(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Hi guys over the last few days I've been looking into what hardware I would like for a PC that will be used for gaming and watching 1080p films etc so far here's what I've got.

Motherboard: £187.19 ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 Intel Z77 Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard

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Processor:£209.99 BX80623I72600K - Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.4GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 8MB Cache 95W Retail

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Memory (Ram): £38.99 Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9)

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Hard Drive: £91.32 WD 1TB Caviar Black Performance Hard Drive 7200rpm 64MB Cache

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Video Card: £274.54 FX-787A-CNFC - 2GB XFX Radeon HD 7870 Core Edition, 4800MHz GDDR5, 28nm, GPU 1000MHz, 1280 Cores, DL DVI/HDMI/mDP

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For the most part I'm happy and I think everything is compatible but am slightly concerned about the motherboard which does not say if it supports AMD Eyefinity because ideally I would like to have three monitors for this build,for multitasking and being able to game on one or all three at the same time. So if anyone could confirm for me that this motherboard is good or if not recommend at better alternative. also the motherboard should support Dual Channel DDR3 RAM.

Another concern of mine is the powersupply I know that to support the GPU it needs to be atlease 600W but I'm not sure which PSU to go with, recommendations appreciated.

Lastly please look over the build and see if there are any glaring problems.

Thanks in advance.

OK so i looked over everything and this is what i found.
pretty much everything matches up, your GPU and motherboard should work perfectly together especially if u want another graphics card and run crossfire for those multiple displays.
as for your PSU the brand is pretty much upto you. your budget. but what i usually do with power supplies is never get the bare minimum. try to get like 100-200w more than u need in case of future upgrades so u wont have to upgrade the PSU as well. make sure your power supply has enough watts for everything. The newegg watt calculator You must login or register to view this content. is a great tool that helped me calculate the wattage i needed for my PC.
Lastly make sure everything fits properly into your case that you want. the last thing you would want is to have all your parts and have a case that is too small. Its up to you if u want a mid or full tower. full tower will fit everything no problem but make sure your measurements are good.
Hope this helped.

Gonna have to ask this question, for my setup where I use 3 monitors will I have to use crossfire or is that only if you want to play games utilising all 3 monitors at once, can I just have 3 monitors that are essentially a 5760x1080 desktop but I can do different tasks on each because at the moment I can plug my laptop into a tv and use it as a second monitor is it as simple as that for a desktop, could just plug 3 screens in and they would all work? I would have to mess around with the gpu.

Good question. ATI Radion Crossfire X (or SLI for NVIDIA) is basically needed for any PC that has multiple GPU's in it. It basically combines all the power of however many graphics cards are in (max of 4) your PC and acts as one GPU. You can only do Crossfire with motherboard compatible with crossfire.

Now to have multiple monitors just depends on how many outputs your graphics card can handle. You don't need to run crossfire or SLI to have multiple monitors. If your GPU has 2 display outputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, what have you) then you can only have 2 displays. If you were however, to buy a second GPU that is the same as the one you already have and decide to run SLI, then the max amount of displays you can have doubles to four. I hope i'm explaining this well lol.

For Example:
My PC has one NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti in it. This has 2 DVI outputs and one mini HDMI output. So automatically my GPU can support up to 3 displays. Now, if i were to buy a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti and run them in crossfire, then everything doubles. My graphic power doubles and my max number of displays doubles to 6. (4 DVI and 2 mini HDMI).

I hope i explained that well enough lol.

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- You don't need the i7 2600k, it only benefits if you plan on doing heavy editing, even then, the i5 works fine. Not worth the extra money.
- ASRock Z77 motherboard, they're only new, came out like two weeks ago, supports crossfire/sli if you ever want it.
- Same RAM, different colour, 1600Mhz.
- 7200RPM drive, extra terabyte.
- 650W PSU, not a well known brand, but none the less, a very good brand, look at reviews if you wish.
- Case is just one I like, there is a black version too but the white one is nicer.
- Simple DVD drive.
- CPU fan, should allow you to overclock to 4.5Ghz +

Now for the GPU, wasn't sure what your budget was, at the moment, that build up there (everything except a GPU) comes in around the same price as your 3/4 build.

I would imagine you'd want to pick one of these:
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Out of those, 7950 is best, and then the 7870, then the 7850 and the 570 are very similar, but the 7850 overclocks brilliantly so it beats the 570 if you overclock it..

Of course, if you do have a higher budget, the GTX 680 and the 7970 (in that order) are the ones to go for.


P.S. That site I linked to is probably the best to use for full builds like this, very cheap.

You should really wait for ivy bridge, it just got released.

I looked at Ivy bridge but it's only slightly better than the top end i7 Sandy Bridge processors besides it would be twice the price so I'll stick with sandy bridge for now.

I've change a few thing around on my build again in particular the Processor gone to an i5 like flying Irishman suggested and the RAM because it was not supported by the motherboards everything appears to be compatible now so all that's left to do is choose a powersupply what Wattage would you recommend for my build I was think 600W modular? Also what size case should I go for full size tower? Oh and one last thing USB ports any tips for what to get I'm not really fussed because I gues usb and DVD drives will always be compatible with the motherboard.

Motherboard: £177.32 Asus Sabertooth Z77, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 3.0, DisplayPort/ HDMI, ATX (You must login or register to view this content.)

Processor:£160.98 Intel CPU Core i5 Unlocked 2500K Sandy Bridge Quad Core Processor - (You must login or register to view this content.)

Memory (Ram): £47.76 CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9B - 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Blue, DDR3 PC3-14900(1866), Non-ECC Unbuffered, 9-10-9-27, XMP, 1.50V ) - (You must login or register to view this content.)

Hard Drive: £91.32 WD 1TB Caviar Black Performance Hard Drive 7200rpm 64MB Cache (You must login or register to view this content.)

Video Card: £274.54 FX-787A-CNFC - 2GB XFX Radeon HD 7870 Core Edition, 4800MHz GDDR5, 28nm, GPU 1000MHz, 1280 Cores, DL DVI/HDMI/mDP (You must login or register to view this content.)

DVD Drive: £13.98 Sony AD-5280S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 SATA, Black, OEM (You must login or register to view this content.)

Twice the price? Where are you getting that information from? And really you can't say anything about the performance until benchmarks come out. Regardless, even if you want to get sandy bridge if you wait for ivy bridge to hit retailers there should be a price drop on sandy bridge.

Edit: If you're not on a tight budget then I guess the 7870, but the 7850 has a much better price:performance ratio. Look at the two in comparison here: You must login or register to view this content. The 7870 isn't much better, yet cost $100 USD more than the 7850. Not to mention, the 7850 is very good for overclocking, the stock is 860mhz, but everything is pretty much the same as the 7870 and you can overclock it to or above 1Ghz with ease.

Also, you should look into getting in aftermarker cooler, I recommend the Cooler Master Hyper 212+, it's about $20 and you can definately overclock 4+ Ghz on it with a 2500k.

Right more questions again. is this psu compatible with the mobo I chose? I'm mainly concerned with the PSU being ATX V 2.2 and the Mobo being ATX but are they still compatible?

650W Corsair PSU, CMPSU-650HXUK, Modular, 85%Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.2 You must login or register to view this content.

Asus Sabertooth Z77, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 3.0, DisplayPort/ HDMI, ATX You must login or register to view this content.


Also with regards to the processor I'm using I'm gonna wait for the Ivy Bridge models to come out and use the i5 2500k version.