Spec Me. Win8 ready machine (£800~)

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Hi Guys,

Its time to update my relic of a PC.

It will be used for.......Surfing......Watching 1080p Movies/Video......YouTube......Downloading.....Listening to Music.....
It will not be used for gaming or anything intensive.

Requirements:

- Win8 ready
- Must be 1080p smooth. This is very important
- Must have 40/60Gb SSD drive for Windows and Apps.
- Must have 40Gb'ish SSD drive purely for download dumps
- Must be 100Mbit Broadband friendly (don't want the hardware to affect the speeds)
- Must be quiet. Don't want something loud at all. Passive hardware would be a benefit.
- 1080p Monitor atleast 24"
- A very large SATA HDD for archiving purposes.
- DVDRW or Bluray

Budget is around £800. If its cheaper then that's a bonus

What i already have to recycle:

- Case Lian Li PC-A70F
- M-Audio Revolution 5.1 Soundcard (PCI)
- Fan Controller
- Speakers
- 500W Corsair PSU
- Keyboard/Mice (Logitech DiNova BT)

I hope you guys can help.
Thank you in advance.
 
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Excellent Fire Fly :)
I don't think 2Tb is goner cut it for the archive drive.

Will the i3 cope with 1080p playback? Likewise with the GPU?
Also, what CPU cooler?
 
Done an AMD build.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £359.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) £119.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A75M-D3H AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £69.98
1 x AMD A6-5400K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD540KOKHJBOX) £53.99
2 x Intel 330 Series 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £50.99 (£101.98)
1 x Scythe Ninja 3 High Performance CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM3/AM2/AM2+/939/940) £39.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1866C10DC) £35.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/RSMS 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £14.99
Total : £811.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
If it was me, I'd change the Intel SSDs to these: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-145-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101&subcat=2102

A little more expensive but worth it as some of the Intel drives have issues and the Samsungs tend to be a bit quicker.

You can also likely drop the 5450, the onboard graphics are more than capable of running 1080p content. Not sure what the driver bug you refer to is Fire_fly but I've had no issues playing 1080p content on various Intel HD graphics, including HD 2500. If you get issues, then buy a dedicated card but I find that unlikely. No point spending money upfront that might be wasted.

If you want to save some money and keep it well under budget, the monitor would be the place to do it. While the U2410 is an excellent monitor, I've owned two and loved them, it could be a little overkill for this system imho.
 
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Mei said:
ye i dont understand the screen either
if its mostly for watching films use a tv :)
Click to expand...

It's mainly for YouTube. And downloaded HD content

Speed said:
If it was me, I'd change the Intel SSDs to these: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-145-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101&subcat=2102

A little more expensive but worth it as some of the Intel drives have issues and the Samsungs tend to be a bit quicker.

You can also likely drop the 5450, the onboard graphics are more than capable of running 1080p content. Not sure what the driver bug you refer to is Fire_fly but I've had no issues playing 1080p content on various Intel HD graphics, including HD 2500. If you get issues, then buy a dedicated card but I find that unlikely. No point spending money upfront that might be wasted.

If you want to save some money and keep it well under budget, the monitor would be the place to do it. While the U2410 is an excellent monitor, I've owned two and loved them, it could be a little overkill for this system imho.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll use the onboard Gpu to start off with.
I'll swap the ssds also.

What monitor would be good but not as expensive?

Cheers
 
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