Thanks for the replies so far guys which I'll pass on to him later. You've raised some very good points

I'm sure there will be some more questions later!

[cyberninja2601 1,106]

Be carefull with the minicase.

 

I have one of those as well. The fans make a lot of noise when gaming. Also some video cards + system boards will not fit because of the position of the drives. If your PCIE x16 slot has to be in the middle you could have some problems. 

 

I agree the storage is pretty big and yes you need 64 bit OS. Many games expect it. I don't know much about AMD processors so I can't comment there. 

[Diddums 4,346]

The FX6300 is a very good processor and ample for gaming. If you buy a retail copy of Windows, it'll come with both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows so you can choose.