Looking for advice on an £800 (~$1300) ITX gaming/occasional recording/rendering rig

Hi there everyone, I kinda forgot I had this account for about a month or so after registering, I suppose it's worth I use it considering you guys probably know more about this subject.


So, I'm nearing my 18th, I've had a previous 6 year old pre-built 'gaming' PC for about the last 3 years, and I had a discussion to receive a new rig as my present, they agreed (thankfully!) and said they'd buy me the parts I specified.


They also said I shouldn't worry too much about a budget, but I figured that's not living in the modern world; gotta make compromises, so I figured around £800 (or in the title, about $1300 USD) would be enough.


Based on the general guidelines sticky, I put this together for you boys:

  • Budget: £800 ($1300, thought I'd jam this in here one last time),
  • Country: United Kingdom (England, more specifically),
  • Preferred retailer: I'm really not too sure about this one; anything that doesn't charge extortionate prices for shipping I suppose,
  • Peripherals?: I already have a keyboard and mouse, but I want to get a new monitor to go with the rig, which should be included in the budget,
  • What will you be using it for?: General gaming, along with occasional game recording andvideo rendering,
  • Overclocking?: No, thank you,
  • Custom water cooling?: Nah, I'll pass,
  • Need an OS?: Nope, got a copy of 7 Pro c:,
  • What kind of settings do you like, or FPS you wish to play at?: Usually the higher range of settings, maxed out if I can help it, but it's not really needed. I absolutely don't want to dip below 60, anything more is fine for me.
  • What resolution will you be playing at?: 1080p for playing, 720p for recording,
  • What kind of games do you like to play?: FPS, MOBA, Racing, Open World.
  • What specific game will you be playing (if applicable)?: The fun ones! But seriously, Source games like Dota 2, and mostly the older games I've been missing out on. But I also want to be ready to play some of the newer games like Skyrim, Just Cause 2, Metro 2033, Saints Row 4 and other stuff in the future.
  • What application do you use to render? (very important): Sony Vegas is my main weapon of choice, don't think I'll change very soon.
  • Do you render movies or Photoshop pictures?: I render movies, but I normally do my images in other applications, which my current PC can handle just fine.
  • What size monitor are you looking for, and what resolution, screen type (IPS, S-IPS, TN, etc.), hertz (60, 120, etc.)?: I was planning on getting a 1080p monitor, anything above 23" is good for me, Hertz isn't too much of a deal for me, I don't really know too much about the benefits of the screen type however; especially not in terms of gaming. Anything 1080p, bigger than 23 inches that can fit in my budget that is generally lauded will suit me just fine.

I don't have a PCPartPicker list to post with this, I apologise if it's required. All I know for sure about this build is that I'd like to have the Fractal Design Node 304 (http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/fractal-design-case-fdcanode304bl) for the case, as well as that I would like to have integrated Wi-Fi, if this isn't feasible I can do without it but I would really like it.

I hope I haven't disgusted any of you with all these words, I don't think it's too illegible if I say so myself. 

Thanks! <3

That's a lot for 800 so I had to go over a little. Here's what I got http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2I4BI

I'm not sure if I would need 16GBs of memory, I think 8 would be a better choice considering how well I fair with 4 at the moment. Plus having 8 brings the whole price down to below my budget.

I also found that not only would a GTX 760 be a cheaper choice, but I could also make use of Shadowplay (which would be nice since one of the things I want to do with the rig is record/stream my games easily).

I don't know if these are both things I should really be considering, but to me they seem like they'd suit me more.

you are foretting that AMD has it's own software that does excactly the same thing as shadowplay. The 280X does cost more, but it also performs better, and due to 3 GB frame buffer, agains 2 GB in the GTX 760, it will be more "futureproof" and will allow you to play at higer resolutions and play games with loads of mods.

This would be great performing ITX PC for a tiny bit over the budget that u gave, and would be perfect for your needs: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2I7HW

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 Haswell processor. Basically, this CPU is a i7-4770 without the iGPU. So just a bit more cost than the i5-4670, you are getting 4 cores and 8 threads, wich would be great for your editing/recording/streaming.

Mobo: ASRock H87M-ITX. Mobo with good reviews, will get the job done very well, and supports everything. SATA III, USB 3.0, supports the 1600MHz RAM and has PCI-e 3.0.

GPU: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X. Great 1080p performance for the price, great and quiet cooling from gigabyte, AMD's Raptor software (simular to geforce experience and shadowplay), has OpenCL wich you can use to boost your vegas pro. Overall, a great card for the price. (if you want to stick with nVidia, a GTX 770 is also a great choice with simular price)

RAM: 8 GB of kingston 1600MHz CL9 ram. 1600MHz should be pleanty fast for yor purposes.

Storage: Seagate barracuda 1Tb 7200RPM 64Mb cache HDD. This will give you a good mass storage, and if you want more speed, you can add a SSD later on.

Case: Fractal design node 304 as you wanted

PSU: EVGA 500W 80+ bronze certified PSU. 500W will be plenty for this system, as it should take maximum of 400W while fully loaded on CPU and GPU. Also it is 80+ bronze certified, so you will have good efficiency, and you won't frie anything with a bad psu.

Monitor: AOC i2367Fh 60Hz 23.0" Monitor. A nice IPS -panel 23" monitor with 60Hz refresh rate. Beautiful colours wich will improve your overall gaming experience, and has only a 5ms responce time, so you will not notice any input lag.

For just a bit over your budget, you will be getting a beast of an ITX machine, that will max out almost every modern game.

Hope i helped, and have fun time with your new system :)

Editing is really sped up by having 16gb's of ram. Right now your 4gb is slowing down what the rest of your system could be doing. Also i'd recommend getting the Gtx 770 instead of the 760.

Ah, well thanks for clearing that up, I never took the Xeon's into consideration; I just thought they were server grade processors and not really meant for much else.

It truely depends on which xeon.  The Xeon chosen is indeed very similar to an i7-4770 with no graphics.