Spec me a build

Liampope said:
Ooh and another one - you'll have to do a coin tossing league to decide :)

If you can spend the 600 on that last pre-OC'd i3 build that would certainly save you the time and effort of doing the overclock yourself (or rob you of the experience if you look at it negatively :)) If it's worth £35 (allowing for the better cooler included) to you to get the pros to do it go for the bundle!
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i might just get this to tide me over till i want to overclock
Asus GeForce GTX 460 1024MB DirectCU GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £172.71
(£146.99) £172.71
(£146.99)
Asus P7H55-M/USB3 Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £79.99
(£68.08) £79.99
(£68.08)
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £79.89
(£67.99) £79.89
(£67.99)
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1600LV4GK) £64.61
(£54.99) £64.61
(£54.99)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Case - Black £41.99
(£35.74) £41.99
(£35.74)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £32.99
(£28.08) £32.99
(£28.08)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £32.99
(£28.08) £32.99
(£28.08)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91) £13.99
(£11.91)
Sub Total : £441.86
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £79.16
Total : £531.52


oh and lol at 7 pages :D
 
I would agree...


...were it not for the fact of the reports of that OCZ Gold ram giving various problems. That's why even though it's cheap you wont find it on people's spec lists and why we instead usually go for whatever is on this week only offer usually for about £76 :)
 
get on the Phenom II route.
if i was you id start with the AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition

AMD have added a new 970 140W quadcore which would be ur future cpu.

gl m8

 
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its a NEWer chipset on that board, im not "techy" enuff to tell you if its worth th extra few £s im sure sum1 will jump in and add.
but id rather have a bit NEWer

modular is the NEW dont get left behind keeps inside ur tower neat, tidy and adds to better airflow, and ur getting a few extra watts.

its all opinions m8 every1 has 1.:cool:
 
jakesnake said:
its a NEWer chipset on that board, im not "techy" enuff to tell you if its worth th extra few £s im sure sum1 will jump in and add.
but id rather have a bit NEWer

modular is the NEW dont get left behind keeps inside ur tower neat, tidy and adds to better airflow, and ur getting a few extra watts.

its all opinions m8 every1 has 1.:cool:
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Em...you do know the 890GX chipset boards mainly offer support for Crossfire as extra (unless for the GTX460 768MB), but is almost no different in other regards to the 870 chipset?

Also, quality of Asrock's motherboard is pretty questionable, as some of their boards can be great at times, but some other can be extremely crap in another instance. As a brand their boards performance are not so consistant comparing to the likes of Gigabyte or Asus. Also the SATA 6Gbps on the Asrock Extreme board is poo comparing to most other motherboard according in bit-tech's recent review.

And i3 530 can be have for simliar price, so no reason to go for the Phenom II X2 555BE unless wanting to gamble on unlocking extra cores.
 
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lol @ jakesnake's spec :). Way to waste money on pointless PSU and mobo so that he ends up spending more and having only a 768MB 460 and a 555 with no cooler! Sums up his image/e-peen over common sense philosophy nicely. Also lol at suggesting a NEWer chipset, NEW modular PSU (??) but at the same time OLD AMD architecture (compared to the i3)
 
isnt AMD max performance per pound?
with the low budget its clearly the right choice to put him on so his upgrades r cheaper aswell. how is it old wen its still the latest socket for AMD.
1156 isnt the latest.

the 460 is the pick of the cards at the present, but the crossfire
would be good for him to have for the future wen 5870s r cheaper.

the modular psu is cheap enuff and will introduce him into better cable management and learn him how it helps airflow.

he said he wasent going to overclock yet, so the stock fan can do a job.
 
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jakesnake said:
isnt AMD max performance per pound?
with the low budget its clearly the right choice to put him on so his upgrades r cheaper aswell. how is it old wen its still the latest socket for AMD.
1156 isnt the latest.

the 460 is the pick of the cards at the present, but the crossfire
would be good for him to have for the future wen 5870s r cheaper.

the modular psu is cheap enuff and will introduce him into cable management and learn him how it helps with airflow to keep things cool.

he said he wasent going to overclock yet, so the stock fan can do a job.
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Not really. While the Phenom II X2 performance may be comparable the i3 530 at same clock speed, it does not go as high in terms of overclockability (Phenom II X2 BE average max OC 3.8GHz; i3 530 average max OC 4.2~4.4GHz).

You really need to get the idea of "latest equal better" out of your head (not to mention Phenom II's K10 architecture is just tweaked version of the K8, which itself is a tweaked version of the K6 dated back to the 2003). As far as architecture goes they haven't built things from the ground up for a long long time. As far as gaming goes i5/i7 is much ahead, while Phenom II X4 is more like Core2Quad (which was last gen) but cost less...and the only new thing they bought out and useful was the Hex core CPU...which benefit people that do video encoding...but not for gaming since games are not really written to use the 5th and 6th core yet; and even with the Quad cores, actual amount CPU usage for most games don't even need more than 3 high speed cores.

The only possible benefit for the Phenom II X2 555BE is its chance to unlock to Quad. If it doesn't unlock or unlock cores that are stable, it's not as good comparing to i3 530 it's simple as that.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Not really. While the Phenom II X2 performance may be comparable the i3 530 at same clock speed, it does not go as high in terms of overclockability (Phenom II X2 BE average max OC 3.8GHz; i3 530 average max OC 4.2~4.4GHz). You really need to get the idea of "latest equal better" out of your head, as far as gaming i5/i7 is much ahead, while Phenom II X4 is more like Core2Quad, but cost less.

The only possible benefit for the Phenom II X2 555BE is its chance to unlock to Quad. If it doesn't unlock or unlock cores that are stable, it's not as good comparing to i3 530 it's simple as that.
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"does not go as high in terms of overclockability"

^^^ HES NOT AN OVERCLOCKER ^^^

"while Phenom II X4 is more like Core2Quad, but cost less."

^^^^ IT COSTS LESS = WIN for this guy hes in the £500 zone here, his upgrades WILL BE LESS ASWELL
 
As he's said he'll probably build a totally new rig on a higher budget in a couple of years there seems little point getting an x-fire mobo now when the current budget is so tight. Especially as he's getting an nvidia GPU! What's important is maximising his gaming performance now and for the next couple of years. The i3 will spank the X2 555 into next week and he can afford it if he is sensible with the other components. Nobody needs a modular PSU - it's a nice-to-have luxury and compromises the other components of this build too much. You can manage cables perfectly well without a modular PSU, too.

Just a fyi - actually 1156 is the 'latest' - it came out before 1356 :).

Scone your existing i3 spec is perfect.
 
Liampope said:
As he's said he'll probably build a totally new rig on a higher budget in a couple of years there seems little point getting an x-fire mobo now when the current budget is so tight. Especially as he's getting an nvidia GPU! What's important is maximising his gaming performance now and for the next couple of years. The i3 will spank the X2 555 into next week and he can afford it if he is sensible with the other components.
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Exactly. What's the point of getting a Crossfire board (at extra cost), when the chance of him getting TWO ATI/AMD cards in the future upgrading from the GTX460 768MB would be next to none? Pretty sure that both the board and the current architecture would become obsolete, and his next system upgrade will come before he put two ATI/AMD card onto the old board.

Going for the 890GX chipset is pointless for him. If he want to go for a AMD build, he should just grab a 870 chipset board. I never said Phenom II X4 955BE build is no good, it is actually option for Scone to consider, but he calculated the cost and didn't seem to want to pay the extra over the i3 530 build.

And even if he is not overclocking, which should he take the lesser Phenom II X2 over the i3 530 if both are similiar in cost?
 
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