Business/Home PC Build

I would ditch the sound card also and invest in an amp and pair of bookshelf speakers and hook it up to the PC using the onboard optical out.
 
teppic said:
i5 build variation, using integrated graphics.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £191.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £145.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit - OEM (FQC-04649) £113.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £104.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit - GREEN £59.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £54.95
1 x Creative Sound Blaster Z High Performance Gaming Sound Card - OEM (30SB150200000) £53.99
1 x Seasonic G series 360w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £48.98
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black £47.95
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler £26.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £879.40 (includes shipping : £10.50).

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I like the look of the spec, I'm still um'ing and ah'ing about the case to go for but I'm sure I can work it out. My only remaining query would be, is a 360W PSU sufficient? I'm going to be getting 2 DVD RW drives and a couple of extra case fans.

Imy said:
I would ditch the sound card also and invest in an amp and pair of bookshelf speakers and hook it up to the PC using the onboard optical out.
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I don't think I mentioned this before, but he already has a very nice 5.1 set of Creative speakers so my thinking was that a nice sound card would compliment them well.
 
mattStoor said:
I like the look of the spec, I'm still um'ing and ah'ing about the case to go for but I'm sure I can work it out. My only remaining query would be, is a 360W PSU sufficient? I'm going to be getting 2 DVD RW drives and a couple of extra case fans.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but he already has a very nice 5.1 set of Creative speakers so my thinking was that a nice sound card would compliment them well.
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The advantage of a lower power unit is they're more efficient at fuller loads. The system as it stands would barely use half the power available. I've run a Haswell system overclocked with an overclocked 7850, hard drive and DVD drive on a 350W PSU.

For someone who appreciates higher quality audio, a soundcard is essential.
 
Save yourself a load of trouble and your friend a load of money for general office apps get a i3 desktop from the purple shirt place, or online upgrade the ram to 8gb but only because it's so Cheap - you will have change from £400
 
edscdk said:
Save yourself a load of trouble and your friend a load of money for general office apps get a i3 desktop from the purple shirt place, or online upgrade the ram to 8gb but only because it's so Cheap - you will have change from £400
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I appreciate the advice but that's just not what we're going for at the moment.
 
mattStoor said:
I don't think I mentioned this before, but he already has a very nice 5.1 set of Creative speakers so my thinking was that a nice sound card would compliment them well.
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How much did he spend on them? If they're anything like the Creative Labs 6.1 set I had before then I'd deffo be spending more on separates. Even low-end separates would be a huge improvement over PC speakers.

Speakers are a funny thing in that your own system can sound good to you (even if it's ****) but the moment you hear something better (and believe me there are many levels of better over and above Creative Labs kit) it's tough to go back.

Headphone listening especially was vastly improved when listening through an amp.
 
Imy said:
How much did he spend on them? If they're anything like the Creative Labs 6.1 set I had before then I'd deffo be spending more on separates. Even low-end separates would be a huge improvement over PC speakers.

Speakers are a funny thing in that your own system can sound good to you (even if it's ****) but the moment you hear something better (and believe me there are many levels of better over and above Creative Labs kit) it's tough to go back.

Headphone listening especially was vastly improved when listening through an amp.
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Really? I never actually thought about that before! Well, I will probably have to investigate that as a separate project since the main goal for now was to upgrade the PC. They are a Creative X-Fi Soundblaster kit but I have always found that they sound really high quality. As you say that could just be that I haven't heard better :D.

As long as the 360W PSU is going to be enough for the build I think I'm going to show him what I've got and see what he wants changing.
 
You can get a higher power PSU if you want, but without a gaming graphics card the system is going to be using well under 200W at full load with the drives and fans. You'd get a top quality Seasonic unit with gold rated efficiency and plenty of power to spare.
 
teppic said:
You can get a higher power PSU if you want, but without a gaming graphics card the system is going to be using well under 200W at full load with the drives and fans. You'd get a top quality Seasonic unit with gold rated efficiency and plenty of power to spare.
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Nah I mean, if it's only going to hit up to 200W or so then there's no point spending the extra. Thanks for all the advice mate, I'm going to propose what I've got and see how the price matches up to what he wants!
 
You'll be surprised. I was and trust me I'm no audiophile. The difference is very obvious when you hear it.

Anyway, enough about sound. I built a couple of Haswell i5-4670 machines at work recently and didn't have to spend much at all.

You can save a bit by going micro ATX rather than full ATX. It doesn't sound like you need all the expansion slots of a full ATX board.

120GB is plenty for an SSD boot drive if not gaming. I'm using a 120GB drive SSD drive right now and after installing Win 7 Pro, MS Office and a host of web/software development applications it's showing as "75.7GB free of 111GB".
 
If you install things like Creative Suite and MS Office it can start to pile up on a 120GB SSD drive. For best performance you should leave about 10% of the drive unpartitioned too. 250GB isn't really that expensive so I think it's a good request in a generous budget.
 
I have Creative Suite (Photoshop, Acrobat, Fireworks, Illustrator) and Office (everything but Access) installed.

I still have 2/3rds of the 120GB drive free.
 
I will put the decision to the man with the money and see what he thinks. Regarding switching to micro ATX rather than ATX, I have built an ATX machine before but have relatively little experience with the smaller micro ATX's so I would be more comfortable sticking to what I know.

How much would I be saving for going with micro?
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £191.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £145.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit - OEM (FQC-04649) £113.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 350D Micro ATX Case - Black £79.99
1 x Gigabyte H87M-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £73.99
1 x Creative Sound Blaster Z High Performance Gaming Sound Card - OEM (30SB150200000) £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £53.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x Seasonic G series 360w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £48.98
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler £26.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £874.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
It doesn't look like we would be saving much money by going for micro, especially when I think he will prefer the larger machine.

With all these OEM parts, I guess I'm going to have to buy some cables?
 
mattStoor said:
It doesn't look like we would be saving much money by going for micro, especially when I think he will prefer the larger machine.

With all these OEM parts, I guess I'm going to have to buy some cables?
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You only need 3 sata cables and 2 of them come with the mobo. So, you only need 1, which you must have a spare knocking around or 1 from his existing PC, unless it`s an old IDE system based.
 
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