Realistic time length to build a whole PC

[Liquid_Entity]

If I had a spend maximum of £100 - £150 a month and buy components per month. How soon could I get the whole build done. Fairly decent spec for beginner music production and good gaming. Silent running, good acoustic protection, lots of memory, an SSD for OS & some games, big HDD for music stuff, Win 7. I have monitor screens already.

Spec and time frame if you please.

 

[Jay794]

Personally, I'd just put the £100 a month in a savings account then when you have aboutr £1000 buy everything you need in one go

 

[beejjacobs]

Personally, I'd just put the £100 a month in a savings account then when you have aboutr £1000 buy everything you need in one go

Pretty much everyone would recommend you do this instead

 

[Liquid_Entity]

I been trying to do that for months, I kind of end up moving my savings in to current account by the end of the month for buying other stuff. My plan was to buy stuff on payday then I know it's bought and then I budget for the month from that.

 

[The Halk]

It really depends on what you want. A fairly decent spec could be a 'budget' AMD or 2100 or it could be a 2700K. It depends on what you'll use it for.

I'd advise in the strongest terms not to do it though, save up the money and when you have enough buy it. Prices fluctuate but always trend downwards, you will almost certainly end up spending more than you intend and you may even end up tying yourself into a path when another path might have been better.

You can ask a 'spec me' and people will, I'm confident, be very helpful. However you need to be more specific about what you want in order for people to be specific about what parts you need.

To try to help you reach that point, it might be worthwhile to look at what you're using now, and where you feel the weak areas are.

 

[stulid]

I been trying to do that for months, I kind of end up moving my savings in to current account by the end of the month for buying other stuff. My plan was to buy stuff on payday then I know it's bought and then I budget for the month from that.

You get free delivery, so,

Buy things that wont get outdated and if you see them on special offer such as,

Case
PSU
RAM
HDD
DVD drive

 

[Hagar]

I been trying to do that for months, I kind of end up moving my savings in to current account by the end of the month for buying other stuff. My plan was to buy stuff on payday then I know it's bought and then I budget for the month from that.

Also best to buy mobo memory and cpu at one go from one supplier to simplify troubleshooting.

Also all 12 months warranties are the same date.

Also you may want to return some bits under DSR after testing.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

the weak areas are.

I am using an Athlon 4400+ skt 939 with 2gb of DDR400 ram and 2 x 120gb SATA HDDs, Ati X1650 card in a Shuttle SN25P case. It is as dated as they come.

I see your points regarding saving and buying it all in one go. I am useless at saving though. I'll see how much I can save in the next few months and consider buying a lot at a time.

 

[cmndr_andi]

You get free delivery, so,

Buy things that wont get outdated and if you see them on special offer such as,

Case
PSU
RAM
HDD
DVD drive

+1 - Buying these parts as soon as you see them on a good deal means you don't get tempted to spend the money on other things while it builds up and buying these parts early won't mean you are missing out on big new technology - as these components aren't changing too much.

For the other parts (CPU/mobo/SSD/GPU) only buy them when you have all your money (so you get the most up-to-date and best value components - since they change so much). At the moment the best option IMHO for a good value system for gaming music production is a Intel Sandy Bridge i5 quad core CPU (ideally the i5 2500K so you can overclock properly) and Z68 chipset board. However, the intel Ivy bridge generation CPUs are expected to arrive late next month, so by the time you come to buy these parts these CPUs (and new boards) should be available.

Though if you want to get the system up an running ASAP then you may consider running a board which allows you to access the onboard graphics (like most Z68 boards) and put off buying the graphics card for a month or so - this will allow you to run your system and do music production work - but won't let you play modern games, which will need the graphics card.

Similarly, you could put off buying the SSD for a month or two so you can get the CPU/mobo earlier. This will require you to install the OS and other software on the HDD, and to do a re-install when you eventually get the SSD.

 

[Krono5]

You get free delivery, so,

Buy things that wont get outdated and if you see them on special offer such as,

Case
PSU
RAM
HDD
DVD drive

Pretty much this. There's no point buying the things that depreciate the quickest when you won't be able to use them until the build is complete.

The best thing is to simply setup a direct debit to your savings account on the first of each month or whenever you get paid and try to forget about it for 6 months. Either that or there's 0% interest for 12 months credit options if you wanted it now. But that relies on the same discipline to pay a set amount each month so you don't get lumbered with interest if you haven't paid it off within the 0% timeframe which imho wouldn't be right for you.

Essentially it all comes down to you to be able to control yourself when money gets tight as it can do and not dip into your savings as you couldn't do if you were buying components every month.

As for what you want you'd need to bem more specific but I presume you'd want a good sound card for music production.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

I been reading lots of other spec me threads about Ivybridge but can see a lot of opinion that it's not going to be value for money unlike the i5 2500k. Anything will be a step up from what I have been using the last 6 years. It is painful !!

 

[olibb]

Same as really, things do get outdated fairly quick. You could save 3 - 400 and then buy a bundle or mobo + cpu etc. Wait for new intel series coming may - june - then you shouldnt be outdated in that area.

 

[Krono5]

Which games do you want to play, what resolution is your monitor and do you care about playing everything on ultra?

 

[Liquid_Entity]

Ok, sounds like it all needs to come down to me being strict with my savings.

*Prays this month will be kind on bank balance*

 

[mame]

Also best to buy mobo memory and cpu at one go from one supplier to simplify troubleshooting.

Also all 12 months warranties are the same date.

Also you may want to return some bits under DSR after testing.

That's a good point about warranties. I've known a few people that have bought things (not just PC parts) and for various reasons not used them for months, only to find a fault with them. It leads to problems. If it has some damage that means it could never work but you report it 6 months after buying it, it takes some explaining

 

[cmndr_andi]

Ivy Bridge is expected to be a small performance increase over sandy bridge (see here) - so for a direct upgrade it isn't worthwhile. However, if you have a much older system and have the option between sandy bridge and Ivy bridge - then Ivy will likely be the better option, though I guess we will have to see some proper Ivy Bridge overclocking to be certain.

As for pricing, the Ivy Bridge which is comparable to the i5 2500K is the i5 3570K. This is a 3.4GHz Ivy Bridge Quad core with an unlocked multiplier and is expected to costs ~£10 more than the launch price of the i5 2500K. I guess we will have to wait and see for benchmarks and overclocking results to see whether it is worth the extra, but I would hazard a guess that it is worth it.

 

[Semple]

As Stulid's list mentioned they're the items that can vary in price quite a bit. Especially if you're planning on spending £1k+ on the system and only saving £100-150 a month. Would take the best part of a year to buy the complete system.

I would imagine it would be ideal if you could save up and buy half of the system in one go. Then essentially you're just buying a few extras each month. You'll be fine when you get going, it's just starting off saving that's tricky.

 

[The Halk]

You can choose the case yourself - there's no real worries about the case unless you intend to watercool (I'd advise that watercooling is not in any way required as air cooling is now very good - it's only if you want to spend the money on it), or if you intend to have loads of hard drives in there... so you should be ok with a standard tower case. In the past couple of years they've really come on and there's lots of decent ones to choose from.

As far as the SSD is concerned, I'd say that's one area it's sensible to cut corners. You don't get bad SSDs these days, anything you put in will be a massive improvement, and anything better than entry level will be very diminishing returns. I'd go for an OCZ Agility. I'm now aware of any impending new tech in this area, it's now quite mature, but maybe in 6 months time or so things will change.

RAM - Cheapest is better here. Gains on timings and/or speed are very minimal, even under the best circumstances compared to spending money elsewhere.

CPU - I've not bought Intel this century.. but I'm about to, and the only place I see AMD is at the very low end/low power with things like the E-350 (I got one of those to run my server and it does the job). You should be looking at Ivy Bridge.

Motherboards - A lot of noise is made about the high end ones, but realistically you should be looking at the low end ones. You don't need a million USB3 slots, or SATA6.0Gb ports. 8+ phases is nice, but you can get away with much less, especially if you're not heavily overclocking.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

Awesome guys, lots to think about here. Ivybridge would be a significant gain from what I have, so perhaps a few months saving and then I can buy the CPU/MOBO/SSD in one hit.

 

[honosuseri]

+1 - Buying these parts as soon as you see them on a good deal means you don't get tempted to spend the money on other things while it builds up and buying these parts early won't mean you are missing out on big new technology - as these components aren't changing too much.

For the other parts (CPU/mobo/SSD/GPU) only buy them when you have all your money (so you get the most up-to-date and best value components - since they change so much). At the moment the best option IMHO for a good value system for gaming music production is a Intel Sandy Bridge i5 quad core CPU (ideally the i5 2500K so you can overclock properly) and Z68 chipset board. However, the intel Ivy bridge generation CPUs are expected to arrive late next month, so by the time you come to buy these parts these CPUs (and new boards) should be available.

Though if you want to get the system up an running ASAP then you may consider running a board which allows you to access the onboard graphics (like most Z68 boards) and put off buying the graphics card for a month or so - this will allow you to run your system and do music production work - but won't let you play modern games, which will need the graphics card.

Similarly, you could put off buying the SSD for a month or two so you can get the CPU/mobo earlier. This will require you to install the OS and other software on the HDD, and to do a re-install when you eventually get the SSD.

Sound advice as always from both stulid and CM_Andi!

Remember that it's possible to add a SSD as a "cache drive" (intel smart response) if the rig is already up and running, next re-install you could do direct to the SSD. Or when you do the build make sure the OS partition is no bigger than the SSD you intend to buy and you could clone your install to the SSD.

If you use a paperclip to bridge the green and black wires on the 24pin block of the PSU you could atleast "test fire" it to make sure it works without having a mobo and a case.

I can't see many people spec'ing you a mobo bundle as new kit is around the corner. Ivybridge should have a much better IGP and seeing how quicksync uses the IGP it's logical to assume that quicksync will be better on ivybridge.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £46.98
Total : £126.96 (includes shipping : FREE).



That would get you started this month, of course case is a personal preference but that is a great budget case and is on offer this week. You need to consider wether you want the ability to run two GPUs as the mobo and PSU are related to this feature. A 7850 would be a good "budget" GPU to look at and as Andi said you can get the rig up and running without a dedicated GPU and add one later.

I look forward to seeing what you end up with, any more questions or problems, we are here to help