Cheers man. I'll see if he's up for increasing the budget; he did start out asking if it was possible to build a "good" gaming rig for 10.000DKK, so I imagine he might be willing to increase it some. And I'm definitely getting him a CPU that's capable in it's own right but can be overclocked for the increased later-in-life performance. I think I'd ditch the 212 Evo for now, and make him buy it or a similar cooler once he's going to outright need overclocking.
Quick question though; is the Gigabyte mobo better or worse than the MSI one? It's only 3DKKs difference, afterall; and I've had bad experiences with MSI, but good ones with GB.
And actually, another quick 'un; which 970, disregarding price, would you recommend?
faux-edit, actually not disregarding price entirely, I mean if given the chance I imagine most if not all of us would pick the Hall of Fame one. I digress, I've heard good things about the ASUS Strix, do you, or anyone else, have some first-hand feedback or anecdotes?
An actual, real edit!: If we were to cut out the 970, is there any other somewhat cheap GPU you would recommend? Neither of us are "fans" of AMD after some incredibly bad past experiences, mind. I do have a GTX 570 lying around, with a triple-slot ASUS aircooler... Would that be good enough if OC'd somewhat? I've no idea how high it can go, but with the cooler I imagine it should be able to do decently.
Well, the Gigabyte and MSI motherboards are in different price ranges and are different sizes. I won't deny it, the MSI Z97 PC Mate is a lower end model that I chose mainly for the low price but relatively positive reviews from the North American PC community (
4/5 rating on Newegg and
4.5/5 rating on Amazon.com). That said, I don't see where the low price is. The lowest Danish price for the Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 motherboard recommended by lordfuzzybutt is 1.088 DKK, over 30% more expensive than the MSI Z97 PC Mate. Maybe you were looking at a different Gigabyte motherboard?
I think brand quality can vary quite a lot, anecdotally I have owned one midrange MSI motherboard and one midrange Gigabyte motherboard (both were P55 models) and the Gigabyte motherboard suffered from bad RAM slots while the MSI motherboard through no fault of its own died when the CPU water cooler pump leaked coolant. The choice is up to you though so if you prefer a brand other than MSI, then I can recommend some alternative cheap motherboards from other brands. I cannot guarantee quality, of course. All I can do is look for reviews and check if there aren't any known defects, issues, or compatibility concerns before recommending parts.
ASRock Z97 Anniversary for 660 DKK
Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3 for 650 DKK
Asus Z97-P for 772 DKK
Unfortunately, I do not have any first hand experience with
any GTX 970 as I have never owned one for myself. I am actually assembling a computer (for someone else) right now that has a GTX 970. It was just a few hours ago - it was the first time I even held a GTX 970, but I have not tested the computer yet. As for which GTX 970 brand I recommend, I normally recommend those brands that are readily available in North America as those are the ones that seem to get the most reviews and so they are the ones that I have the most "experience" with. That includes Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, EVGA, etc. I see on the pricerunner.dk website that there are more European brands available such as Inno3D and Gainward. I remember reading a review for the Gainward GTX 970 Phantom and it was positive, the only negative aspect was the thicker than normal cooler that took up more space. I am not familiar with the Inno3D brand at all.
That said.. I don't think there are any awful GTX 970 cards out there that I'd actually avoid buying at all. There were certain EVGA models with defective coolers, but that issue is long gone and was fixed. You could buy any GTX 970 and have a good time with it, the only differences are the price and certain specific features (like zero fan speed mode for quiet operation).
If you and your friend want to avoid AMD.. then there's not much else in terms of choice. They're the competition after all. You have to look up to the more expensive GTX 980 which is almost certainly too much for the budget, or look down to the GTX 960 which has nice points but is somewhat lacking in raw performance.
The GTX 570 you have on hand is an OK midrange card for today's PC gaming. Stronger than the GTX 750 Ti, but weaker than the GTX 960, so it's somewhere in between. I'm going to guess that card you have is the 1.2GB VRAM model. If your friend plays games at 1080p then he'll have to turn down some graphics settings because even 2GB VRAM is already not enough for some games at 1080p, but otherwise it's a decent performer. Not great but not awful.
