Good buy??? have up to £400

benclanford · 10 Oct 2010 at 21:40

Hi and must say there's a great wealth of info here and I have been reading the forums for a while now trying to decide what to do.

I have £400 as a work bonus to spend on computer bits!!! So after a good deal of reading feel this is the way to go:

Gigabyte Board - GA-P55M UD4:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-208-GI

I5-760:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-339-IN

Corsair Dominator 4GB:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-288-CS

Is it worth paying the extra £30 and having a Vertex SSD for the OS and apps?:
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-047-OC

I have an Antec Fusion case, 5850, HX 520 PSU and a 1TB Seagate Drive with Win 7, games, apps etc...also a H50 cooler to try out!

My thinking was to have the SSD booting windows and making the daily tasks that bit quicker...using Photshop, Dreamweaver, browsing etc. I know games played off the drive will have no difference in speed but is a SSD really worth it or should I put the rest towards a new game or more RAM?

Please also feel free to provide any other alternatives :-)

stulid · 10 Oct 2010 at 23:22

good selection of parts, and that motherboard does sli/crossfire with both slots running at 8X/8X speed so any thoughts of future dual gpu setups will be run correctly(symmetrically)

Porcelina · 11 Oct 2010 at 00:06

It is a very nice selection and quite close to what I chose when getting my rig together. I went for slightly better latency timings, the G.Skill Ripjaws which are fantastic but I got them on a daily and thus they just looked a lot better than the competition. Doubt you can go very much wrong with the Corsair ones, I guess it depends on what you want to do with your system.

I do not have an SSD myself and I am also curious about just how much of a performance increase it would be. I am very impressed with my Samsung SpinPoint F3 though and as games are the most taxing of operations I put my computer to, I am pretty sure a better GFX solution would do more for me.

But yeah, base components are very good indeed.

danewesley · 11 Oct 2010 at 00:25

Id go for the ssd, especially if your using the apps you said. more memory may benefit but the increased read/write times of the ssd over normal hdd with leave you amazed and never wanting to use hdd's for os/work apps again.

Photoshot Boot Time OCZ Vertex

Big.Wayne · 11 Oct 2010 at 01:10

benclanford said:
I have £400 as a work bonus to spend on computer bits!!!

Please also feel free to provide any other alternatives

I have

H50 cooler

5850

1TB Seagate Drive

Antec Fusion case

HX 520 PSU

Win 7

Big.Wayne · 11 Oct 2010 at 01:15

danewesley said:
leave you amazed and never wanting to use hdd's for os/work apps again.

Photoshot Boot Time OCZ Vertex

I gotta say that video does nothing to convince anyone an SSD is a worthwhile investment? . . . For one how important are Adobe Photoshop CS4 load times? . . . secondly I have my O/S running off a 5,400rpm laptop drive and Photoshop CS4 loads up just as fast as it does in that video!

I'm not against SSD's per se but have never bought one because the premium is very high compared to the actual "Real World" benefit it brings?

danewesley said:
Id go for the ssd

danewesley · 11 Oct 2010 at 02:29

i havent bought an ssd either yet, its just when i look at what i have, i can either buy another gfx card, some memory or an ssd. the most noticable thing for me would be an ssd. just like many other people have said on here.

I agree the premium is very high, thats why im waiting too.

in future i will find a more appropriate video which compares 5400/7200rpm drives to ssd's and back it up with some reviews.

benclanford · 11 Oct 2010 at 09:38

Thank you everyone for your comments and also Big Wayne for some good comparisons and roughly what I was looking at for AMD. With the AMD set-up there wasn't much in it. I might go for the Intel and that board will give me an option later to add another GPU?! My current set-up lasted me a while and I aim this ones does too!

Now as for the RAM...for better timings, how about one of these:

Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-041-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-048-GS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Kingston HyperX T1 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz) Dual-Channel (KHX1600C8D3T1K2/4GX)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-076-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

I still haven't decided on an SSD. I would like a nice quick machine and recently I keep getting a disk check on start-up so occasionally takes a while. Backed everything up just in case but the thoughts of an SSD booting with fresh Win 7 and games left on drive (or formatted and fresh install of games etc) means good PC to me but the costs are still high. Either way I would do a fresh install so although bit pricey would last me a while...

almost ready to buy :-)

Big.Wayne · 11 Oct 2010 at 11:20

benclanford said:
Thank you everyone for your comments

Your welcome, you pretty much know exactly what you doing!

benclanford said:
I might go for the Intel and that board will give me an option later to add another GPU?

Are your thinking of adding another HD 5850 to your set-up at some point in the future? . . . I think Crossfired HD 5850's comes in at about 480watts-500watts so you should be fine with your Corsair HX520w if its not too old, you will need to get two extra 4-pin-Molex>>6-pin-PCI-e power adapters also as the PSU only has the two . . .

Good luck with the build! :cool: