Best £400 Build give or take £50

[Bacon?]

Ahhh sorry about that Hono didn't read your post Hono

@sonic,

Its still not native quad core support though and the Ivy i3 will still perform better at WoW than the Trinity CPU. Unless it now uses all available cores at all time?

 

[jm240]

Hey guys thanks so much for your great suggestions!!

This has got me thinking now though....

How does the integrated CPU graphics work exactly and are there any benchmark comparisons for the AMD A10 CPU against some nVidia GPU's?

So really all you need the motherboard to have is onboard graphics to be able to hook up the monitor and the graphical processing is done by the CPU!? That's amazing isn't it/

I wonder where this kind of specialised CPU processing will be heading.

Maybe a CPU will be released in future than can natively process Java or .NET bytecode...

 

[jm240]

Having read and replied on your other thread about case and PSU choice, I know you have a GTX 460 and some HDDs. Providing your HDDs and optical drive are sata (not IDE), with my cash I would do this........

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £161.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £66.95
1 x Zalman Z9 USB 3.0 Midi Tower Case - Black £54.98
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - Corsair H60 Performance Intel Liquid Cooling Solution (Socket 1155 / 1156 / 1366) £32.39
- 1 x No Fan Required £0.00
- 1 x No Fan Required £0.00
- 1 x No Thermal Paste Required £0.00
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.99
Total : £428.29 (includes shipping : FREE).



The OEM i5K is on offer, being £20 cheaper it helps pay for an aftermarket cooler to do some real overclocking. Granted it only has a 1 year warranty (retail has 3 years) but lets be honest CPU failure is very rare. The K editions also sport the better IGP, more on that later.

The Z77 mobo allows overclocking of the CPU. It has a 3 year uk based warranty and a dual (UEFI) BIOS which is a nice safety feature. The mobo comes with the LucidMVP software, it can use the IGP to boost your 460 GPU for better performance in game or switch to using the IGP for general tasks to save power. The IGP is also used by quicksync to help boost video encoding if you have software that uses it.

8GB of RAM, 1600mhz is the sweet spot for the 1155 socket. The RAM also happens to tie in nicely with the mobos colour scheme Case and PSU I have already recommended to you. The CLC cooler would need some thermal paste and fans, I'm hoping you have some spare. The Z9 case has plenty of fans so finding a fan or two for the radiator isn't an issue. If you have to buy thermal paste though the kit is less appealing. Either look at a aircooler like the coolermaster 612S (paste supplied) or if you like the idea of seeing a CLC cooler through the window, then maybe the antec 620 (paste and fan supplied).

The new drivers have really helped with the GTX460, I still own one and run it @850mhz (give or take depending on hot weather). I still find it capable for my needs, buying a GPU is really going to cut into your budget so I'd upgrade the GPU later on.

Hope this helps

Hono thank you so much for that great post and all your help you have given me this week.

 

[jm240]

Why would a Liquid cooler kit be sold without everything that is required for it to work?

I would have thought fans would be included seeing as it includes a radiator?

I am somewhat confused though as to what these fans are used for and where they get installed?

Are they case fans or heatsink fans?

 

[honosuseri]

Why would a Liquid cooler kit be sold without everything that is required for it to work?

I would have thought fans would be included seeing as it includes a radiator?

I am somewhat confused though as to what these fans are used for and where they get installed?

Are they case fans or heatsink fans?

It's because I put a barebones CLC kit in my basket. The CPU was OEM so had no stock heatsink supplied, this OEM saves you £20 whilst it's on offer. In my eyes we just knock that £20 off a decent cooler of your choice to help overclock and get more performance. Some people complain the stock fans supplied are too loud when overclocking on the retail CLC coolers and some people do change the fans out. If you click on the barebones item you can see that you can add upto two performance fans and buy premium paste of your choice. These obviously add to the cost but even the barebones H60 kit is on offer.......god I'm tight fisted

I would normally spec the Coolermaster 612S heatsink, which is ~£30. It comes with a tube of paste, a quiet 120mm fan and easy snap on brackets to fit two fans comes supplied. So you could infact hook the two Z9s LED fans onto it instead to make it look different and having a second identical fan improves the cooling, the "spare" coolermaster fan can go at the bottom of the case and help cool the GPU or the front of the case. This is a great value air cooling solution for overclocking no matter what you do with the fans.

As the Z9 has a decent window I thought you might like the look of the CLC cooler. Something like the antec 620 would be ok and doesn't break the bank. Has a fan and paste which is already applied for you. It doesn't really cool better than an air cooler at the same price point though, so it's not great value.

So to get you the "watercooled look" at a similar price to good value air cooling, I used the barebones kit. If you have to buy paste thats unfortunate and brings it closer to £40 (remember the £20 towards it). Yes the radiator needs a fan but you have a perfectly good exhaust fan on the case that it can be hooked up to if we are honest.

Infact as the Z9 U3 case has 3 fans (which are pretty quiet) you can put the two LED fans on the radiator (we call this push/pull and is better performance obviously) and use the non LED at the front as an intake for the case (its a molex fan and this brings it closer to the PSU cables which have the molex connector....top tip) . Both the LED fans could be connected to the fan controller. So you can manually control the speed of the fans on the radiator to suit your needs, at a lower speed the LED dims on the fans and they will be quieter.

I hope I'm not confusing you lol

I'm a big fan of the Z9 chassis as you simply get sooo much stuff with it for the price. You can buy cases like the Bitfenix Shinobi for £50, that only has one 120mm fan, no fan controller or window. It's a fine case but we can have a bit more "fun" with the Z9 for our money

I look forward to seeing what you settle on, we always love to see build logs here with pretty pics

 

[areksnumbr1sxylady]

It's because I put a barebones CLC kit in my basket. The CPU was OEM so had no stock heatsink supplied, this OEM saves you £20 whilst it's on offer. In my eyes we just knock that £20 off a decent cooler of your choice to help overclock and get more performance. Some people complain the stock fans supplied are too loud when overclocking on the retail CLC coolers and some people do change the fans out. If you click on the barebones item you can see that you can add upto two performance fans and buy premium paste of your choice. These obviously add to the cost but even the barebones H60 kit is on offer.......god I'm tight fisted

I would normally spec the Coolermaster 612S heatsink, which is ~£30. It comes with a tube of paste, a quiet 120mm fan and easy snap on brackets to fit two fans comes supplied. So you could infact hook the two Z9s LED fans onto it instead to make it look different and having a second identical fan improves the cooling, the "spare" coolermaster fan can go at the bottom of the case and help cool the GPU or the front of the case. This is a great value air cooling solution for overclocking no matter what you do with the fans.

As the Z9 has a decent window I thought you might like the look of the CLC cooler. Something like the antec 620 would be ok and doesn't break the bank. Has a fan and paste which is already applied for you. It doesn't really cool better than an air cooler at the same price point though, so it's not great value.

So to get you the "watercooled look" at a similar price to good value air cooling, I used the barebones kit. If you have to buy paste thats unfortunate and brings it closer to £40 (remember the £20 towards it). Yes the radiator needs a fan but you have a perfectly good exhaust fan on the case that it can be hooked up to if we are honest.

Infact as the Z9 U3 case has 3 fans (which are pretty quiet) you can put the two LED fans on the radiator (we call this push/pull and is better performance obviously) and use the non LED at the front as an intake for the case (its a molex fan and this brings it closer to the PSU cables which have the molex connector....top tip) . Both the LED fans could be connected to the fan controller. So you can manually control the speed of the fans on the radiator to suit your needs, at a lower speed the LED dims on the fans and they will be quieter.

I hope I'm not confusing you lol

I'm a big fan of the Z9 chassis as you simply get sooo much stuff with it for the price. You can buy cases like the Bitfenix Shinobi for £50, that only has one 120mm fan, no fan controller or window. It's a fine case but we can have a bit more "fun" with the Z9 for our money

I look forward to seeing what you settle on, we always love to see build logs here with pretty pics

Zalman Z9 fan over here how much they paying you??

 

[honosuseri]

Zalman Z9 fan over here how much they paying you??

One billllllion dollars!!! (pinky in corner of mouth)

It's not the perfect case but it is great value, it's a personal preference at the end of the day. The U3 is better than the Z9 plus. The PSU vents aren't great on either but U3s are dust filtered. Infact it makes better sense to mount the PSU fan up so you can see it through the window.

The USB3 ports cabling will pass through and outside the rear of the case, ideally we might like to buy the 19 pin mobo header cable (~£5) to keep it all internal. I've used cases like the Coolermaster Silenco for ~£50. That was sound proofed with two 120mm fans but again the USB3 ports "need" an adapter but atleast Zalman provided PCI plates with holes cut in to keep it tidy without the adapter.

Max GPU length is 290mm. To be honest some cards don't fit but the £240 GB windforce 3GB 7950 does and 2GB 7850s (£150ish) will fit just fine. So it's not the end of the world I suppose. His 460 will definately fit, I really think he can OC it and milk it a little longer. Games like BF3 and with TW Rome 2 on the horizon having a quadcore does make a difference.

AMD are making a habit of giving away games, I'm waiting to see what comes with the next gen of GPUs and if the PCI Express 3.0 lane will be better utilised. His 460 if it's 1GB is probably worth around ~£50 second hand maybe. He should look at working towards access to the Members market (MM) here in time, it's a nice perk to be able flog and buy 2nd hand kit. He might be tempted to shortly sell his 460 put another £100 towards a GPU like the 2GB 7850. These GPUs also overclock very well and you can bag Tomb raider and Bioshock infinite with them for free. It's all about getting the most for your cash