DIY gaming part 4: Motherboard, processor & memory

It’s been a while since the last DIY article, which was back in May. I have, however, at last committed to the next major stage of my new system build. In fact, this is the most major stage, being that it forms the skeleton, brain and memory of the new machine.

Given that I’m chasing a fairly impossible power/value sweet spot, it took a while to pinpoint exactly what to go for. While researching I stumbled across this excellent hardware guide by CynicalCyanide over on the Star Citizen forums. It’s an excellent primer for buying computer tech in 2014 and it clarified a lot of my decisions – and also saved me a bit of money here and there with its pragmatic approach.

Star Citizen has become one of my ‘target games’, being a title which is majorly stressing my current system. In fact, it’s the first game I’ve encountered which I have to run on ‘low’ settings. I’ve not had that experience since the first Crysis on my previous rig, back in 2011.

After much deliberation, I settled on the following pieces:

• Motherboard: Asus Z97-A. From reviews and general comments this appears to be a very, very good mobo for a good price. It’s sits in the top end of the value pricing bracket but has features you’d associate with something much more expensive. It’s also a Z97, which means it’s relatively up-to-date. Currently there’s also a £30 cashback on this over at DABS, as long as you buy it with…
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K. It was always a showdown between an i5 and an i7 but, ultimately, the i7s are still too expensive for me. They also don’t present immediate benefits for gaming, though I suspect that’ll start to change over the next couple of years. Therefore the i5 is a bit of a risk in terms of future proofing, but it’s an overclockable CPU and up the high end of the i5s – it seems to be the ‘go to’ CPU for gamers.
• RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz. I’d originally planned to go for some G.Skill stuff as it’s highly rated but availability is a bit all over the place here in the UK, so I instead opted for Corsair. It’s a brand I’ve used in the past and they’re known for reliability. It’s also the same brand as my new rig’s CPU.

These pieces should arrive early next week. It’s been YEARS since I last built an entirely new machine, so that should be an interesting experience. The most difficult thing will actually be the logistics of backing up and shuffling everything around on my current system so that I can entirely wipe my main drive and put a nice, clean copy of Windows 7 on it. It’s going to be a hefty job, though cloud services like Dropbox and Google docs make the whole process vastly easier than it used to be.

More once I’ve put the thing together…