Advice on gaming PC specs

[Jimlaad43]

I'm looking for a PC to run games like Assetto Corsa and F1 2015 for the next few years,and just want some advice from you guys as to whether you think the kit I've selected would work, and if any of it is problematic. Max price of around £630 ish.

 

[AndrewBo]

I would recommend a large HD. 1 TB .

 

[Jimlaad43]

I would recommend a large HD. 1 TB .

This is just for gaming, I will still use my laptop for everything else.

 

[Peter]

The HDD is the bottleneck of the system, better change for a SSD.

 

[PaulH]

Stretch to a GTX 970 if possible & at least a 1TB HDD

 

[Jimlaad43]

Stretch to a GTX 970 if possible & at least a 1TB HDD

No. £630 is the price cap, those changes are way to expensive.

 

[Matheus Machado]

If it is the same price go for standard clock 16Gb of Ram and look for a 1TB HDD. I use mine only for gaming and already fullfilled 600GB of my 1 TB.

 

[Flying Kefran]

I'm looking for a PC to run games like Assetto Corsa and F1 2015 for the next few years,and just want some advice from you guys as to whether you think the kit I've selected would work, and if any of it is problematic. Max price of around £630 ish.
View attachment 117471

This is a good configuration.

A few comments:

HDD
If you use your PC only for gaming and do not install too many games, the 500 GB HDD will be enough.

RAM
"Fast RAM" does not really bring benefits compared to more standard ones (like 1600 Mhz), so you might have the opportunity to save some money there. 8 gigas are generally enough and it is the easiest thing to upgrade on a PC so I would not suggest to move to 16 gigas.

GPU
The GTX 960 is a good 2015 card but you just have to keep in mind that its performances are not future proof. As mentionned by others, the 970 is the current best perf/dollar choice so it is a good option if you can.
If not possible there is an alternative solution: If you do not want to increase the GPU cost, you can also think about buying your PC without graphic card and buy a second hand GTX 780 (non TI). It will cost more or less the same price as a new GTX 960 for a 30-40% perf bonus.

 

[Skazz]

Um, this is Skylake so DDR4 RAM. Stock speed is 2133MHz, not the old DDR3 1600MHz. But otherwise I agree on getting cheaper RAM if it's available and "only" hits 2133 or 2400MHz. Overclocked RAM gives you at maximum 0.5% performance boost in Skylake using a dedicated GPU in the benchmarks I've seen.

I would seriously not build a PC with only 8GB RAM for gaming right now, I'd go 16GB minimum because games are all going 64-bit and getting larger and larger.

The 960 to 970 jump in price is large, but it's without doubt the best way to get more performance.
I also wonder if there's a cheaper motherboard than the Z170-Pro available in your list. There are some Asus 100-series motherboards which are about half the price of the Z170-Pro.

 

[Frank]

Changing the HDD to a 1TB version with more cache will really improve your build without it costing too much. In the future you can always upgrade your build with an SSD, but on your limited budget that is not something I would do now.

RAM is something you can always upgrade in the future, so stick with the 8GB for now, but I would definitely recommend going for 16GB when you have the extra money for it. Your board has 4 slots, so that will be a non issue. For the current and coming race games 16GB is really not that mandatory, yet.

As for the GPU, I would personally go for a 970 and go for a cheaper motherboard as @Skazz stated. Just be mindful on the future RAM upgrades you might do, but if you find a board with only 2 slots you can always go for a single DIMM of 8GB and put a second next to it when you got the cash.

 

[Keith Joyce]

Have you looked at the Yoyotech RS10? I just bought one - a very sweet machine for £599.00