Oooo, thanks! Me likey. Yea i dont often do any sort of high end video rendering so an I7 would be wasted on me >.<
I see you opted for a step down cpu from what i picked but a step up in graphics cards, Is it worth the extra £60 for the 770 rather then the cheeper 760?
I usually go more on the CPU as that is much harder to upgrade later on. I mean, I have a 460 and see no issues playing any game I wish for some time still. I would stick with the 760, but maybe Sip has some reasoning that would convince me.
Oh you, Fatso. 
Relatively it is quite the step. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1037?vs=1038
And yea the step down in the CPU, I’ll explain that a bit below.
Yea, so here’s my experience, I helped a lot of my friends build computers, and they are now playing the newest games, and they are finding the GPU is their bottleneck by far, for example my friend Max, had a GTS450, while albeit not the fastest card, he had an i5.
GPU technology is advancing MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than CPU technology. Theoretically a CPU should be able to last you much longer as long as you buy a decent one upfront because between generations you are getting minor performance increases. I’m going to illustrate this the best I can with benchmarks, but I can’t get all the data I need so it’s a bit tough, but I’ll explain…
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1036?vs=1135
This is a 3 generation gap of GPUs, and the performance increase is incredible.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=837
This is a 2 generation gap of CPUs and the performance increase looks negligible in comparison.
I know this is not a perfect comparison, because the generation gap is not quite the same, but lets look at a 2 generation gap for GPUs then
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1036?vs=1185
Even this is quite imperfect because the GTX690 has 2 graphics cards on one board, of which there is no equivalent from Nvidia today, except for third parties I believe. But even here you can see the difference between generations, how in two generations two cards were needed to get LESS performance on average. So lets look at one last, a GTX780 SLI which is basically two cards working together, but not on the same physical board vs a GTX590.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1063?vs=1185
So a two generation gap, with as close as we get to equivalence is blowing the old generation out of the water.
I did this to prove a point mostly, that GPU’s are moving more quickly than CPU’s so buying a better GPU seems to make more sense, buuuut also means that you may need to upgrade that even earlier. The goal would be to upgrade the CPU and GPU at the same time. Which is what I ended up doing in my own build. I went from a 9800GTX and e8400 to an i3 and GTX660ti at the same time, which is quite the improvement.
Though if you do want to drop down a bit on the GPU I would recommend getting a K-series CPU (4670K) and overclocking it. Though you need a different motherboard then too. (Z87)
I dropped the CPU down one model thingy, because it’s a .1GHz clockspeed difference, likely that extra 8 euros you were paying will maybe get you a 1% performance increase.
I think by GPU(graphics processing unit), you mean APU(advanced processing units), because GPUs come in APUs, rather than CPU(central processing units) coming in a GPU, which is often placed on a motherboard by itself to increase graphics slightly. The whole idea of an APU is that it includes multiple CPU and APU cores, for example my APU, and AMD A10-7850K has 4 CPU cores, and 8 GPU cores.
sorry if it’s hard to understand, brackets are for those who don’t know what all these terms are, and if you don’t understand it, ignore it, as I’m not entirely sure it makes sense
Wut? I dont want a Apu, the gpu aspect of them are often lacking in pure horse power.
I need me a dedicated gpu.
I think your confused to what is and what can be classed as a GPU, might want to look it up.
@sips; Thanks for clearing that up, im on the verge of scrapping my build and going with what you set up just cause 780, All the parts bar the cpu look alot better, you fiend XD
Also, Is the micro atx motherboard ok? whats your reasoning behind picking this particular board?
Also-also, since ill have two 2tb drives, what drive would you recommend me storing things like pics, vids, random documents on and which for install programs and games onto?
The two drives being this; http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002CPV2WG/?tag=pcp0f-21
and this; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-6GBps-Saving-Internal/dp/B0053YKMGA/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1402090526&sr=1-4&keywords=WD10EARS
AND!! Since im taking apart my current pc for parts, Could I go cheep on the windows 7 and just use the key with this pc? its a home premium version with the code labled on for activation. And if so how would i go about getting a install disk for this cheeply? as I dont have one (just a factory reset disk for this pc)
Yea don’t get an APU for this price range.
Honestly why I picked that board is that it was cheap and had decent reviews, although not perfect, though none are ever perfect. For my build I picked the cheapest motherboard I could get (which happens to be MicroATX as well) and am so happy. My previous one was $250, this one is $60.
So since you have an SSD in that build here’s how the drives should work.
C: SSD - Install Windows and all programs, and the games you use most frequently.
D: RE3 - Install every other game on this. Any files that you want to load a bit quicker
E: Green - As general storage, just anything really. Maybe use it as a backup drive if you don’t need all that space.
You can try to use that key, though I can’t guarantee it will work because it is probably an OEM key, meaning that it can only be used on that machine, or at least that’s my guess. You can download a Windows 7 ISO from Microsoft from:
http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24209.iso
And then put that on a flash drive using an ISO to USB tool to make it bootable, or if you know how yourself.
Of course you will still need a key, but you can run it for 30 days without activation I believe.
I also believe the key you have will not do a darn thing. They usually have a one time activation. When I had to reformat my machine, the key I had would not work, even though it was the same machine. I looked online for solutions…
Really? If the motherboard doesn’t change then you should be able to use the same key, I know I have in the past, even with OEM keys. If that was really the case you should call Microsoft because that key should work on the same machine despite being reformatted. I don’t know if they can do anything at this point, but that’s that.
Granted, this was with Win XP… I have not had an issue with keys or forced re-formats since.
Update for those interested, I have brought;
Patriot viper 8gbs ram
Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD3 (Thanks sip :D)
Western Digital - WD RE3 (Again tankies <3)
A sata cable, A ‘gaming’ mouse (cheep as can be so might be awful) And a Cherry MX-Board 3.0 (cause I wanted to try a mechanical keyboard and it was cheep).
Still got the rest to go that ill start buying at the end of the month, My basket list keeps changing cause im changing my mind so much, going back and forth from the 760 - 770 cause of power vs resolution required by me, and jumping between my 4440 cpu, sip’s cpu 4430 and a top of the haswell line 4690.
God Damn price vs awesomeness
Watch out for the new haswell refresh (4690 may be one i dont remember) the motherboard may not support it. Or you have to do a bios upgrade so you will have to get a CPU that works to upgrade it. There is maybe a 1% performance difference between the 4430 and 4440 because it is a .1GHz change in clock speed. Doesn’t matter either way honestly.
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=4674
This site says its a refresh version, what does that mean? should I ignore that cpu due to the refresh tag?
I did a quick search on refresh models, it would seem they’re just more efficient.
Your link would reinforce my theory too The refresh i7s are better than the standard i7s, likewise for i5s
But would it work with my motherboard? Thats the issue. If it does then SOLD! XD
All that should matter is the socket type. Since that list you posted is all the same socket, then there should be no issue. I had not heard of refreshes either. I would have thought it meant refurbished, but I guess I’m wrong.
Often on Z77 boards or similar you have to flash a new BIOS, to make them work. Yes they are the same socket but you have to be able to flash the bios meaning you have to have a CPU that already works in that socket. Save yourself the hassle and don’t buy a refresh.
Well screw that then! XD
Im gonna go for whatever is cheaper out of the 4430 and 4440 (on amazon the 4440 is actually cheaper at the moment by about £10, although might change once I get my money on the 1st)
Update 2.0, I have now got;
The samsung 120gb ssd
the i5 4440 cpu
the asus 760
a cx600m psu by corsair (semi modular)
And now im just waiting on the case! Tryed to get a arc midi 2 from a dealer but they craped out on me, so getting it cheeper elsewhere In about 2 days time, THEN LET THE BUILD BEGIN
SWEET AND THAT SHOULD BE A FANTASTIC CASE WOOOOOOO!