Build a PC for Rome 2 / Hardware Recommendations and Advice Thread

[A Barbarian]

No, S2 is effectively (there is some stuff going on in secundary threads and also the OS needs some CPU time but the limiting stuff is really bottlenecked on a single core) single core, trust me. Also, since the i3 also has 2 cores, a program needs to use at least 3 cores so that the FX can make up for the lower single core performance.

Proper multicore support is really the feature I want most from Rome 2. Most other stuff like A.I., more factions, ... can (hopefully) be modded in but multicore support can only be implemented by CA. But you have to design the whole engine from ground up with multithreading in mind, otherwise the possible gains are quite small.

[Jedi]

No, S2 is effectively (there is some stuff going on in secundary threads and also the OS needs some CPU time but the limiting stuff is really bottlenecked on a single core) single core, trust me. Also, since the i3 also has 2 cores, a program needs to use at least 3 cores so that the FX can make up for the lower single core performance.

Proper multicore support is really the feature I want most from Rome 2. Most other stuff like A.I., more factions, ... can (hopefully) be modded in but multicore support can only be implemented by CA. But you have to design the whole engine from ground up with multithreading in mind, otherwise the possible gains are quite small.

Hey dont mention the fact that it is a huge waste of money and our cpu power by neglecting to get all four cores or more used up to near 70% + usage like BF3 can.I can only imagine what could be done with troops numbers if my 3570k at 4.7 was getitng maxed out :O


And for the tutorial there should only need to be a few lines about the actual parts.Most of it should be aimed at the actual building which if done with certain parts like corsair coolers makes things a hell of a lot less daunting.If you can understand the basics on youtube which you will after 1hr or less tutorial you CAN do it yourself!


First on the list should be the 3570k.Nothing else comes close forget AMD! Cooled by a corsair H60-H80i depending on your budget is a great option.
Then you need a Z77 motherboard of your choice depending on if you want PCI.
Next should be fast ram.Faster ram opens up the bandwidth and helps the cpu out doing extreme physics simulation like totalwar mass melee.8GB of samsung green or kingston 2133mhz ram can be had for a good price.I got 16GB for £65!
A quality corsair PSU is next and you should ideally be looking at 650-850 watt models.More psu power will help future proof your purchase.
Then just buy the case and the best graphics card you can afford.
A small SSD is also highly desireable.Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 models are perfect.My choice would be the 128GB model.


Ta-da

[Biggus Splenus]

Not everyone can afford what you have listed though. 16GB is an absolute overkill though, most games don't even use 8GB. You don't need a power supply between 650 and 850W, 500W is enough for any single graphics card. The FX 8350 should not be forgotten, it runs just as good as the Intel i5 3570k on games that are threaded properly, like Crysis 3 and Farcry 3, but Shogun 2 isn't one of these games. More about you RAM choice, you definitely don't need to spend more money on fast ram. 1600Mhz is ideal for gaming, higher speeds make the smallest difference. Besides, you can just overclock your ram to any speed you want.

And the case should always be decided on last. You don't want to cheap out on a GPU just because you bought a great looking case.

Choosing your PC parts isn't that straight forward.

[A Barbarian]

1600Mhz is ideal for gaming, higher speeds make the smallest difference.

That's usually right, but again Shogun 2 is an exception here. Most games get maybe 1 or 2 percent (if any) speed bump from a 50% RAM speed difference but Shogun 2 gains almost 10% on average (and I would imagine that it gains more on the minimum values):

Besides, you can just overclock your ram to any speed you want.

Really? So you buy a noname 1333 Mhz RAM and overclock it to 2000 Mhz? Good luck. Also, which voltage and timings are you going to use? Overclocking RAM is actually more complicated than overclocking most CPUs or GPUs since there are more parameters (voltages, RAM timings). At least if you want more than a 10% overclock. The overclocking headroom is also influenced by the number of modules, 4 modules usually aren't as easily overclocked as 2 since the all modules have to be able to reach the same overclock and 4 modules put more stress on the chipset. Also don't forget that the voltage on the RAM has an influence on the CPU since the recent CPU generations, the memory controller is now embedded within the CPU.

Here is an example of the relation of speed to voltage and timings (and this is for one set of 2 modules, with a different set of 2 modules or with 4 modules it would look different):

[Tkcons]

I over clocked my 1333 to 2000 without a problem, using Kingston. I originally only bought 8 GB, but found another 8 GB on sale for $30.00. I have never used the 16 GB, but having the extra memory allows me a more stable overclock, as my mobo, switches amongst the Ram, and dynamically overclocks the CPU for single threaded and dual threaded applications. I really don't understand the point of overclocking the RAM, except that it allowed for a more stable CPU over clock. I have a 965 Deneb over locked on air to 3.87 with single and dual threaded applications punching it to 4.47 on single and 4.37 on dual. I was unable to achieve this overclock on air until I over clocked the RAM.

[Jedi]

Not everyone can afford what you have listed though. 16GB is an absolute overkill though, most games don't even use 8GB. You don't need a power supply between 650 and 850W, 500W is enough for any single graphics card. The FX 8350 should not be forgotten, it runs just as good as the Intel i5 3570k on games that are threaded properly, like Crysis 3 and Farcry 3, but Shogun 2 isn't one of these games. More about you RAM choice, you definitely don't need to spend more money on fast ram. 1600Mhz is ideal for gaming, higher speeds make the smallest difference. Besides, you can just overclock your ram to any speed you want.

And the case should always be decided on last. You don't want to cheap out on a GPU just because you bought a great looking case.

Choosing your PC parts isn't that straight forward.

No offence buddy but you got pretty much everything wrong there apart from 16GB being overkill... Faster ram does help and games do use 8GB.Im not going to go get benchmarks from tomshardware again but games and windows combined will start pushing 8GB very soon.Hell the sims shows fps increases right up to 6GB!

And buying a 500w PSU is simply going to gimp your entire purchase.If someone builds a new pc the first thing they should be doing is buying the best processor they can afford with some fast 8GB ram.Unless these noobs are going to rip out the processor later on and upgrade and by having a 500w PSU you have essentially killed thier upgrade path.

Are you going to run a gtx 680 on a 500w psu? Thats a fire hazard!


Unless you want to be stuck with a rig that cannot be upgraded go ahead and buy that 500w psu.In the meantime people i have built for are using corsair 650w power supplys and 3570k cpus and can in 2-3 years time drop in any high end card they wish (Nvidia 7000 series) to revamp thier computers and bring it back to life.This is something you cannot do on a budget 500w psu build.Yes it may hurt you now to take most of your budget and not use it on a graphics card but in 2 years time when that card shows its age and needs upgraded you have the perfect rig to house a new card.

[A Barbarian]

and games do use 8GB.Im not going to go get benchmarks from tomshardware again but games and windows combined will start pushing 8GB very soon.Hell the sims shows fps increases right up to 6GB!

Considering the relatively low prices I also recommend at least 8GB (2x4GB modules, not 4x2GB) but since almost all games are still 32 bit and therefore limited to 4GB (older games often to 2GB) address space, the actual benefits for games are not very big.

I found this quote on Toms-Hardware:

So far, so annoying. Other than the 64-bit client of Half-Life 2 with the Bombast mod installed, hardly any game sees an increase in frames per second using more RAM.

[Toho]

This thread is pretty useless at this point.
what you could do is put budget brackets. like 700-900, 900-1100, 1100-1300, 1300-1500 and 1500+

you then list different parts for each budget bracket that the forum users can follow and buy, that was one of the most complicated steps for me since I had no idea what was good and what was bad for Rome 2.
and then with the parts listed you post some general instructions, warnings and tips on assembling these parts.

THATS what you should be doing. this thread is pretty pointless now and can't even be called a tutorial at this point. it is just misleading.

Edit:
and to answer your question(Poll); both, it helps a lot if you show where each part goes individually making a long ass video of 30 minutes wont help making several 5 mint videos that have an introduction before them and 'show' an example after the explanation would be very useful.
its obvious you want to help people and I believe as someone who needed the help of a friend to get my own PC build set up that doing what I suggested above would be infinitely more useful and it would warrant a sticky in the Basement Sub-Thread.

[Biggus Splenus]

Well yeah, its not a tutorial yet obviously, but I was waiting to see what kind of tutorials people want before I made them.

I was going to make recommended fixed-price builds, say one at $700, another at $900, $1100, $1300, $1500, $1700, $1900+. Then under each of these recommended builds, I would make a some suggestions on how to improve the build overall for about another $100 (so that the improved version would be half way between its original, and it's next step up, if that makes sense). Do you think this is a good idea?

I won't be including monitors and/or mice and keyboards, but I will have a separate section for them on what I would recommend for different price ranges too.

[magpie]

I would assume as CA are using the Warscape engine for Rome II then the specifications are not going to change from the previous TW titles using that engine?

Seem,s one would be better off waiting to see what they come up with before spending a bundle on a new computer, Where Rome II may not be able to use all the super new technology?

[Totalheadache]

I would assume as CA are using the Warscape engine for Rome II then the specifications are not going to change from the previous TW titles using that engine?

Seem,s one would be better off waiting to see what they come up with before spending a bundle on a new computer, Where Rome II may not be able to use all the super new technology?

exactly this. but if some of you are unsure on builds get reading up. i always link this as it's a good basic intro..

i actually took apart my old pc first and figured out what was what, rest was history as they say. that was 5yrs or so back so was a bit harder in them days


http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=237103

some of the old cpu installations were such a pain in the ass...

p.s and yes some parts are to be avoided so brand research is important as is the company you buy from and their "period of grace" where you have time to build and send back when necessary. that's why getting all your main build stuff around the same time and having a good couple of days to figure it is a good idea.

even choosing the right fan can matter as you dont want that uber build being let down by noise etc etc.

[A Barbarian]

I would assume as CA are using the Warscape engine for Rome II then the specifications are not going to change from the previous TW titles using that engine?

They said that they are going to make some bigger changes to the engine for Rome II but never talked about any details. So there is a certain chance that they actually improved the multi-core usage for example. But we will only find out when the game has been released since CA never gave out any exact information about such things only very coarse information or marketing talk like 'Shogun 2 supports multiple cores' which they can already claim because they have that web-component (based on the Google Chromium/Webkit) serving game related ads in the main screen, lol.

Also, even the graphics engine from the Shogun 2 demo which was released right before the real game was quite different from the engine in the game. With the demo I was able to force MSAA which looked better than the latest DX11 MSAA implementation they have in FOTS because that one is bugged.

[Shigawire]

Well, I've built my own computers since the 1990s, but I think this would be a valuable contribution, so I don't see why not!
I'm sure there are people who would appreciate it. I just built a new computer for a friend of mine this friday, he mostly uses it for graphical work though.

[Toho]

to the OP and anyone else thats interested in doing this.
as a noob that knows nothing much about computers just do what I said and this thread will be a gold mine for people like me.

tell us the budget and preferred parts to buy. give us written instructions and a short video that demonstrates the instructions.
make both instructions and the videos short but always have little notes at the bottom for further explanations, tips and warnings.

[vietanh797]

if you just want a PC run S2 good I suggest
Core i3 or i5 if you have money, Ivy bridge type please since they allow you to have PCIEx16 run at 3.0
Ram 4GB is enough for S2, 8GB is just waste of money if you only go for S2 or Rome 2
MB should be Gigabyte, they tend to be more stable than other brands, but you should buy one that allow you upgrade later on not the one that won't sell anymore after 2 years
VGA is important but if you not plan to play game that too old(released 2005 or earlier) then you can try the HD7770 it is quite ok for new game I personally choose MSI brand, I was a fan of Nvidia(they good for RTS game) but lately the those AMD cards is cheaper and better.
PSU about 550W is good to go, but if you want to upgrade your PC later then you may want to choose a 750W, I don't think you will need to go higher than 750W for a gaming PC since it is stupid to use bunch of VGA cards for gaming.
I don't really care about HDD the old one still good and I have time to waste no need to buys expensive HDD that can't store much data and just only help you run a little faster

[Biggus Splenus]

No offence buddy but you got pretty much everything wrong there apart from 16GB being overkill...

Actually, the thing is that I didn't.

8GB is fine, ask any PC gamer that builds his own pc and has tried both 8GB and 16GB. I've done it, and there is no noticeable difference at all. Period. This cannot be argued.

500W is fine on a tight budget build, which is why I chose it for him.

In a full system with the 680, the PC won't even consume 400W of power, it will be between 340-370W, so no where near a fire hazard, still enough room for expansion, and plenty of room for an upgrade. The 7970 however will consume 400W IN A FULL SYSTEM. So there is no need for a higher watt PSU unless you want to SLI/CFX, which obviously cannot be done when you are on a $700-800 budget PC build, like I listed before. You have to know that you don't need a PSU that has 300W excess all the time, you fit your PSU to the rest of your system, just like with all other parts. It's actually really simple.

You say that in a few years he might want to upgrade his GPU, and that the PSU will stop him. This is actually a really stupid assumption. GPUs will not continuosly develop to suck out more power, they are developing for more efficient performance. For example, compare the 680 to the 570. The 570 is much less powerful, but uses more wattage (30W more at max load). If you want a more 'blanced' comparison, then compare the 580 to the 680; 680 sill out performs the crap out of the 580, and consumes 60W less at full load. Another example is the current Nvidia and AMD GPU architecture; Nvidias is more advanced (arguably perhaps), which is why their GPUs can perform on-par (most times) with AMDs at a lower wattage. By the way, I am strickly talking GPU architecture here, not including GDDR5 memory or anything else.

In Nvidia's next GTX series, there will definitely be a much better performance/wattage ratio, which has continuously developed since, well, graphics cards existed. So to end you assumption, your should really consider researching into this and getting your facts right.

Please do not reply to this post saying "no I'm right, your wrong", because I know that just isn't true. I'll try to get some bigger tech heads than myself down here just to confirm this.




...... Ok, now about the your post vietanh

PCIE 3.0 is actually more geared for the future, you will have trouble finding a game these days that will actually max out PCIE 2.0's bandwidth. So 3.0 isn't essential, but it's the best thing to get anyway because Ivy Bridge is currently the most modern CPU, and cost the same as the older ones.

About the RAM part you mentioned... TW seems to be very reliant on RAM speeds and size (which I forgot to mention earlier ), so this is a game when all your RAM specs can make a noticeable difference. 4GB will be fine for an i3 or a low end i5, but if your going with the i5 3570k, then 8GB of RAM will actually be used well.

It's not exactly correct to refer him to Gigabyte. On a budget, ASRock is definitely the best. They offer the exact same hardware features as the bigger brands, like Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS, but they are a fair bit cheaper. The later 3 brands have better software though. But to be honest, if your on a tight budget, ASRock Z77 boards are they way to go. They also have the least return rates = more reliability. ASUS currently have the highest, which is quite shocking.

For the graphics card.... 7770 is not a good choice, it will only run good on S2 if you pair it with a high end CPU. It's definitely worth investing the few more bucks into a 7850, or better yet, even a few more for the 7870 (owning the best price/performance ratio on the market right now). The lowest end "gaming" graphics cards are the 7850 and 600, any lower and you will notice a huge drop in performance.

Your post on PSU is well stated, but 750W is only going to be necessary for SLI or CFX. My friend has 2 7970's running on a 760W PSU and it never maxes it out, runs amazing.

And yeah, with a HDD you only want to choose between Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital (in order of reliability; WD most reliable). It's best to get 1TB drives of these, because any higher will have multiple platter = less reliability (although most people wont ever see it fail, so its only a tiny difference, not worth considering, so forget I mentioned it ).

[Jedi]

Actually, the thing is that I didn't.

8GB is fine, ask any PC gamer that builds his own pc and has tried both 8GB and 16GB. I've done it, and there is no noticeable difference at all. Period. This cannot be argued.

500W is fine on a tight budget build, which is why I chose it for him.

In a full system with the 680, the PC won't even consume 400W of power, it will be between 340-370W, so no where near a fire hazard, still enough room for expansion, and plenty of room for an upgrade. The 7970 however will consume 400W IN A FULL SYSTEM. So there is no need for a higher watt PSU unless you want to SLI/CFX, which obviously cannot be done when you are on a $700-800 budget PC build, like I listed before. You have to know that you don't need a PSU that has 300W excess all the time, you fit your PSU to the rest of your system, just like with all other parts. It's actually really simple.

You say that in a few years he might want to upgrade his GPU, and that the PSU will stop him. This is actually a really stupid assumption. GPUs will not continuosly develop to suck out more power, they are developing for more efficient performance. For example, compare the 680 to the 570. The 570 is much less powerful, but uses more wattage (30W more at max load). If you want a more 'blanced' comparison, then compare the 580 to the 680; 680 sill out performs the crap out of the 580, and consumes 60W less at full load. Another example is the current Nvidia and AMD GPU architecture; Nvidias is more advanced (arguably perhaps), which is why their GPUs can perform on-par (most times) with AMDs at a lower wattage. By the way, I am strickly talking GPU architecture here, not including GDDR5 memory or anything else.

In Nvidia's next GTX series, there will definitely be a much better performance/wattage ratio, which has continuously developed since, well, graphics cards existed. So to end you assumption, your should really consider researching into this and getting your facts right.

Please do not reply to this post saying "no I'm right, your wrong", because I know that just isn't true. I'll try to get some bigger tech heads than myself down here just to confirm this.

Well firstly i never said anything about the speed difference between 8 or 16GB of ram.What i said was you were wrong about saying above 1600mhz makes no difference when it does and more so on AMD 8 cores which need 2400mhz to really open them up.

And its not even about watts with a psu.Its is about amps on the 12v rail.The corsair 500w has 34A on the 12v rail.GTX 680 requires 550w minimum with 38A on the 12v rail.You are not even taking into consideration the potential overclocks or SSD,CDROM,FANS etc.And im sure you have lots of experience in this kind of thing when your date of birth is 1995? Your giving out bad advice and someone is going to be stuck with some crappy generic 500w psu when they could simply go with a quality corsair 620w for a few bucks more.Just look around on google for a few gtx 680 500w psu threads.

How many 500w builds have you tested personally or builds where people skimp on the heart of the system? Running a psu near its limits day in day out is asking for psu failure.And when it takes out the rest of the system which happened on a friends corsair 620w then you have to ask questions about other brands when corsair are the best in the business.I know it may be temping to you all guys to save some money on the psu and put it into the graphics card but im telling you its a major mistake i made on a build a few years ago.

Not only did my 600w OCZ GameXstream fail but it would not of powered a GTX 580.It blocked my upgrade path and i made sure i never had it happen again.If you want to learn this lesson the hard way then please be my guest.

[vietanh797]

...... Ok, now about the your post vietanh

PCIE 3.0 is actually more geared for the future, you will have trouble finding a game these days that will actually max out PCIE 2.0's bandwidth. So 3.0 isn't essential, but it's the best thing to get anyway because Ivy Bridge is currently the most modern CPU, and cost the same as the older ones.

About the RAM part you mentioned... TW seems to be very reliant on RAM speeds and size (which I forgot to mention earlier ), so this is a game when all your RAM specs can make a noticeable difference. 4GB will be fine for an i3 or a low end i5, but if your going with the i5 3570k, then 8GB of RAM will actually be used well.

It's not exactly correct to refer him to Gigabyte. On a budget, ASRock is definitely the best. They offer the exact same hardware features as the bigger brands, like Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS, but they are a fair bit cheaper. The later 3 brands have better software though. But to be honest, if your on a tight budget, ASRock Z77 boards are they way to go. They also have the least return rates = more reliability. ASUS currently have the highest, which is quite shocking.

For the graphics card.... 7770 is not a good choice, it will only run good on S2 if you pair it with a high end CPU. It's definitely worth investing the few more bucks into a 7850, or better yet, even a few more for the 7870 (owning the best price/performance ratio on the market right now). The lowest end "gaming" graphics cards are the 7850 and 600, any lower and you will notice a huge drop in performance.

Your post on PSU is well stated, but 750W is only going to be necessary for SLI or CFX. My friend has 2 7970's running on a 760W PSU and it never maxes it out, runs amazing.

And yeah, with a HDD you only want to choose between Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital (in order of reliability; WD most reliable). It's best to get 1TB drives of these, because any higher will have multiple platter = less reliability (although most people wont ever see it fail, so its only a tiny difference, not worth considering, so forget I mentioned it ).

Well I also plan to do upgrade later which save money so that's why I suggested a ivy bridge.

I think with bus 1333 4GB ram is good but still it only cost you 1 or 2 ram slots for 4 GB, we can easily buy another 4GB since ram are cheap now, out of everything ram is most easy one to upgrade. That should not be a problem

I mostly use MB from Gigabyte since I use them for quite a long time(each MB for 5 years at least). This brand seem unlikely to have a broken down or dead chip compare to others.

I am using i3 2100(which is sandy bridge but I don't have money to upgrade it now so have to live with it) and HD7770(yeah that make this card run at PCIEx16 2.0) and it work pretty good for me here so I don't think I will need to upgrade for Rome 2, of course if you want a max settings then HD7770 not a good choice but I not aim for max settings. Also bugget wise HD7770 is cheaper than 650GT i believed.

750W PSU should be need if you running a i7 with some high consuming card, for a HD7770 which only need about 80W then a 500W PSU(actually 450W is already fine) is fine but a card need 150W-200W then I really think you will need 750W PSU which allow you to upgrade later on

I agree about HDD


My old system was Pen E 3.1 Ghz ram 3GB, inno 3D 8600GT DDR3 and it still can run S2 (lol I was expecting that I able to run Rome 2 with that PC but my last job gave me a chance to get my current system)

[Biggus Splenus]

Well, stalking my age is a little creepy, but I won't talk about that now.

Sorry about the RAM mix-up, I was reading a few posts at a time and confused myself.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Anyway, back to what is necessary. I suggested this build with an i3 and the 7870 (at the highest, might not even be able to fit this into the budget), because it's a really tight budget build. You can't tell me that a 520W PSU will do fine with this? Maybe a worthy upgrade is getting Antec's 620W HCG power supply, and an extra 10-20 $$$.

By the way, if you where to go with a Corsair PSU you would have to get a CX series, which are not as good as Antec's HCG series. When on this budget, HCG is the way to go.

About amps and wattage; you are taking this somewhere that I never even thought it would reach. Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU? I never said that, I'm talking about the 7870 at the highest here. I did say before that the 680 would use under 400W at the max, but I didn't suggest to run the bloody thing on a 500W PSU, that's silly. But the Antec 520W HCG has 40amps and 480W on the 12v rail, so it would be ok anyway. The 620W version has 48amps and about 580W on that rail.

Some cheap PSU's are rubbish, but Antec's HCG series are geared for gaming (as the series title suggests), and focus on the 12v rail, which is why it's a quality choice.

[Jedi]

Well, stalking my age is a little creepy, but I won't talk about that now.

Sorry about the RAM mix-up, I was reading a few posts at a time and confused myself.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Anyway, back to what is necessary. I suggested this build with an i3 and the 7870 (at the highest, might not even be able to fit this into the budget), because it's a really tight budget build. You can't tell me that a 520W PSU will do fine with this? Maybe a worthy upgrade is getting Antec's 620W HCG power supply, and an extra 10-20 $$$.

By the way, if you where to go with a Corsair PSU you would have to get a CX series, which are not as good as Antec's HCG series. When on this budget, HCG is the way to go.

About amps and wattage; you are taking this somewhere that I never even thought it would reach. Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU? I never said that, I'm talking about the 7870 at the highest here. I did say before that the 680 would use under 400W at the max, but I didn't suggest to run the bloody thing on a 500W PSU, that's silly. But the Antec 520W HCG has 40amps and 480W on the 12v rail, so it would be ok anyway. The 620W version has 48amps and about 580W on that rail.

Some cheap PSU's are rubbish, but Antec's HCG series are geared for gaming (as the series title suggests), and focus on the 12v rail, which is why it's a quality choice.

Well i posted something very fast to give people an idea on how they should go about building and you replied with

Not everyone can afford what you have listed though. 16GB is an absolute overkill though, most games don't even use 8GB. You don't need a power supply between 650 and 850W, 500W is enough for any single graphics card.

I am simply telling you it is not and people could get the wrong idea on how important the power supply is.Maybe you made a mistake there but thats cool and yes 500w is enough for an i3 build and those amps sound plenty.Its going to be silly preparing to put something better GFX wise beside an i3 as its simply going to bottleneck it.

Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU?

I am not i tried to run it on 600w which is where i learn my biggest lesson.I built my pc with most of my budget going on an 8800 GTX and went for a dual core and 600w psu which was a fatal error.I wanted to get a 580 for my new pc and use it in the old one until my budget was ready but low and behold the 600w psu was stopping me and it went on to die 9 months later alongside my 8800 gtx.If i did not skimp on a crappy £60 psu i probably could of used my gtx 580 and the core 2 duo would of did nicely in games that dont give a crap about cpu power.This is why i always reccomend a good corsair psu and the best cpu you can afford.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Seasonic are corsair.Corsair do not make anything they simply rebrand and adjust existing power supplies and give them a 7 year warranty.My AX850 powers the system in my sig and im 99% sure it is a rebranded seasonic as the fan never comes on ever unless its load hits a certain threshhold.As i dont push the psu there is no fan,blissful silence and the efficency stays at roughly 90% so i save money on my electric bill too.And im safe in the fact i know if need be i could SLI titans or whatever else comes to mind.