Skyrim on Ultra for <£500

[hendos43]

Hi there, so this is the build I'm considering:



http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004FA8NX2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_10?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0054X4I4M/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004CRSM4I/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005851O16/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0047D5S26/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003SM3HH0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0017Q8IAA/ref=ox_sc_act_title_8?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00461G3MS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_9?ie=UTF8&m=A1AUCPBF2P18HS

EDIT: Please ignore the leads in the image, they were accidentally added, as has been pointed out below!

Would love to be able to shave this down to <£500, whether that means buying from scan/ccl/somewhere else and splitting it up, whatever. The only problem is I need it really, really, quickly as my 3yo laptop has just started dying on me.

Been meaning to build a system for a while now, but have never really had the money (well, evidently i still don't) but I thought I would start as I mean to go on and try and aim for something at least vaguely future-proof.

Requirements (please tell me if you think I need less for what I want to do):

Lots and lots of image editing preferably easily able to have large documents open in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop at the same time;
Above average amount of video editing in Premiere;
Would love to be able to breeze Ultra settings on Skyrim/Very high BF3 settings, as the monitor I will be using is my Samsung 42" HDTV;
Quite a lot of 3D modelling in Rhino, and CAD programs such as Vectorworks and Microstation.

Please let me know how you think I can shave this down, and whether it would be better to shop around or downgrade slightly some of the parts.
The optical drive is probably my least important part.
Also, I'm not sure if 500W is enough power for the system and I don't really know much about PSUs so any help there would be greatly appreciated.
I also do kind of want the i5 over the i3, which is where i see the most obvious monetary saving, so if it were possible to keep that, I would be very happy.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[yogibbear]

500 W is probably fine. But ~550-650W would protect you against having to upgrade if you did a GPU upgrade down the track.

[derFunkenstein]

How many other drives do you have that you need power splitters and extra SATA cables? Everything you need cable-wise should come with the PSU and the motherboard.

Also, I think the only way you're going to get it down to around 500 is to go with an i3 2100: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Sandybrid ... 917&sr=8-1

I would not buy it from Amazon just on the principle that they advertise it as a "quad core", though. There's nothing quad about it.

[hendos43]

Ahaha, wow, I have no idea how they ended up in there. I must have added a deal to my basket rather than the item, my bad. I'm only going with the one drive for now, and no SSD since I have 1TB external which I will keep my music and movies on. With that kind of external space, and the floods at the moment, I thought I would just go with 1 500GB HDD for now.

Haha, also, the Amazon link even has a question mark after the 'Quad Core' statement. How much do you think I will notice the drop from i5 to i3 in the aforementioned usage the computer will undergo, by the way?

[hendos43]

500 W is probably fine. But ~550-650W would protect you against having to upgrade if you did a GPU upgrade down the track.

Ah, cool, thank you, this is good to know.

Planning on getting another 8GB RAM at some stage when money permits, too, I forgot to mention this, not that this is related.

Would I need a separate cooling system, too?

[derFunkenstein]

How much do you think I will notice the drop from i5 to i3 in the aforementioned usage the computer will undergo, by the way?

Part of that is going to depend on where you're coming from. You say you have a 3yo laptop - are we talking about Core 2 Duo era stuff? If so, an i3 will knock your socks off. On the other hand, I know you really want to keep the quad. I just don't see anywhere else to save a substantial amount of money - I can't recommend any less of a PSU, motherboard, video card, case, etc. Not enough to save you the ~75GBP, anyway.

[hendos43]

This is very true, what i have at the moment is terrifyingly poor, but I am kind of wondering whether it's worth investing purely since my housemate has an i5, and I have played skyrim on it. It's quite rightly delicious. How significant will the change from the 5 to the 3 be?
Also, the 2500k model is overclockable, which will at least ramp up the longevity of the computer slightly; I don't plan on overclocking until it becomes a low end build rather than an economical mid-range/until the warranty runs out.

Hmmm, decisions, decisions...

[derFunkenstein]

Skyrim CPU scaling: http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyr ... page7.html

The i3 at 3.3GHz (which itself is a little faster than the 2100 I linked) is a little behind the i5 2500K. so apparently it's able to do something with at least one of the extra cores. It's still faster than even an AMD FX 8150, which is embarrassing for AMD.

The big difference will be in your video stuff, I think.

[Firestarter]

500 W is probably fine. But ~550-650W would protect you against having to upgrade if you did a GPU upgrade down the track.

Total power consumption under typical load (Skyrim) at the wall of a system with a relatively power-hungry Core i7-980X and a HD7970 was 283 Watt, according to TRs HD7970 review. That's probably at most about 240 Watt draw from the PSU itself (15% waste), so even with a 100% margin on top of that, a modern quality 500 Watt PSU should be just fine, even after a GPU upgrade.

[ish718]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22048/1

That should give you an idea of the performance you should expect playing skyrim

[credible]

For what you use your computer for, all the video processing and the like I would go more this route, gives your self and extra 2 cores to play with, plus will play all the games you need.

Plus, don't quote me, but in some the benchmarks that I have seen, I was sure a processor like these scored quite abit higher in the video editing and rendering parts of the benches.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Phenom-1055T-2-8-processor/dp/B003TJ8SYE/ref=sr_1_66?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1325911798&sr=1-66

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-M5A97-Motherboard-Socket-Support/dp/B0053GR9QY/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1325911954&sr=1-5


Pretty much any of the 6 core ones would be good, but better to have the over clock headroom.

[Arclight]

I have only red a little but, if it's still relevant (i.e. if you haven't ordered the parts yet) i'd like to make a few remarks regarding the components of your build:

1. Memory: due to the fact that some boards come DOA, in order to avoid issues either technical or with the customer service, you should pick a memory model listed on the motherboard manufacturer's website for that particular mobo. Usually they call it QVL for memory, QVL standing for qualified vendors list. If you do choose to venture outside the officially tested DIMMs then at leat buy some with low profile heatsinks, not like the ones you chose, or you will face a diminishing list of compatible tower CPU coolers.

2. Case: that Antec 300 was cool a few years back, now i don't see enough features that would determine me to buy. It lacks cut-outs for wire management, anti vibration for the mechanical drivers etc. If you can squeeze in your budget and intend not to go with water cooling, cooling Lancool (a daugther company of LianLi has some nice case sub $100) or if you want to go balls deep into water cooling or aircooling i'd recommend Cooler Master 690 II Basic (cheaper than the Advanced).
Lancool (comes with 4 fans, 2 x 120mm; 2 x 140mm included)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811112247
CM 690 II Basic

3. CPU: if the goal was to actually play this game at 1080p and discard any other non-gaming applications i;d actually advise you to buy a cheaper quad core and invest the money in a beefier video card.

4. PSU: the CX series from Corsair are their worst and it doesn't inherit the same quality of their legendary, granted more expensive, units. Their designs are made by Seasonic, so i'd recommend buying a PSU dirrectly from Seasonic. The 620W version should be future proof, but for this build (without considering upgrades) the 520W will be more than enough.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817151095
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817151094

I would also like to suggest you buy a CPU cooler from day one. The Hyper 212+ is already legendary but you can look into better but more expensive ones from Noctua, Thermalright and Prolimatech. Be sure to check socket compatibility before making the purchase. Any good tower cooler will be alot more silent than a water cooler despite what you heard. A good water cooling block will require fans that have good static pressure, but the good and silent ones are quite expensive....and instead of having 1 fan on your cooler you'll end up with atleast 2 in a push pull config. I have now a Thermalright True Spirit installed and at full load the fan runs as quiet as during idle.

[Firestarter]

For budget CPU cooling, the Thermalright TRUE Spirit is the one to get IMHO. Or failing that, the Coolermaster 212 EVO

Also, I'd like to point out my previous comment regarding PSUs. With roughly 250Watt power draw while playing Skyrim, with an HD7970 and a more power hungry processor, I think a good 500Watt PSU is just fine even for a GPU upgrade

[hendos43]

Firstly, I'd like to thank all of you for your guidance, it's helping a lot.

@Arclight
Thanks for this kind of a comment, it's very informative as well as suggestive.

I haven't ordered my parts yet, so here are some follow up ideas:

1. Do you think this would be a suitable RAM replacement?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skill-Ripjaws-F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL-DDR3-1333MHz/dp/B003SLFBUW/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1325935769&sr=1-3
as it is listed here: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-z68ap-d3.pdf even though it's 1333 instead of 1600 it's probably a decent way to shave off some pennies, too?

2. Unfortunately it's not really within my price range and I was under the impression that for about £40, the Antec 300 is probably the best thing I'm going to find anywhere. Am I being oversold? It's also the part I am not really concerned with in terms of appearance et cetera.

3. Also unfortunately it kind of the other way round. I'm only going to be gaming on it when I'm not working on it which will involve high intensity image/video editing and probably some quite processor intensive 3d modelling. At work there's a year old MacPro with close to 3GHz (I forget how much) and doing some of the tasks on it that I will be doing can often be harrowing (albeit it's in Bootcamp so I'm bound to suffer). The idea behind buying the i5 in the first place is that I don't want to be able just to cope with this work, I want to have some breathing room on top.

4. I actually had been briefly considering the Seasonic S12II-520 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seasonic-S12II-520-ATX12V-Standard-Supply/dp/B00390P1NO/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1325937025&sr=1-1) before now but only switched down to the Corsair for a nearly 100% price drop.

Finally, I would love to go for some cooling right off the bat, but i was under the impression that considering I'm having to be so cheap right now, maybe I could survive without it for now at least?

@Firestarter
Thanks for this, too, I think I'm going to go with you here purely because it's justifying my being frugal with PSUs even if it's possible that I will need more wattage in the future. Do you have any tips on specifics i.e. model?

@derFunkenstein
This is a good comparison, but unfortunately it highlights more that the i5-2500K is such a respectable CPU that, instead of just being behind the i7-2600K, it's giving it a real run for its money. Do you think it's stupid to want it so much on my budget?

Finally, just spoke to my housemate who reckoned that though it's now a bit of a lesser GPU, an easy way of shedding some pounds would be to go for a 6750 instead of a 6850. For all the praise I've heard about the 6850, I'm not hugely convinced that's true, but it sure as hell would save £30 - £40. Thoughts? I know it's worse, the clues in the name, but I'm starting to run out of places to cut costs down!

Thanks again for all your help guys.

[Firestarter]

@Firestarter
Thanks for this, too, I think I'm going to go with you here purely because it's justifying my being frugal with PSUs even if it's possible that I will need more wattage in the future. Do you have any tips on specifics i.e. model?

No I don't, I'm kind of struggling myself to find out which PSUs can be trusted to deliver their rated wattage and which are the junk that sparked the demand for high wattage models in the first place.

[derFunkenstein]

Of course it's not stupid to want the 2500k; it's just that you can't fit your GPU of choice and the 2500k in your budget. Which brings me to the 6750...

Finally, just spoke to my housemate who reckoned that though it's now a bit of a lesser GPU, an easy way of shedding some pounds would be to go for a 6750 instead of a 6850. For all the praise I've heard about the 6850, I'm not hugely convinced that's true, but it sure as hell would save £30 - £40. Thoughts? I know it's worse, the clues in the name, but I'm starting to run out of places to cut costs down!

Say goodbye to Ultra. The 67xx series is the same GPU at the same frequency as the 57xx series - same shader counts and everything. The 6750, therefore, has 720 shaders at low speeds and 128-bit GDDR5 memory bus. Unfortunately Anandtech's Bench database doesn't have a 6750 or 5750, but it does have a 5770, which runs at higher speeds with more compute processors (800 vs 720). Just looking at how it does in other games compared to the 6850, I don't think you're going to be playing Skyrim on Ultra, if that's a goal:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/296?vs=291

[hendos43]

Ah forget that then, there's not much point shelling out that much and having it be that inferior. Perhaps it would be best to try and wait until next payday... This is in fact the whole problem. I need it very soon to get on with degree work and modelling, but money's tight and HDD prices are high.

This is kind of on a side note now, but i am also going to need a wireless keyboard and mouse since it's going to be on the other side of the room connected to the tv and well yeah anyway the point is it needs to be wireless, only need basic two button/scroll button so no high budget gaming mice/mechanical keyboard but preferably something fairly solid, reliable, and hopefully good-looking. I don't really have a budget for this, i would just like some low/mid end periphs. I was just going to go for a decent logitech combo pack, any objections/suggestions? Thanks guys, this is very helpful.

[hendos43]

I have just had another thought. Probably at some stage I am going to want to dual boot with Lion, since I use a few mac only programs - Vectorworks and the like.

Would the above rig be hackintosh compatible? And, if no-one knows, does anyone know of a fairly comprehensive list/site on which I could find out?

Thanks, guys.

[Arclight]

I have just had another thought. Probably at some stage I am going to want to dual boot with Lion, since I use a few mac only programs - Vectorworks and the like.

Would the above rig be hackintosh compatible? And, if no-one knows, does anyone know of a fairly comprehensive list/site on which I could find out?

Thanks, guys.

I think there should be a home brew hackintosh guide right here on TR but i'm too lazy to search for it. Just check out the article bellow it has plenty of links to guides, there should be one that fits your needs:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/21952

I didn't read it back when it was published as Mac's are not appealing to me, but i understand you have some essential apps you need to run....so good luck.

[hendos43]

Thanks man.

Yeah, I actually despise them, but unfortunately some software is Mac only in my line of work. Thankfully, there are a decent amount of NTFS plug ins these days that make living mainly in Windows easy to ignore when you have to switch over for an hour and a half.

[MrJP]

If you still haven't ordered, then you can stretch the budget a bit further by going for a case/PSU package rather than separate items. For example, this Antec VSK 2450P is around £70 at Ebuyer. The entry level PSUs that Antec uses in these cases are fine, and certainly not disimilar in quality to the Corsair builder series that you initially selected.

You can then use the extra money to stretch to a 6870 rather than 6850 to give you a fair bit more headroom on the gaming performance. e.g. Powercolor 6870 for £135, with Sapphire and XFX variants at £140 if you don't like Powercolor (some people have a semi-irrational distrust of their products, but I've never had any problems and these cards are all reference designs anyway). The 6870 is right in the sweet spot for GPU value at the moment, a good step up from the 6850, and you won't get significantly better performance without spending a lot more money.

Note that I've only looked on Ebuyer because I tend to find they're consistently the cheapest relaible supplier in the UK, helped by offering free shipping if you're prepared to wait a day or two longer. You might want to look at pricing up the whole system there to see how it compares to Amazon. Scan are also very good, but shipping costs can be on the high side.

Happy shopping!

Edit - before someone else rushes to pont it out, I've realised that I've made a schoolboy error by recommending a graphics card that needs two PCIe 6-pin power connectors in conjunction with a PSU that only offers one. You could use a Molex adaptor to power the other port (one might be supplied with the graphics card) and this would work OK - the PSU has enough capacity for this system. However according to the Antec site the PSU only has 4 molex connectors to start with, so this might leave you short if you need them for additional fans etc. I still think you should try to get a 6870 if possible, but the case/PSU might need a rethink to get a tidier solution.

[hendos43]

If you still haven't ordered, then you can stretch the budget a bit further by going for a case/PSU package rather than separate items. For example, this Antec VSK 2450P is around £70 at Ebuyer. The entry level PSUs that Antec uses in these cases are fine, and certainly not disimilar in quality to the Corsair builder series that you initially selected.

You can then use the extra money to stretch to a 6870 rather than 6850 to give you a fair bit more headroom on the gaming performance. e.g. Powercolor 6870 for £135, with Sapphire and XFX variants at £140 if you don't like Powercolor (some people have a semi-irrational distrust of their products, but I've never had any problems and these cards are all reference designs anyway). The 6870 is right in the sweet spot for GPU value at the moment, a good step up from the 6850, and you won't get significantly better performance without spending a lot more money.

Note that I've only looked on Ebuyer because I tend to find they're consistently the cheapest relaible supplier in the UK, helped by offering free shipping if you're prepared to wait a day or two longer. You might want to look at pricing up the whole system there to see how it compares to Amazon. Scan are also very good, but shipping costs can be on the high side.

Happy shopping!

Edit - before someone else rushes to pont it out, I've realised that I've made a schoolboy error by recommending a graphics card that needs two PCIe 6-pin power connectors in conjunction with a PSU that only offers one. You could use a Molex adaptor to power the other port (one might be supplied with the graphics card) and this would work OK - the PSU has enough capacity for this system. However according to the Antec site the PSU only has 4 molex connectors to start with, so this might leave you short if you need them for additional fans etc. I still think you should try to get a 6870 if possible, but the case/PSU might need a rethink to get a tidier solution.

Thanks for the tip. This is what the *exact* same build looks like on eBuyer:



Unfortunately more expensive, but you are right about the delivery costs, since it says right there that's it's 15kg of stuff...

Also, on your edit, I'm probably going to go with a 6850 if that's the case, budget-wise, but might be able to shed some pounds by using the deals at ebuyer.

I am gradually accruing money towards this, but it's an uphill struggle. Hoping the actual prices go down a bit. I just signed into Amazon, and got notified that I'll be saving £2ish if I buy them now than when I made the list. A marathon starts with a single step?

[hendos43]

I did it.

Thanks for ordering with Ebuyer.com!

We are sending this email as an acknowledgement of your order being placed. A confirmation email will be sent shortly.

This order contains the following items;
Item: Antec 300 Three Hundred Case
Qty: 1 Cost: £39.74

Item: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Qty: 1 Cost: £66.65

Item: Samsung SH-222AB 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black
Qty: 1 Cost: £9.98

Item: Seagate 500GB 3.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Barracuda Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache
Qty: 1 Cost: £54.16

Item: Corsair 500W CX V2 PSU
Qty: 1 Cost: £38.08

Item: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC Unbuffered
Qty: 1 Cost: £30.82

Item: Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Qty: 1 Cost: £144.17

Item: Sapphire HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
Qty: 1 Cost: £91.65

Item: HDMI Cable 1.4 Black 2 Metre
Qty: 1 Cost: £2.49

Item: Xenta Black 2.4Ghz Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse - Nano USB Receiver
Qty: 1 Cost: £8.32

-----------------------------------------------------------
Shipping method: FREE at £0.00

Sub Total: 486.06
VAT Total: 97.27
Total: £583.33

A few changes here and there, see optical drive, but it gave me the headroom for a cheap wireless keyboard/mouse and hdmi cable so i can use my 42" hdtv as my monitor. I have not spent this much money on one thing ever... pretty excited =)

[vargis14]

Going from that laptop you are gonna to love it!

I rec you get a coolermaster 212 + tower cooler they are super cheap and match up with the 2500k like peanutbutter and jelly.....the 212 evo is there latest 212 model but its 10$ more but performs a bit better.Regardless the 212s will shave at least 25c off stock cooling.

[hendos43]

Okay, I know this isn't really the place, and feel free to shoo me away in the direction of the support boards, but you guys now know quite a lot about my build. Got everything through fine from ebuyer and built it last night, set up some BIOS options and went to sleep.

Today, I go to install Windows from a USB stick and I get to the part where I select the HDD I want to format/partition. No drives are found/recognised. My HDD is sat in there, plugged into a SATAIII port (1) and powered up. I boot into the BIOS to check it's there, and sure enough, it recognises it. I started to think that it was probably something to do with the fact that I changed from IDE to AHCI before I installed the OS, so I changed it back, and still it doesn't recognise it. But it's still there in the BIOS. I changed it around and put it in the other SATAIII Port (0) and still it doesn't work. I even tried to put it in the SATAII Ports, and none of them work. Meanwhile the ports all work fine because the Optical is running fine off all of them when I switch them around.

I started reading online (both sensible and dangerous, I know) and people having this issue start talking about the AHCI/IDE thing again, and needing a driver in AHCI mode, so I reset my BIOS to 'Fail-Safe' default settings, to no success, and 'Hardware Optimised' default settings, with no success. I even try to put it in AHCI AND IDE modes and use the 'load drivers' in the install GUI to make them work. Nothing. Infuriated, I pull the CMOS battery and try to start over. Identical nothing.

Am I out of options? Is my HDD DOA? Or have I missed something spectacularly obvious and am blinded by inexperience?

Tl;dr, currently:
IDE, not AHCI
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200rpm 16MB Cache SATAIII
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Rev 1.0
HDD is connected to SATAIII (0) & Power
Turns up in BIOS, but is not a volume when in the Installer for Windows 7 under the advanced drive options, and no driver on the motherboard disc I have will work for it.

Can obviously give you any information from the BIOS you need that will help, or other relevant data.

Thank you guys, again, I know this isn't the right place, but you've been great so far =)

[Mr. Bamboo Head]

first thing i would try is plugging the hdd into a sata II header instead of the sata III. i believe they're backwards/forwards compatible tho i've yet to purchase a sata 3 drive so i can't verify.

[JustAnEngineer]

You'll have fewer headaches in the future if you can get your original installation done while in AHCI mode.

Have you messed with the boot order in the BIOS?

[hendos43]

That's what I thought, but it didn't recognise the drive under AHCI either. I changed the boot order so that it would read my USB-HDD first for the install setup. Why would that change it?

[JustAnEngineer]

You didn't accidentally remove the hard-drive from the BIOS boot order, did you?

[hendos43]

No, I don't think so, but I'm not even booting to it yet, as there's nothing installed on it? Or will it not show up because it's not in the boot order. Nonetheless, I'm fairly sure it's there (not currently on it).