Good deal for custom gaming pc?

[spontaneite]

I'm building up my first PC, probably to buy around christmastime, so I've been looking around a bit. I considered a laptop for a while but submitted to the superiority of desktops for gaming. I'm no PC expert but I've done some research - and I've found a custom PC specialist who I think is giving me a pretty sweet deal. I'd like anyone's opinions.

 

The basic model is this:

 

AMD™ FX 8150 X8 Processor 3.6GHz

Eight-Core (12M Cache, 5200MHz)

AMD 970 AM3+ Mother Board

16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Memory

1TB SATA III 600 MB/s Hard Drive

ATI Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 Graphics

High Definition Audio

But I'm told that for an extra £300, bringing the price up to £1000 (I guess around $1600ish) I can have:

AMD Radeon HD 7990 (not sure how many gb)

SSD 120gb drive PLUS the original 1TB drive as a separate storage drive

+Any processor upgrades that become available e.g 4GHz option

With 3 year warranty, 1 year parts 3 year labour

And it will be 1000 for the lot. I play Skyrim pretty much exclusively these days, but for Skyrim and other demanding games, does this sound like a good deal for the price? And as a gaming PC in general? I play with A LOT of mods, some of which are very script and texture heavy, and some I haven't installed only because my current PC can't handle the strain. I want to run on ultra settings with the high res pack and ENB on top. Can I expect good things from this rig when I do all that?

Secondly, gaming mouse. I'm looking at one with high dpi (like 3400+) and responsiveness etc but no fancy buttons. I can get it for £20. Worth upgrading from my current crappy non-gaming mouse?

Cheers

[prod80]

If you run lotta texture mods you need -at least- 2 but rather 3GB or more VRAM GFX card...
As for graphics card brand and modding (especially using ENB) I'd stay with Nvidia instead of AMD, just because it's less likely to cause problems AMD/ENB compatibility related (not to say they suck, but simply because 9 out of 10 graphic card related issues with Skyrim + ENB happen on AMD cards it seems).

You will not need 16GB RAM... Skyrim is 32 bit and can only use 3.2GB before it will crash. So, I'd say go with 8GB as 4GB will not be enough but 16GB is overkill for Skyrim. Tho I can not say if you have other requirements... You can always add more later tho, If need be for another game or program which can handle more RAM.

Skyrim does require a good CPU, but it's much more dependent on your GFX card. Shadows however are done by CPU. Any fast 4 core will do. I use an overclocked i5 2500K @ 4.3Ghz for the job... it's too fast for Skyrim actually.

 

Edit;

I just read now... for around Xmas time... that's far far away... you can pretty much disregard the above as I can not view the future :smile:

 

Anyway, cheers.

Edited May 14, 2013 by prod80

[spontaneite]

Thanks for your advice. I wasn't aware that there were issues with EMB and AMD compatibility. The saleperson, also a gamer who plays Skyrim, seemed to think that AMD processors and graphics cards worked better for gaming than Intel and Nvidia rigs did. Do you think there's any truth behind that? I think the card he mentioned was, minimum, the 3gb one. As for RAM - if downgradiing it to 8gb saves me money, then I'll certainly do it. But if it's any less than £50...well, I might as well just keep it. It will at least allow me to run multiple programs at the same time as Skyrim. I've been giving modding a go lately and having to reload the CK, graphics programs, etc every time I test something is very tiring.

 

So if I were to go with an Intel model, I'd quite like to get the i7. Would an i7 overclocked be overkill? :P also for the graphics card, would gtx 680 be enough or should I shell out for the gtx 690?

[prod80]

"So if I were to go with an Intel model, I'd quite like to get the i7. Would an i7 overclocked be overkill? also for the graphics card, would gtx 680 be enough or should I shell out for the gtx 690?"

This is already overkill for Skyrim, but will be good for a longer time .. but much more expensive then what the sales person advised. You know the 700 series of nVidia will be out soon... might as well have a look at those, since christmas is far far away :p ...not really a point to look at PC prices unless you are gonna buy in that week or month as prices change very often and very fast.

[spontaneite]

Thanks for the advice :) I know I'm looking a bit early, but I like to get an idea of what I'm doing way before I actually need to do it. Hopefully I'll be able to get something awesome for less money by xmas - maybe the i7 will be cheaper by then? I can only hope

[gsmanners]

Another thing to consider (that most people seem to overlook) is how much power you want that beast to use. It isn't unusual for a powerful computer to use 700 to 800W of power, but I always build systems that use around 400W. It's something to think about.