£1100 Gaming Build

What makes the msi one so bad?
Ok i'll have a look at both of them and try and make sense of it all

 

When I built my machine last August I got this:


All in it was <£1150. The VTX 7950 X-Edition was total **** and got replaced by a MSI 7950 TF3 so add an extra £10 for that.

 

What did you think of the monitor? Seems that is the last thing that i need to figure out on what one to get, basically the best i can get sub £200

 

Monitor is amazing for the price. Usually I change the colour settings and stuff but all I did on this was change the Default to Game Mode and never touched it since. Its nice, detailed and vibrant. Highly recommended it for a cheap 24" Montior. Unless you have the cash for a Dell Ultrasharp

 

There have been a lot of reliability concerns of late with MSI, especially with their motherboards. The board will probably function just fine to be honest, but the "Gaming" moniker is marketing.

 

Oh noes, what kind of reliability? Again sry for all the questions, new to all of this, my first build and what not

 

As I said, I'm more jaded toward them than anything else. I'm sure any components you buy from MSI will function quite well. However, I've noted a number of motherboard failures across these forums and others over the past year or so. More so than any other brand. There was also a bad shipment of MSI 7950's a few months ago, which saw a lot of returns. The same holds for certain other GPU's they build.

 

But apart from the recent reliability, has everything been ok, i mean they have a warranty?

 

Of course, but do be aware that should something go wrong some companies are easier to work with than others. One of the reasons I tend to recommend Gigabyte to UK members is because they've fantastic support and a base of operations in Milton Keynes, which helps turn-around immensely compared to certain other companies where you may have to send a product overseas.



The image is pertinent to OCUK and in regard to GPU's, but it gives you a good idea in general. Most UK shops will honour returns within a certain period (Usually a year).

 

Oh awesome that's really helpful actually, i've liked the asus products in the past, but had crappy service from them. I just really want someone who has one of those msi gaming boards to make a review or something on them, hard to compare against a z77 from gigabyte that is amazing, with no reviews

 

http://hitechlegion.com/reviews/motherboards/34125-msi-z77a-g45-gaming

There's a review for you at least, although I'm not sure how legit that website is. You'll probably be waiting a long time to find an actual owner of that specific board. The major selling point of that product seems to be the "killer" NIC, which is essentially a gaming branded network card that supposedly helps keep latency low. As far as I'm concerned it's snake oil, as is the 'Creative Audio' feature - which falsely claims to give you sound quality on par with a modern sound card.

 

Likes:

Black and Red Theme
PCI-E 3.0 x16 Spacing
Crossfire and SLI ready
Sound Blaster Cinema Audio
Click BIOS II
OC Genie II
Dual BIOS protection
Solid capacitors and SFC Chokes
PCI-E Gen 3.0
Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN
3000MHZ (OC) DDR3 support
10 Potential USB 2.0 Ports
Aesthetically Pleasing Heatsinks



Dislikes:

Long Video Cards in the 1st PCI-E slot hang over SATA connections
No Wireless Features
No E-SATA
Sooooo... what is E-SATA? From that review i'm convinced to get that board

 

The 'likes' are things commonly found on other boards in the price range. That said, it does seem to be a fairly good motherboard for the price.

E-Sata is essentially an external sata connector for storage devices (hard drives).

 

So if i was going to get a HHD and a SSD i could just use the two Sata 3 ports that it has? or do i need the eSATA?
I thought that the features of this board seem about the same if not more than any of the other boards, and it looks amazing too!
I was going to ask, noone seems to ahve done a review on the EVGA 660ti 3gb ftw+ edition, know anyone that has one? I'm sort of worried about the stock cooler that it has on it, dont know if it would do enough of a job compared with the MSI twin or gigabyte 3x windforce (i may have butchered some of those names....)

 

E-sata is basically legacy with USB 3.0 being as fast.

 

Unless you make use of external storage, esata isn't relevant to you. As for the GPU, if I was going to buy a Nvidia card I'd go EVGA. You can't go wrong with the company, I wouldn't worry about the cooler.

 

Awesome, thanks for clearing that up

Oooh got there too slow hehe but tyvm for clearing that one up, and ok i'll go for that card, i mean the benchmarks for the other ones are really good, so the best version must be better surely also thought the 3gb would make it slightly more future proof Okies if you're sure then i belive you Anything else i should think about changing before i order it in a few days?
EDIT: like the SSD or anything at all... still not sure about the monitor either

 

Pshh. T'was but a crafty ninja!

I'd actually consider making a seperate thread with your max budget for the monitor. There's a lot of information in here and people might pass it over. I'm not usually one for multi-threads as some people take advantage, but in some cases it's warranted. You'll get more responses, I could offer some advice but my knowledge on the subject is limited. I'd hate to steer you in the wrong direction.

 

Okies, well what would your advice be on the front? I find that if i end up asking too many people, i'll just end up getting confused like i did over the mobo and gpu

 

You should be able to get a BenQ XL2411T (120hz monitor) for around that prince range, which would be a good option. While you may not make full use of it now, if you do SLI you'll be hitting higher frames and may appreciate it more. That said, with some of the games you've listed you should easily hit the 120fps mark consistantly. Another option would be a cheap IPS, which will generally look better but potentially have worse response times, and at that price a lower refresh rate.