I have always been interested in the differences between consoles capabilities, I like to see which games look better on which consoles and I’m addicted to watching graphics comparisons on newly released games.

Often these graphics comparison videos show footage from  Xbox, Playstation and PC, though I paid closest attention to the consoles I was also jealously watching the PC footage in awe of how it was always ahead of the competition by a long way. So I have decided to stop fretting about differences between consoles and just dive into the complex pool of PC parts, heat sinks, CPU’s GPU’s memory and RAM (“memory IS RAM!”) and this is my experience.

Deciding on PC parts is best described as messy. There seemed to be no starting point apart from scrolling through forums and looking at other builds to see patterns. The problem here is that everyone has their own opinions on which parts are better and why, one person will swear that an Nvidea GTX 970 is the perfect card whereas another will raise the fact that they falsely advertised 4GB of memory and it actually has 3.5GB memory and 500mb for…. You get what I mean.

The method I found useful was choosing a particular part, Googling that and seeing if anyone recommended another instead. This meant that I was able to at least have something to work on and for the most part if there was a better option it would be mentioned somewhere, fortunately I also have a friend who is a master builder and so could consult him for advice when needed. Eventually I had my PC wish list saved to pcpartpicker.com and I felt confident in the parts I’d chosen, all whilst remaining on a budget.

CASE

NZXT H440 WHITE

£97.99

I chose this case because it’s a looker and a do-er, many of the cases I found either looked good and had little air flow or had loads of air flow and looked like something Optimus Prime had thrown up. I wanted to be able to see the internals because whats the point in building your own PC if you can’t revel in its glory every time you turn it on. I also wanted a blue and white theme and so felt safe in committing to the idea of a H440 as it’s available in many colours so I could base my build on it and not worry about changing my mind on the colour scheme. The case has a total of four fans included and has excellent airflow, making use of the vents along the top. The case is also raised a fair bit above ground level which further helps. The downside to the case is that it has no slots available for any form of disk tray, the front section does have a removable panel but when removed it simply reveals more fans, no space for disk tray. This did not dissuade me as honestly I can’t remember when I’ve last used an actual disk for anything. The H440 comes with four pre-installed fans and the case is made almost entirely out of steel which makes it look that bit more professional than the various plastic cases around the same price range.

MEMORY

HyperX 240GB SATA3 3K 2.5-inch Gaming SSD Drive

£79.99

Recognising the Kingston name on a post on www.hotukdeals.com someone posted a link to this reduced SSD and honestly I just couldn’t find anything to beat it at that price range. The write speeds seem best in class, and I couldn’t find one bad review of it. An SSD seemed an absolutely necessary purchase at least for the installation of the operating system as it affects the boot time and overall nippiness of the system. No point scrimping to get a slower hard drive with more space, PC’s are built for SPEED!

 

GRAPHICS

GIGABYTE GTX 960

£170

At the end of the day, the reason I’m building all this is to create a machine that is superior to current gen consoles, so scrimping on the graphics card was not an option. I made up my mind from the beginning that the card I went for would be an Nvidea, I wanted the card to be as quiet as possible whilst still retaining a lot of power for the money. After reading various reviews I saw that the Gigabyte was consistently favoured over other brands, most notably for its copper heatpipes and unique fan style that remains consistently quiet, with the fans only individually turning on when needed.

Of course I nearly fell into the trap of going from the 960, to the 970 then to the highest spec 970 to the 980 and then I realised I was verging on £500 just for the GPU and I decided to calm down. The GeForce GTX 960 is a great card that gives excellent performance for value, all whilst remaining very cool and quiet which is also important. This card gives great results whilst not breaking the bank and in the future can be combined with another GTX 960 via SLI for even more power.

 

Fortunately I was able to have a CPU and Motherboard donated so I was able to save money in regards to those components:

Motherboard : MSI 790FX-GD70

CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz Quad Core

The main attraction to having your own PC is that you can modify the internals at your own pace, essentially it is a constantly evolving machine. The motherboard and CPU I have for this build are fine and don’t limit the performance of my other components, though when it comes to upgrading my graphics card, or running two GPU’s via SLI then my Motherboard/CPU will also need an upgrade. Until then I have a comfortable build that can handle any current gen game thrown at it, and will evolve over time as more components are added and taken away.

 

 

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