£1200 build - thoughts?

Mr Jack

Mr Jack

Mr Jack

Caporegime
Joined
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Nordfriesland, Germany
I've got a budget of £1200 to spend on a new PC. I will be gaming with it, but also working on it including quite a bit of bioinformatics for which a decent multicore processor and fast storage are key.

This is what I've spec'd out:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,226.86
(includes shipping: £23.10)
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Obviously I plan on looking at what I can get in the Black Friday deals as well, but that's the basic outline, thoughts? Have I missed anything off? Does it seem like a reasonable spec for the money?

(I need the OS and WiFi support, and I want a new monitor. I have keyboard/mouse)
 
Maybe consider getting the SanDisk X300 512GB SSD that Overclockers are selling for 99.95 as part of their Black Friday deals instead of the M.2 drive? You would get more memory for a cheaper price.
 
Changed a few things from your spec.

Swapped the case for the newer R5.

You don't need a SSHD as you have a fast SSD already. The WD Blue is a solid hard drive.

The Corsair RMx is a very quiet unit even at full load. You get all Jap caps and a 7 year warranty.

Noctua D15S is a single fan version of the D15 which is one of the best air coolers on the market. It is also very quiet.

The 2400MHz kit is a bit cheaper.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,225.74
(includes shipping: £15.90)
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lee32uk said:
Swapped the case for the newer R5.
Click to expand...

I couldn't see anything about the R5 that seemed to relevant - it mostly seemed to have better watercooling support. What's the advantage of the newer case?

You don't need a SSHD as you have a fast SSD already. The WD Blue is a solid hard drive.
Click to expand...

I figure for an extra £8 why not get the faster drive?

The Corsair RMx is a very quiet unit even at full load. You get all Jap caps and a 7 year warranty.
Click to expand...

I considered it but I was under the impression that the Superflower was considered a better PSU. I don't suppose there's much in it.

Noctua D15S is a single fan version of the D15 which is one of the best air coolers on the market. It is also very quiet.
Click to expand...

I have a, possibly irrational, preference for horizontally orientated coolers since they also provide better cooling across the motherboard. No doubt the Noctua is a better CPU cooler but I'm not really planning on extreme overclocking anyway so does it really matter?

The 2400MHz kit is a bit cheaper.
Click to expand...

But I should be able to get higher speeds out of the 2666MHz kit, right?

Thank you for your help :)
 
The R5 has improved stock fans and also a better front intake. I think the sound insulation is improved, although don't quote Me on that.

The SSHD won't be any faster than a standard hard drive. The SSD portion is very tiny. As you have a very fast dedicated SSD in the SM951 then it isn't really worth buying an SSHD.

I would say that the Corsair RMx is on par with the SuperFlower. If you wanted to go with a SuperFlower unit then the EVGA G2 650W would be a better option as it is exactly the same platform and oem but for less money.

I prefer Air coolers that push the air towards the rear exhaust fan rather than back into the case. I would only use a top down cooler in a HTPC case where cooler height is limited.

Overclocking Ram doesn't really have any benefit when gaming. If you want to overclock it then you can still do it with the 2400MHz kit. You should be able to get the same result as the 2666MHz kit.
 
I like it

I'd stick with with the Superflower as I have a 750w platinum and it's flawless. Plus it goes well with your colour scheme ;)
 
Just to say I put the order in. I went with the R5 case as you suggested and picked an ASUS Gtx 970 that was going for £229 on Black Friday and some 3200MHz DDR4 ram that was also on Black Friday for the same price I was going to pay for the slower ram so it seemed like a no brainer. I opted for a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler in the end; seemed like a good balance of price and performance. Otherwise it was as originally specced out and came it at just a whisker under my £1200 budget :)
 
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