New Gaming PC on a budget help needed

S

Sillicur

New member
Hey all,

So I'm finally gonna be building a new gaming PC from scratch. The goal is to play most AAA titles coming out in 2015/2016 on high / ultra at a resolution of 1600x900 (i know not even full HD).

My Budget is roughly 10k but could stretch to about 11k.

Notes:

Will get an SSD later (Don't want one as budget is tight)
No preference between Nvidia or AMD GPU's, looking for a card with more than 2gb memory
Preferred CPU is Intel, i5 (hoping to get a skylake for DDR4 ram as well)
Not fussed about the brand name as long as the product is stable and has a full warranty
I wont be overclocking

Could anyone suggest some pieces or a good build that could fit into that budget? Will try to grab at least one part during Black Friday sale (wootware) for some extra room or a good deal.
 
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I would suggest a :

MSI Z97 GUARD PRO Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4590 3.7GHz Quad Core CPU
Kingston HyperX Fury 4GB DDR3 1600MHz Gaming RAM
nVidia GTX 950 2GB OC

That should clock in around R9k
 
PsychoFish said:
I would suggest a :

MSI Z97 GUARD PRO Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4590 3.7GHz Quad Core CPU
Kingston HyperX Fury 4GB DDR3 1600MHz Gaming RAM
nVidia GTX 950 2GB OC

That should clock in around R9k
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For an extra R600 +- you can get the 960, or even R900+- for the R9 380X. Both very decent cards that should last very long and enough power. I agree with the rest of stuff you listed!
 
Flex said:
For an extra R600 +- you can get the 960, or even R900+- for the R9 380X. Both very decent cards that should last very long and enough power. I agree with the rest of stuff you listed!
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Yup, the GFX card is something you can toy around with. I find the GTX 950 gives a lot of bang to the buck. At ~R3000 it's affordable and decently powered. It's 20+% more price for ~10% more performance. It's the same issue I have in justifying the difference between an i5 6600 (Skylake) vs i5 4590 in that it's about a R600 price difference and only about a 10%-15% performance increase which is negating the performance/$ ratio.
 
PsychoFish said:
Yup, the GFX card is something you can toy around with. I find the GTX 950 gives a lot of bang to the buck. At ~R3000 it's affordable and decently powered. It's 20+% more price for ~10% more performance. It's the same issue I have in justifying the difference between an i5 6600 (Skylake) vs i5 4590 in that it's about a R600 price difference and only about a 10%-15% performance increase which is negating the performance/$ ratio.
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Very very true! But the AMD R9 380X slots in between the 960 and 970. And with prices like this its even a better deal! http://www.wootware.co.za/powercolo...r5-pci-express-3-0-desktop-graphics-card.html

I have however never been a huge fan of AMD. But apparently the support and software for their new chips are amazing.
 
Flex said:
Very very true! But the AMD R9 380X slots in between the 960 and 970. And with prices like this its even a better deal! http://www.wootware.co.za/powercolo...r5-pci-express-3-0-desktop-graphics-card.html

I have however never been a huge fan of AMD. But apparently the support and software for their new chips are amazing.
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Yes, the R9 380X is amazing, but at R 3999 it's only on the same level as the GeForce GTX 950 OC 2048MB @ R 2499-3199. Yes the 380 has double the RAM and double the memory interface speed, but on a clock speed level it's less and that will hurt the AMD down the line. The nVidia is also less power hungry than the 380. So in terms of performance/$ the 950 edges out the 380 and in terms of performance/Watt the 950 edges out the 380. Not saying the 380 is bad, it's just an oddity in it's performance band.
 
PsychoFish said:
Yes, the R9 380X is amazing, but at R 3999 it's only on the same level as the GeForce GTX 950 OC 2048MB @ R 2499-3199. Yes the 380 has double the RAM and double the memory interface speed, but on a clock speed level it's less and that will hurt the AMD down the line. The nVidia is also less power hungry than the 380. So in terms of performance/$ the 950 edges out the 380 and in terms of performance/Watt the 950 edges out the 380. Not saying the 380 is bad, it's just an oddity in it's performance band.
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I think you might have the 380 in mind and not the 380X. The clock speed is about the only thing better on the 950. Shaders, everything else better on the 380X then the 950, even the 960.
Here is a very good article on the card with benchmarks and so on: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3005...cs-card-for-1080p-gaming-priced-to-fight.html
 
PsychoFish said:
Yes, the R9 380X is amazing, but at R 3999 it's only on the same level as the GeForce GTX 950 OC 2048MB @ R 2499-3199. Yes the 380 has double the RAM and double the memory interface speed, but on a clock speed level it's less and that will hurt the AMD down the line. The nVidia is also less power hungry than the 380. So in terms of performance/$ the 950 edges out the 380 and in terms of performance/Watt the 950 edges out the 380. Not saying the 380 is bad, it's just an oddity in it's performance band.
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I've done a lot of research and seen a lot of benchmarks. The R9380 (the non X even) beats the 960 every time, leaving the 950 in the dust. The X should be even better hey
 
Sillicur said:
I've done a lot of research and seen a lot of benchmarks. The R9380 (the non X even) beats the 960 every time, leaving the 950 in the dust. The X should be even better hey
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Yeah the 380X is always faster than the GTX960, the 380 and GTX960 trade blows with the 380 looking better off. But as [MENTION=6600]PsychoFish[/MENTION] says, I also don't always trust them. Their drivers are dodgy a lot of the times and they sometimes take long to fix driver problems.
[MENTION=21]The Joker[/MENTION] always advised people to stay away from Powercolor GPU's though, they use cheaper components and thus are not as reliable. From what I can find, the GTX960 is cheaper than the 380 and 380X, but since it is slower I suppose that is the way it should be.

It is up to you but perhaps stay away from Powercolor :)
 
I just have not had ANY luck with AMD/ATi hardware ever. What seriously turns me off is as Blazzok mentioned that their drivers can be dodgy at times. The last ATi/AMD card was the HD 4830 and it sucked balls. I quickly replaced it with an nVidia 8800 GT and was seriously happy with it. Many of my friends run AMD cards and something always seems a little off when I see them play or if I play on their rigs. I really cannot put my finger on it.

Let's be honest, in most instances we're bitching about a 10fps difference (where framerates are in the 70-100 fps range) and it's not a whole lot of FPS to moan about. What does irritate me with the AMD cards currently is the Performance/Watt, take an R9 390X vs a GTX 980. The AMD card on idle sucks 10Watts more and under severe strain it sucks almost double the power (320~ Watts vs 170~ Watts) than the GTX 980 and this seems to be the issue across the board.
 
PsychoFish said:
I just have not had ANY luck with AMD/ATi hardware ever. What seriously turns me off is as Blazzok mentioned that their drivers can be dodgy at times. The last ATi/AMD card was the HD 4830 and it sucked balls. I quickly replaced it with an nVidia 8800 GT and was seriously happy with it. Many of my friends run AMD cards and something always seems a little off when I see them play or if I play on their rigs. I really cannot put my finger on it.

Let's be honest, in most instances we're bitching about a 10fps difference (where framerates are in the 70-100 fps range) and it's not a whole lot of FPS to moan about. What does irritate me with the AMD cards currently is the Performance/Watt, take an R9 390X vs a GTX 980. The AMD card on idle sucks 10Watts more and under severe strain it sucks almost double the power (320~ Watts vs 170~ Watts) than the GTX 980 and this seems to be the issue across the board.
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I get what you're saying. I have an R9 280x in my gaming desktop and a GTX970m in my laptop. When playing the same games on both, the laptop just feels "right". Frame rates feel more consistent on the supposedly weaker GPU of the laptop and glitches in rendering are nonexistent. On the desktop I sometimes get glitches and artifacts in rendering (possibly due to heat buildup) and the frame rates can be a bit erratic at times, even in games that are well optimised and not all that tough on hardware (Mad Max and GTA 5 as examples).

There's a guy over at MyBroadband (GTX Gaming is his account) that's willing to sell me an EVGA 970 for R5200 and buy my R9 280x for R2400 as a trade-in, so I'm seriously considering that. Getting a brand new GTX970 for R2800 seems like a steal at the moment!
 
TBlaar said:
It's still not Intel ;)
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On that, I must say that I was greatly surprised by the Intel HD 530 and 6200s, really surprising performance from Intel.

But to me still it's nVidia > AMD > Intel in the GPU space
in the CPU space it's Intel [...country mile...] AMD
 
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