£3k build - thoughts?

4thAttempt

4thAttempt

4thAttempt

Associate
Joined
8 May 2012
Posts
61
Location
Southend, Essex
So, 5 years since my last build it's time for a new one and once again I'm looking for something to last me the full 5 years.

Not a hardcore gamer but enjoy strategy games, driving games and MMORPG's - but not FPS games, I'm way too slow for them! Lots of Internet, Youtube and a bit of eBay. Probably some mild overclocking but not looking for record breaking speeds. This is probably in the 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' category but I have the budget so might as well use it :)

Budget is £3k and I want low noise levels. Case sits under desk so no side window necessary (or wanted!).

Thoughts on this build? Did I miss anything? Would you change anything?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,882.85
(includes shipping: £28.02)



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The WD black is a confidence thing, used them for years without problem so it's always a default choice for me! Any suggestions for a monitor? I need to stick to 24" as I only have a small area and 27" is not going to fit! There are a couple of 1440p ones on Overclockers that might suit but I have no clue if one brand is better than another

I have deliberately missed off sound - I'm using a Logitech 2.1 setup at the moment as that's all I have space for but a 5.1 headset is an option - but again I don't have a clue what I'm looking for :(
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,646.95
(includes shipping: £23.10)





This case and cooler are certainly quiet.

Your PSU was way too much money, this one does that hybrid fan mode thing where it stops spinning at lower temps/load.

This GFX card also stops its fans and is quiet when under load.

16Gb of RAM is more than enough for a gaming system.



If 24" is all you can manage - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-...d-multimedia-monitor-black-red-mo-047-ao.html

1440P+Gsync.​
 
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In terms of monitor, you won't go far wrong with a Dell S2417DG. It's fast, has gsync so will compliment your GFX and will be far superior to the AOC you have selected.

The WD is a good drive, are you sure 2TB is enough? If I were you I would go for at least 4TB. Remember, it's gotta last 5 years!
 
Are AMD 'back in the game' now? I've heard good things about Ryzen but started building computers in the days they didn't need CPU coolers - 8086 chip anybody? In all that time AMD have usually been playing catch up and although I've built them it's always been for other people rather than myself. I left that job 15 years ago and have only built a couple of systems since then but always based on Intel / Nvidia rather than AMD.

HoneyBadger said:
The WD is a good drive, are you sure 2TB is enough? If I were you I would go for at least 4TB. Remember, it's gotta last 5 years!
Click to expand...

Clouds* lots and lots of clouds! SSD for 'work' type stuff, rotational for games. Adding an additional HDD might be a requirement later on but I'll have the space for it :)

*there is no cloud, it's just somebody else's computer :)
 
AMD use to suck for many years but finally have something decent, you get more cores/threads with Ryzen than you do with the equivalent priced Intel option and I reckon that will help it outlast say the 7700K.
 
Looking at AMD Ryzen....I'm not a big fan of waiting as there is always something on the horizon but if I went Ryzen 1800x at £450 I could go with an AMD graphics card meaning freesync rather than gsync and save a bunch on the monitor. The waiting would be for the AMD Vega range to come out, is there speculation (or better still, confirmed dates) as to when that is likely to happen?

For some reason (habit probably) I always think Intel/Nvidia and AMD/AMD and never Intel for one and AMD for the other but I guess lots of people do mix without problems
 
i know its not WD brand, but 1tb more storage for over £30 saving

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £103.69
(includes shipping: £8.70)



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ive had no issues with WDB, toshiba, barracuda drives before, i have a 500gb seagate as my boot drive, a 750gb in either seagate or toshiba, a 1tb WDG and a toshiba 1tb with both these last 2 being the faster 6mb/s drives and no issues, had a WDB in a laptop and worked wonders even as a backup drive till i changed it for a fujitsu, sadly though the 3tb WDB listed at similar price to the barracuda is a 5400rpm speed which usually a 2.5 drive speed, so disappointing as brand wise it wouldve been the better choose.
 
ExoMale said:
i know its not WD brand, but 1tb more storage for over £30 saving

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £103.69
(includes shipping: £8.70)



​

ive had no issues with WDB, toshiba, barracuda drives before, i have a 500gb seagate as my boot drive, a 750gb in either seagate or toshiba, a 1tb WDG and a toshiba 1tb with both these last 2 being the faster 6mb/s drives and no issues, had a WDB in a laptop and worked wonders even as a backup drive till i changed it for a fujitsu, sadly though the 3tb WDB listed at similar price to the barracuda is a 5400rpm speed which usually a 2.5 drive speed, so disappointing as brand wise it wouldve been the better choose.
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Personally I just don't trust Seagate.
Have they rebuilt their reputation now ?

WD is always my go to for hardrives. :)
 
MassiveJim said:
Personally I just don't trust Seagate.
Have they rebuilt their reputation now ?

WD is always my go to for hardrives. :)
Click to expand...

if im honest i dont know much about anyones rep really, but other than a mains powered external i had when i was still in high school that got corrupted going from my house to a mates, i have never had any problems with internal drives and infact i have a 1tb 2.5 portable from seagate attached to my xbox one and no faults even after filling it up lol.

ive had more WD which is why ive got a green, mostly used the blue edition, but so far other than bad files giving corrupt and bad sectors once, neither of my drives have failed and still working fine, hell im surprised my fujitsu laptop drive of 160gb thats my backup is still going strong even after accidental disconnection from the enclosure its in the odd couple times, guess you get lucky.


take toyota, top company for reliability, yet i had a corolla T sport once for 1.5 years and what seemed like a great first fast car and toyota, turned out to be a pit after the first couple month all the way till i sold it, while great, cost me too much, its just how things are, so i never pass up on a not so well known or well review brand unless i actually have to.
 
WD, Seagate and currently Toshiba.

Ive had lots of HDD and I guess I must be the luckiest guy alive as non have ever failed on me.
 
any issues ive ever had with drives that has resulted in a fail has been down to corrupted files or moving from machine to machine and probably how i stored some before? i had 200gb ide that had a lot of stuff on and the drive died without even being used again lol, was only stored away.

mean the op can buy whichever brand they like, just to me it would be silly to spend £30 more for 1tb less just for brand name sake.
 
WD Black used to come with a 5 year warranty, I'll have a look at the others to see how they compare but pretty tempted by the Toshiba one that @stulid mentioned. As fair as drive failures go I've had 3 of them and oddly enough 2 were WD Black (the other was a Hitachi) but in every case it was the same connection so I'm going to assume faulty MB. 1st WDB worked for 3 years and failed. WD sent a replacement which worked for a year and failed. I then put a Hitachi in which worked for about 6 months and failed. Since then I've not connected anything to that SATA port.

With regard to PSU, I could go a lot cheaper and may do so but it's an area I like to be confident in and the Corsair comes (I believe) with a 7 year warranty...plus I like the idea of being able to monitor it through the CorsairLink software although I would have no idea what it all means!

If I knew when Vega was going to be available I might be tempted to wait and go with a Ryzen build but having used exclusively Intel for the past 30 years it's a hard habit to break.
 
4thAttempt said:
WD Black used to come with a 5 year warranty, I'll have a look at the others to see how they compare but pretty tempted by the Toshiba one that @stulid mentioned. As fair as drive failures go I've had 3 of them and oddly enough 2 were WD Black (the other was a Hitachi) but in every case it was the same connection so I'm going to assume faulty MB. 1st WDB worked for 3 years and failed. WD sent a replacement which worked for a year and failed. I then put a Hitachi in which worked for about 6 months and failed. Since then I've not connected anything to that SATA port.

With regard to PSU, I could go a lot cheaper and may do so but it's an area I like to be confident in and the Corsair comes (I believe) with a 7 year warranty...plus I like the idea of being able to monitor it through the CorsairLink software although I would have no idea what it all means!

If I knew when Vega was going to be available I might be tempted to wait and go with a Ryzen build but having used exclusively Intel for the past 30 years it's a hard habit to break.
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The only thing with buying a 1200w PSU for a computer that only needs 500w is that it won't be achieving its maximum efficiency. But I'm guessing the saving of a couple of quid over the lifetime of your PC doesn't matter much to you, given that you are about to drop £3k on a machine :)
 
860w rather than 1200w but the point is still valid. My reasoning is that I don't like stress in either myself or my PC! Running at less than 70% load should make things last longer and if i do decide to upgrade it will hopefully be just adding another GPU rather than adding a GPU and then needing a PSU as well ☺️
 
But there are so many fantastic 850W PSU for way less than the AX860i.

All of these,

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,309.13
(includes shipping: £15.30)



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All top end units.
 
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