£1500 build required

Bakedgoods

Bakedgoods

Bakedgoods

Capodecina
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Evening all, i'm one of those who's not kept up with hardware at all and has no idea about the latest generation.

Could someone help me out with a spec for £1500 (including a decent monitor) or no more than £1300 without? It's mostly to be used for gaming.

Considering the pre-built and overclocked options but may build it myself if it's going to be worth it.

Any help appreciated :)
 
Not sure if I want to wait that long of it's the end of August :(

Been without a desktop PC for a couple of months already it's a nightmare.
 
Here's a base. Just add case, screen, keyboard, mouse, cooling and your choice of graphics card(s). It will do SLI and Xfire.

OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G) £187.99
(£159.99) £187.99
(£159.99)
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £151.99
(£129.35) £151.99
(£129.35)
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £149.99
(£127.65) £149.99
(£127.65)
Corsair HX 850W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-850HXUK) £142.99
(£121.69) £142.99
(£121.69)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 16000C9 (2000MHz) Dual-Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A2000C9) £104.99
(£89.35) £209.98
(£178.70)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £48.16
(£40.99) £48.16
(£40.99)
Samsung SH-S223L/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £12.98
(£11.05) £12.98
(£11.05)

£904

Edit:

can save £50 on motherboard if you dont want SLI.
it has 8GB RAM, you might only want 4GB for now.
can save some by dropping the 120GB SSD down a size.
if you don't want dual graphics cards at all then pick a 650W version of same PSU.
 
Last edited:
£1510.87 with the free delivery you qualify for

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95thrifles said:
£1510.87 with the free delivery you qualify for

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Click to expand...

You know, I hadn't noticed how much more cost effective RAM is on 1356. It's only slightly more expensive for 6GB than 4GB, and that's the sweet spot. 4GB is not enough these days IMO.

Pretty much covers the cost of going to that platform.
 
The build looks really solid. Obviously it is a judgement call whether you want to go the i7 or i5 route and what monitor to get, but if you fall onto the i7 you probably want that processor/motherboard setup.

To the above poster. Just out of curiosity, seeing that the OP is mainly interested in gaming, why would you think that 4GB is not enough? Just about all theoretical analysis and practical experience would have me believe that anything over 4GB is quite frivolous, though of course with an i7 setup you go with 6GB just because of the compatibility. Saying 4GB is not enough seems strange though. What would be the reasons for this?
 
Convenience and future proofing really. Games these days are 32bit so taking up 2GB of space - but with the widespread uptake of 64bit OS it can't be long before we start having 64bit games (at least in parallel). On a 4GB machine everything past that 2GB is used for the other stuff, so by the time you have an MSN client, Steam, a browser with a few tabs etc etc it's all gone and alt-tab starts to invoke paging to disk.
 
I guess that is possible, I am just not sure that I see that coming up on the horizon really. Then again, if it gives some peace of mind and I am sure for many it will, it is another good argument to go with the i7 route. Then again, with the roomier budget the price drop of the i7 950 is really just about all the reason one would need.
 
Thanks for those spec guys. I would probably sway towards either increasing my budget to accomodate such a decent monitor and spending more on a better gfx card.

I'm seriously considering waiting for the next gen ATI cards though if they will be released before the end of this year.

I tend to get a bit of a twitchy buying finger though once i've set my mind on something :F

I've really missed the whole SSD thing. Are they that much faster when your OS/Games are installed on them?
 
It is worth spending decent money on a decent monitor, should have mentioned it above, no point spending £1500 on a pc to display it on a crap monitor, the monitor will last you several builds as well so yeah theyre definitely worth the investment
I have the HP LP2475W and was amazed at the difference between it and my previous monitors, definitely worth it
The SSD is nice, makes booting up much quicker and things tend to load quicer but if its purely for games its not that much help tbh imo, I play a lot of online games and end up having to sit round waiting for everyone else to load anyway, grrr, lol
 
I've currently got a 22" Samsung Pebble.

I actually hate the plasticy feel and look of it. It looks fine on a TV but I prefer matt monitors with less sort of casing and plastic around the edges if that makes sense?

I agree it would be worth it but I would be prepared to pay extra rather than compromise of graphics card etc.
 
If youre willing to pay extra all very well and good, I wouldnt really call a 470 a compromise though, its one of best cards out atm and prob best price/performance
 
Thanks, i'm just being a bit shallow with regards to the 1280MB when there's cards way in excess of that now. I realise there's more to it and i'm probably just not aware of how the technology works.

I'm going to hang fire for the ATI 6 series I think.
 
Re the actual memory size, this is directly in proportion to the screen resolution, at 1920x1200/1080 theres no need for any more memory, the only reason youd need more is if youre running a multi screen setup or 2560 res (30" monitor)
The actual speed the gfx card runs at is more or less independant of its memory size and more to do with clock speeds, sp counts etc, but these arent directly comparable either due to vastly different technologies between ATI and NVidia as well as different architectures within each of their respetive series
 
I didn't know about the correlation, I just suspected it had higher core clock speed etc. Thanks though - useful post :)

I keep saying i'm going to wait but I just love new tech :D
 
Correct me if i'm wrong but the 6 series cards going to be released this year are likely to be the mid range not high end cards like the 5970?

Trying to decide if it's worth waiting, getting a cheap card to tide me over for a few months, or just jumping in now.
 
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