Buying A New PC - Pretty Clueless - Help Needed Please.

Basing the spec of the Intel 10200i Configurator - purely because it was suggested it one of the posts and seemed good to build off and see what I could get.

All suggestions very welcome though as I'm really looking to get the best possible machine I can for the money - but sadly just don't really know what I'm looking at.

Your help really is appreciated and I'm very thankful to all for explaining things as it is really helping me to understand more about each component.
 
In all honestly i doubt the i7 will out live the i5 buy that much if at all, The i5 is a BEAST :)
I think if you really needed the 8cores/threads then Bulldozer is looking very promising.
 
greavesy makes a fine point - bulldozer is the new AMD chip coming out in september (could be delayed further though) and it may be pretty awesome. however it may also be a huge disappointment, and even if it's good it really won't be much better than sandy bridge (2500k or 2600k) so it's not like if you buy them now, bulldozer will come along and make them obselete. the performance would be comparable, and you'd have to wait til september to get it.

if you decide to go for the 2500k, then base your spec off the 10100i, as you can save some money by not getting a 3rd party cooler, and get a cheaper motherboard, while all the parts you actually want/need stay the same. that would put you under budget by about £190 (not including the monitor/keyboard/mouse though). you can order those peripherals seperately.

if you decide upon the 2600k, then the spec you listed in post #18 based on the 10200i will do you very nicely indeed. it's a fair amount more expensive though and imho isn't worth the extra (past the point of diminishing returns). 'sup to you :) let us know what you decide
 
Ok - I've tried doing this on the 10100i Configurator...

BitFenix Shinobi Gaming Case - Black
Intel Core i5 2500 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - NO OC AVAILABLE
Intel Stock Cooler (None overclocked systems)
Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600MHz CAS9 Memory Kit
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card
OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OCZ StealthXstream 2 600W Power Supply
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Subtotal £705.22
£846.26 inc VAT

Plus I want firewire, media card reader and monitor so I'll add in...

Belkin Firewire 3-Port PCI Card (F5U503VEA1) [F5U503VEA1]
£14.99
Samsung B2230H 21.5" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black [LS22PUHKF] £122.39
OcUK Internal 3.5" Card Reader - Black £3.98
(Are these ok to add in or is there a better alternative?)

I'm up to about £988 in total...

However, with the 10100i Configurator I've ended up with 2 hard drives which whilst I understand in principle, isn't something I've had before. I take it overclockers install the OS to the SSD and all data/photos etc go on the other drive?

This build is £100 cheaper than the last attempt - how does it fare?
 
Why has no one recommended a prebuilt system. Why does the OP need to use the configurator?

What type of video editing do you do? People are just assuming it's industrial high end and that you need to spend 80 quid extra on a 2600K. If it's basic home editing or converting. Just stick with the 2500K as suggested.

Don't bother with an SSD. They're too expensive for what they are. It ramps up the budget and will confuse you when installing programs to different locations when you run out of space etc. No disrespect meant at all btw!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-176-OE

Add a "6950" and Windows to the above and it comes in at £960. It's also overclocked for you... which will really improve video editing/conversion rates. The graphics card also blows all those 460's out the water. As you can see here:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=313

On sale this week... saving £80 ^^^
 
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Thanks for the suggestion - I've had a good look at that and whilst it looks an awesome beast of a machine, I quite fancy having a bigger hard drive, a different case - and once I add in a monitor with that I'm around the same price again.

Right, I've gone back to square one and an working from the 10200i config...
Coolermaster CM690-II Advanced Case - Black
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz Quad Core Processor
Akasa Venom CPU Cooler
Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600MHz CAS9 Memory Kit
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card
Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OcUK 4GB USB Flash Pen - Ideal for backing up DATA
OnBoard Sound Card
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition Power Supply
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Fully Cable Managed
Samsung B2230H 21.5
£1,048.66 inc VAT

With this I've changed the case, gone for the i5-2500k and am back to one hard drive which I think will suit me more.

I still need firewire so is this ok to add in?...

Belkin Firewire 3-Port PCI Card (F5U503VEA1) [F5U503VEA1]
£14.99

I'm pretty much on my budget with this price but how is it looking?... is there anything I can improve on?, anything that is unecessary?

I know that SheepBeast has said that the Z68 motherboard is redundant and to that a P67 would be better but the only options I get are upgrades on this config... would one of these be any better or make any difference?

Asus P67 Sabertooth Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard- [add £16.66]
MSI Z68A-GD65 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard- [add £21.67]

And I will keep saying it - thanks guys for all you're help - it's very much appreciated. (I never had these problems when I bought my first ZX Spectrum!).
 
Well,even if you dont plan game to much,i would get 560Ti or even vanilla 560 instead of 460,just for lil bit extra power,it wont hurt,especially since you getting 2500K
You getting pretty good system,so dont be cheap on video,later you might regret it
 
Okey dokey, I'll swap the video card for the 560... I'm trying to ensure that I'm not looking/needing to upgrade for a fair while as this is quite a chunk of cash for me....

REVISED BUILD
Coolermaster CM690-II Advanced Case - Black
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz Quad Core Processor
Akasa Venom CPU Cooler
Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600MHz CAS9 Memory Kit
OcUK GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card
Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OcUK 4GB USB Flash Pen - Ideal for backing up DATA
OnBoard Sound Card
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition Power Supply
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Fully Cable Managed
Samsung B2230H 21.5
Belkin Firewire 3-Port PCI Card (F5U503VEA1) [F5U503VEA1]
£1088 incl vat.

Any other suggestions?
 
Spend the extra for the H60 cooler, might as well make it a straight £1100.

I have two reasons for this,

1) Its easier to transport a PC with this instead of a heavy cooler.
2) A lot less "colorful"
 
Thanks stulid - added!...

REVISED...
Coolermaster CM690-II Advanced Case - Black
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz Quad Core Processor
Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600MHz CAS9 Memory Kit
OcUK GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card
Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OcUK 4GB USB Flash Pen - Ideal for backing up DATA
OnBoard Sound Card
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition Power Supply
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Fully Cable Managed
Samsung B2230H 21.5
Belkin Firewire 3-Port PCI Card (F5U503VEA1) [F5U503VEA1]
£1108 incl vat.

You guys are great - I really wouldn't have known where to start with this. Feels really nice to be edging away from 'Dell' and into the unknown.

How's it looking now?... I kind of figure that I'll only do this once (every several years) so may as well get it spot on.
 
that's a pretty sweet spec :) however i really don't think you need the 560 graphics card if you don't play games much. even the 460 is powerful enough to max out most games that are out nowadays. due to the consoles hardly any games are coming out now which actually push pc hardware to it's limits and i don't see that changing for a couple of years. the rest of the spec looks pretty spot on though
 
Looks like it will be a great system. If you are not planning on gaming much then get a 460 maybe but I think Stulid has already hit the nail on the head with this one and the OP wants a bit of future proofing and the higher clocks on the 560 provide that.

SheepBeast said:
hardly any games are coming out now which actually push pc hardware to it's limits and i don't see that changing for a couple of years.
Click to expand...

I got to disagree with this part, Battlefield 3 has people spending £1k+ for new rigs and the trailer is from pc gameplay rather than consoles, and only ~5% of pc's will be able to play it at the trailer quality level, and for the console versions they are having to drop a lot of the extra bits to make it playable at a reasonable fps rate. Also for pushing hardware there's Uber Sampling, high Anti-Aliasing and Multi-Display that can strain the best of cards.
 
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jamiegray85 said:
but I think Stulid has already hit the nail on the head with this one as the OP wants a bit of future proofing and the higher clocks on the 560 provide that.
Click to expand...

Just like to say you give me too much credit(but cheers anyways:D), I only mentioned the H60 cooler.
 
You've guided everyone here at some point so most of the knowledge has come from you, and I meant hit it on the head for closing up this thread really as the OP seemed happy with what was specced and had earlier considered a 460 and went for the 560 still.
 
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