New build advice. Advice on some componants

Badger_grr

Badger_grr

Badger_grr

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Joined
31 Oct 2006
Posts
270
Hey guys so far I have the following build in mind;

build-1.png
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Does this build look alright? Will be using a vertex 2 ssd and corsair h50 cooler and a 5850 (for the time being).

I need a nice quiet PSU. Any reccomendations?

Also whats the best way to find out when an item with be in stock? Should I just ring OC or the forums, (pre sale enquiries)?

Cheers.

Badger
 
Couple of points i'll make, I know the spec masters will be already building a spec as i type.

Those asus mobo's have received a lot of bad press on here, so would be best to avoid. And that hdd being "green" means it's slow 5400rpm as opposed to 7200rpm. I know u stated u will use a SSD drive but personally i'd want to use a faster drive incase it is ever needed to be used as a master drive later in its life.

You might find it easier to opt for an overclocked 2500K bundle or indeed just use the parts and assemble yourself to save a few quid

*edit* you said you will use a h50 cooler but have the arctic freezer on the spec list. Is that a mistake? Did you mean to add the h50 or do you have one already? :/
 
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Caviar Green are slow drives, used for storage. That's OK if you already have another faster drive you want to use for primary drive / OS.

You won't get much advantage using 1866MHz memory, especially considering the cooler you want to use which would limit your overclocking anyway.

You have the Fractal Design XL that is bigger but for the same price. More room for graphics cards.

For PSUs, single card, a 650W Corsair / XFX / Antec / BeQuiet. For SLI, 850W+ from same brands. More if you plan on using 480GTX's.

Good alternative boards are the MSI GD53, GD65, AsRock Extreme. Also consider the Z68, but little advantage compared to P67.

The 2500K retail has 3 years warranty. The prices fluctuate wildely, they are expensive atm.

an alternative


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £164.99
1 x MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £109.99
1 x Fractal Design Define XL Full Tower Case - Titanium Grey £84.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £71.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache WD10EALX - OEM £48.98
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £23.99
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
Total : £607.01 (includes shipping : £14.75).



£100 saving, ... must have forgotten something :)
 
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Hey Badger,

I'm not sure I subscribe to the hype over the Asus motherboards and I'd still be happy to recommend one, but MSI's offerings are very good at the moment and definitely worth taking a look. I wouldn't bother with an overclocked bundle though, it's so easy to do yourself with the K chips.

The "green" hard drives should be fine as long as you can fit your hard drive and any games or apps you'll regularly use on your SSD. If you're worried, a £40 Spinpoint F3 1TB is very fast and could act as your "games drive".

As for a PSU, I'd recommend the Corsair TX 650W- it may be a tad expensive at £75, but you have peace of mind for reliability and energy efficiency. Go up to 850W if you plan on CF or SLI later.
 
hybrid572 said:
Hey Badger,

I'm not sure I subscribe to the hype over the Asus motherboards and I'd still be happy to recommend one, but MSI's offerings are very good at the moment and definitely worth taking a look. I wouldn't bother with an overclocked bundle though, it's so easy to do yourself with the K chips.

The "green" hard drives should be fine as long as you can fit your hard drive and any games or apps you'll regularly use on your SSD. If you're worried, a £40 Spinpoint F3 1TB is very fast and could act as your "games drive".

As for a PSU, I'd recommend the Corsair TX 650W- it may be a tad expensive at £75, but you have peace of mind for reliability and energy efficiency. Go up to 850W if you plan on CF or SLI later.
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Thanks for the words guys, The greens are going to be raided and purely for storage. I was thinking of another drive for games, would like to have more than 4 games installed at any one time. Was tempted for the 500gb hybrid but looking at benches im not sure if its worth the money for the size.

PSU wise I currently have a Corsair HX 650W in my current rig. Maybe I should buy a cheaper lower wattage for the pc going to my mum which is the one in my sig without the 5850. What psu could i get away with a 5450 passive card?
 
Good, informative article. The most important part, for those who don't wish to read all 12 pages, is the following:

As far as gaming goes, though, there's very little point in buying anything faster than 1,600MHz memory. Crysis couldn't care less about what memory you use, while Civ 5 ran equally as fast on the 1,600MHz kit at CL9 as the 2,133MHz at CL8. Only with the memory set to 1,333MHz did we see a slowdown, and even then by 1-3fps (around 5 per cent) at most.
 
Badger_grr said:
Thanks for the words guys, The greens are going to be raided and purely for storage. I was thinking of another drive for games, would like to have more than 4 games installed at any one time. Was tempted for the 500gb hybrid but looking at benches im not sure if its worth the money for the size.

PSU wise I currently have a Corsair HX 650W in my current rig. Maybe I should buy a cheaper lower wattage for the pc going to my mum which is the one in my sig without the 5850. What psu could i get away with a 5450 passive card?
Click to expand...

No problem :)

Yeah, the F3 500GB isn't really worth it- it's barely faster than the 1TB, barely cheaper and half the size. Get a 1TB so you can stick your full steam folder on it, plus anything else you have around.

The HX 650W is awesome, as long as it's fairly recent- a 5yo PSU won't do much good. I'd be happy to put a CX 430 or 500 in your old system- with a 5450, which I assume won't be gaming, you won't draw much power at all. You could probably drop the OC, too.
 
hybrid572 said:
SSD Caching (you're better off just sticking your OS on the SSD, plus any other games if you have space), and the ability to use the HD 3000 onboard graphics. Just go for P67.
Click to expand...

Quick Sync for video transcoding too and Lucid Virtu for swapping between integrated and discrete graphics to save power :)
 
hybrid572 said:
No problem :)

Yeah, the F3 500GB isn't really worth it- it's barely faster than the 1TB, barely cheaper and half the size. Get a 1TB so you can stick your full steam folder on it, plus anything else you have around.

The HX 650W is awesome, as long as it's fairly recent- a 5yo PSU won't do much good. I'd be happy to put a CX 430 or 500 in your old system- with a 5450, which I assume won't be gaming, you won't draw much power at all. You could probably drop the OC, too.
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Yea I'll deffo be leaving the 9550 at stock and there will be no gaming going on. 2 hard disks and a dvd rewriter.
 
Badger_grr said:
Yea I'll deffo be leaving the 9550 at stock and there will be no gaming going on. 2 hard disks and a dvd rewriter.
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CX430 sounds perfect. Hard disks only take up power at boot; they tend to be very low power otherwise.

sk82: I wasn't aware of those features, but I think in the OP's position it doesn't sound like they matter anyway :)
 
Right, heres the revised build.

Question; Is there any benefit to have a 6Gb/s mechanical sata drive? Surely they can't take advantage of the high speed transfer?

buildrevision.jpg
 
Right, thanks for the help hybrid and everyone else.

Ordering tonight!

Going to go for the fractal arc for some future water cooling I think.

Just need to pop over to the monitors sub forum and look for a new 24".
 
Nice one. tftcentral.co.uk have a good monitor recommendation feature. I'll save you the trouble of going to the monitor forum; they'll tell you to get a Dell U2311H.
 
hybrid572 said:
Nice one. tftcentral.co.uk have a good monitor recommendation feature. I'll save you the trouble of going to the monitor forum; they'll tell you to get a Dell U2311H.
Click to expand...

quick question; Is the tft selector page working for you?

No matter what options I put in, no monitors are reccomended. Tried in firefox and chrome.
 
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