So I convinced my friend to not buy a new Xbone and go with a PC with his gaming. Since I knew the most about PC building, I was the authority on this build which by extension made me the chooser of the specific parts. He will be using the PC simply for gaming and nothing else. He likes to play a lot of Skyrim, Fallout, Battlefield 4 and is interested in a lot of indie games. His budget was £500 (I won't translate into dollars because it isn't a simple case of currency conversion).
Here's the component list :
Fractal Design Core 1000 w/USB 3.0
Corsair cx430w power supply
Asus A88XM-PLUS Motherboard
AMD Athlon X4 760K
1TB Seagate Barracuda
Corsair Value Select Memory 8GB DDR3 1333 Mhz
XFX Radeon R9 270X DD
He has his own monitor, mouse, keyboard, OS and blu-ray drive so those aren't a problem.
Here's the thing.
He went ahead and bought all the parts before I could get a chance to double check my picks. Hence the fact that it's irreversible. I would have opted for the R9 270 - because and overclocked 270 is effectively the same as the 270X - and a CX500 for a little extra upgrade ability.
I suppose my question to you is: Is the original component list that I stated above good for my friend?
This is more of a thing to help my well being and I realise there isn't anything I can actually do at this point but a reply would really help my knowledge if anything else.
Well I think you did fine. Admittedly, the extra wattage from a 500 watt power supply would probably be good for the future but by the sounds of it he won't be doing a huge GPU upgrade anytime soon so it won't really matter.
The price difference between the 270 and the 270x in the UK is like £10 which is definitely worth it consider you are getting guaranteed higher clock speeds where with the 270 you may not achieve them. Also the 270 may overclock to 270x levels but the 270x will overclock even further than that so it would have definitely been worth it.
IMO, I would go for the CX500 and a 270. Also, maybe you should look into getting a non-reference 270, like MSI. Reason being that cooler the card is, the more overclocking you can push out of it, basically making it a better investment. In the states, a 270X is $30 dollars more.
Your fine with parts you stated, yes the R9 270 and 500w powersupply would have been bit better choices but Your friend is not going to be dissapointed with the performance of the machine.
Yeah, as everyone stated here, the build you gave your friend is still pretty good, but you won't be able to upgrade to a GPU of higher performance(depends which one, of course). I'd imagine the R9 270X should still overclock a bit higher than the R9 270.
Yes, the card which I was thinking about was the Asus direct cu2 version on the 270. I know direct cu2 coolers are quiet and cool, also the one that I saw was £30 cheaper than the xfx one I listed above.
most 270 has 1 6pin. 270x 2x6pin. more wattage so oc can be better on the 270x. some 270x cards have better cooling. like the 270x and 270 from gigabyte.