Been out of the hobby for a while, got it all sorted except the essentials!!

engstrom0304

engstrom0304

engstrom0304

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Ok, So im planning an antec skeleton watercooled project... looking at the moment for a mobo, cpu and gpu watercooled...

allowing £300 for case and watercooling, but thats likely to rise...

Looking for the rest... best i can get for about £400...

Not really sure what the best is out there atm for this cash :)

Just looking for casual gaming to be honest...

Remember that doesnt need cooling or case...
 
What is it going to be used for?

And will you want a discrete graphics card, or will you be happy with SB integrated? If the SB GPU is enough, will you want to be able to add a graphics card in the future?
 
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Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £145.99
(£121.66) £145.99
(£121.66)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £83.99
(£69.99) £83.99
(£69.99)
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £68.98
(£57.48) £68.98
(£57.48)
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £54.98
(£45.82) £54.98
(£45.82)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Sub Total : £359.92
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £73.98
Total : £443.90


Obviously a Sandybridge i3/i5 is a much faster CPU out of the box but unless you get a K CPU and a P67/Z68 motherboard your overclocking fun wont last long. plus its way out of budget.

The G114 core of the GTX560 has no set mhz, manufacturers are free to use 810-950mhz so that will give you some fun too.
 
I'd kinda like to steer clear of AMD, had many bad experiences... Dont need an os...
Click to expand...

Then your **** out of luck as you need a K cpu and P67/Z68 board to overclock a sandybridge, and thats £300 just for the CPU/RAM and motherboard, leaving very little for the rest.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £167.99
(£139.99) £167.99
(£139.99)
MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £89.98
(£74.98) £89.98
(£74.98)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
Sub Total : £244.13
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £50.73
Total : £304.36
 
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I am not sure on that one :confused:

You are eligible for free shipping by the way in case you didn't already know, so you can knock a tenner off the builds!
 
To be fair buddy it would make sense to drop the watercooling kit to help fund a better core system.

I'll add a link so you can compare CPU benchmarks. The 955BE is a good CPU but it's no where near an i5K. You can OC the 955BE and at 3.8Ghz it will beat an i3 2100 in some benchmark tests. In truth most people would have spec'd an i3 build if not for the fact you want to OC.

Personally for a gaming rig. I would opt for an i5 setup. It will overclock well even on its stock heatsink and is way beyond what you could hope to get from a current AMD CPU. You can always add the watercooling later once the system is built and stable, then see how much further the improved cooling will take the OC.

I'm all for AMD on budget builds, I just feel the watercooling is only offering style rather than function to the system. Buying an AM3 CPU now is slightly pointless, we are expecting BD to be released in a few months and then these AM3 CPUs will devalue. If you don't want to drop the watercooling purchase then maybe it would be wise to wait a month or so and see what happens to prices.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/362?vs=288

(I compared the 980 to an i5. Seeing as you want to OC the 955 that is a rough idea of what you could expect from it. Remember though the i5 is benchmarked at stock and you would be able to OC it on its stock heatsink further improving it's performance.)
 
honosuseri said:
To be fair buddy it would make sense to drop the watercooling kit to help fund a better core system.
Click to expand...

+1. Can't see why you would compromise on the hardware for the sake of watercooling. There are cheaper ways of making it quiet if that's your thinking and better ways of making it fast. :confused:
 
IPAddis said:
+1. Can't see why you would compromise on the hardware for the sake of watercooling. There are cheaper ways of making it quiet if that's your thinking and better ways of making it fast. :confused:
Click to expand...

Its simply a project for fun... much more bothered about things like, mounting the rad and pump and res on the antec skeleton etc... and the looks than the performance...
 
You won't get anything near the performance of your current rig - seems like a very expensive project just for kicks. Have you thought about upgrading your current rig instead?

Alternatively, if you used the GPU from your current rig, you could get an i5 2500K rig easily.
 
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