£1000 Budget - Photography\Gaming

[syn3rgy]

Hi All,

This is my first post on OCUK and would love some assistance\guidance from you all.

I am looking for help on building a new rig. The last build I did was years ago and a bit out of date with it all now.

I do a lot of photography and require something that will be able to handle Adobe suit \ Lightroom etc and processing tons of images, but would not like to limit it to just this.
I would also like to use it to play games and watch movies and for it to definitely last me for a good few years before I have to do any sort of upgrading.

I have a budget of £1000 give or take a little

Don’t require:
Monitor – will buy this outside of the £1k (Suggestions for photography would be appreciated, thinking of Dell U2713HM) Will get 1 for now but plan to upgrade to 2 monitors
Keyboard
Mouse
DVD Drive
OS

Would like:
Case – Smallish (do like the look of the Corsair Obsidian 250D or something similar ie BitFenix prodigy M as this may provide a bit of flexibility for motherboard and expansion. Other suggestions welcome)
Quiet – Not adverse to water cooling however, would need to understand this a bit more (Maintenance)
HDD1 – SSD Drive for OS + Adobe cache etc
HDD2 – Normal HDD for everything else
Graphics card – For some reason, I prefer AMD but not “stuck” on this.
Memory – Think min starting would be 16GB and upgrade in future

Thank you all for your assistance

 

[dacads]

Haswell refresh is just around the corner which will reveal new CPUs and Z97 motherboards.

Here is a preliminary spec I have come up with anyway

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £245.99
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD316G1600HC9DC01) £115.99
1 x Asus Z87 GRYPHON Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Aero Cool Dead Silence Gaming White/Black Mini Tower Windowed £72.95
1 x Corsair RM Series RM 550 '80+ Gold' 550W Power Supply (CP-9020053-UK) £71.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £13.49
Total : £986.46 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 

[Doogles]

Haswell refresh is just around the corner which will reveal new CPUs and Z97 motherboards.

Here is a preliminary spec I have come up with anyway

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £245.99
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD316G1600HC9DC01) £115.99
1 x Asus Z87 GRYPHON Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Aero Cool Dead Silence Gaming White/Black Mini Tower Windowed £72.95
1 x Corsair RM Series RM 550 '80+ Gold' 550W Power Supply (CP-9020053-UK) £71.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £13.49
Total : £986.46 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Good build but I think you could get a high capacity PSU with just as good quality for the same price. First one for lower price or second one for better quality.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-003-SF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-044-SS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2466

 

[ShivP]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £245.99
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX21C11T3K2/16X) £119.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £119.98
1 x Asus Z97I-Plus Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £114.95
1 x Corsair Obsidian Series 250D Mini ITX Compact Gaming Case - Black (CC-9011047-WW) £71.99
1 x Corsair CS550M 550W Semi-Modular 80+ GOLD Certified Power Supply (CP-9020076-UK) £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x Noctua NH-L9i CPU Cooler Low Profile - 92mm £34.99
Total : £1,047.44 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Mini-ITX

 

[syn3rgy]

Hi All,

Thank you for the suggestions, do we know when the new boards and processors are meant to be coming out? I'd rather wait till then so hopefully it will be soon. No doubt, when they do come out, I will be asking you gurus for your assistance

Im thinking a micro-atx case and motherboard may be the best options as this will let me expand in the future, Mini may be too restrictive in terms or additional memory if I will to upgrade to 32gb.

Would there be any benefits in going water cooled?

 

[Danny75]

Hi All,

Thank you for the suggestions, do we know when the new boards and processors are meant to be coming out? I'd rather wait till then so hopefully it will be soon.

OcUK has already received stock of some Z97 and H97 motherboards. The rest will soon follow.

The new Haswell CPUs for 2014 have already been received by some stores in other countries, so they should arrive in the UK any day now. Perhaps the "K" (overclocking) chips will arrive a few weeks after the others do, though. Not sure.

Would there be any benefits in going water cooled?

Depends. A decent air cooler will out-perform a 120/140mm rad water cooler. So performance-wise, only really makes sense if you go for a 240/280 rad. Aesthetically, a pump on the motherboard does look nicer and shows off the RAM (and allows for easier removal of RAM sticks than some air coolers which overlap the RAM). There are other considerations but you can read up more on air v water cooling yourself.

 

[syn3rgy]

Ok, so after playing with the MATX scenario I have decided to go with ATX and Mid Case.

Below is what I have put together so far. I have gone above budget a little and dont want to go any higher.

Please could you gurus do a sanity check for me and advise on what you think.

There are two motherboards as I am undecided, the G1 Sniper seems to have a better sound card (Please advise on what you think I should go for). Also, I may purchase another GPU in the future so that i have 2.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £359.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £269.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX16GX3M2A1600C11) £129.95
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £128.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 550D Quiet Midi Tower Case - Black (CC-9011015-WW) £119.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £88
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
Total : £1,294.57 (includes shipping : £14.75).



Not sure if I have forgotten anything. Dont really need a optical drive.

Thanks all

 

[Doomedspeed]

for that money (case wise) id go the Antec P280.

The motherboard may become quite easy. Look at the Gaming 7, its more expensive but comes with 8GB of RAM free (worth £60), so its a £80 motherboard with top of the range features. Just add another 8GB (another £60) and you're laughing. So that's £200 for RAM and Motherboard.

I'd go for the Asus DCUII R9 290 instead. The X isn't worth the extra and MSI AMD GPU's have been having issue recently.