£400-£500 Spec help please :)

claresiobhan

claresiobhan

claresiobhan

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Harrogate
Hi :)
I'm looking to build my own pc for the first time, so I'm a little worried but my dad works in IT so he should give me a hand :)

I haven't had a desktop in a long while as I've been using a Dell Inspiron 6400 but basically, I hate it with a passion. My dad recommends just trying to add more memory or a better hard drive but I know laptops are hard to get good parts too and not to mention, the laptop sucks.

I would like a desktop with a good sized hard drive (say 500GB minimum as I've always had hand me down PC's with poor hard drive sizes) to store all my songs etc, a good amount of memory (and advice on whether to have a dual core or split into 4) and a good graphics card and processor (budget providing!)

I was originally going to buy the *insert poor competitor* with 1TB memory, but after checking some mesh reviews and reading some forums I found my way to this site and was pretty blown away with how much better for value getting your own parts is and really amazed at how helpful the forums are!


I'd mainly use my laptop for uni work, listening to music and watching movies, and also game ranging from girly stuff like Sims 3 to stuff like Call of Duty etc

I'd really appreciate any help or if anyone could recommend what hardware I can get for my money. I dont need to extra stuff like a mouse, keyboard speakers etc and I've got a sony bravia 19" HD screen, would that be any use as a monitor because if so I'd rather just use that then splash out on a new monitor.


Sorry for the longggg post, and thanks in advance!! xx~


:cool:
 
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remove the competitor name:D

and heres a spec

xm3f3n.jpg


could probs unlock the CPU to become a quadcore with that mobo :D
 
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £86.99

LG CH08LS10 8x Blu-Ray Reader/16x DVD±RW - £79.99

Asus M4A77TD Pro AMD 770 Motherboard - £68.99

G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 - £66.99

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £59.98

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 250 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - £59.00

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 420W Power Supply - £39.99

Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - £32.99

Total :£508.43

My Try at a Spec. If you gave up the Blu Ray Drive you'd be able to get a better video card, I just thought it'd be nice to have a Blu Ray Drive.
 
Thanks :) Out of interest are Blu-ray players something that might come down in price any time soon? Can they be added at a later date as well? I do like the idea of having them because we have some blu-ray dvds from my brothers ps3 and it would be nice playing them on a HD monitor :D
 
I think BluRay will drop in price, but it will take a good few years for it to get to 'buy without thinking' levels like DVD burners are now - IE sub £50.

You could go AM2+ and save money on the RAM, but that is a bit of a waste really. I'd defo look at going quad core though, it's well worth it IMHO.

As for the laptop, don't be too coy about upgrading it; laptop HDs have come a long way in the last couple of years in terms of speed and transfer rates [especially SSDs] and extra RAM never hurt anyone!
 
It just depends how much you really want to play Blu-Ray's.

Quad Core is Hit and Miss, it really depends on what you want to use the computer for.

For gaming a Quad Core doesn't really offer an advantage over a fast Dual Core as the majority of games aren't Multi-threaded yet. They will be at some point but at this point it's not worth the extra leap unless you are a REALLY hardcore gamer.

The only thing I can think to ask is what you do in University, if it's something where you need to use Photoshop or a CAD application then it would be better to have Quad Core over Dual core.
 
For my uni course I don't need Photoshop but have that and Corel Painter on my laptop atm (seriously slows it down) as I do use the programmes in my spare time, however perhaps not to the extent that someone doing a digital course would. The main thing I'm after is playing the games I like on the best setting (never been able to do that before!) without all the lagging and freezing I usually get.

Also would using my TV as a monitor work? I've looked at the back on of TV and it has a monitor adaptor but I don't think it would be HD, hence buying a blu-ray player may not actually play through my TV :/
 
Depends on the monitor - if it's marked as HD ready, it's almost certainly going to support 1360x768 or whatever the 720p standard is supposed to be. If you google "[model number] datasheet" it should tell you the supported modes over VGA, give that a look.

Bear in mind though you can pick up 22" 1080p monitors for under 150 notes [see here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-071-VS ] which have HDMI on board.

As for quad core/corel Painter - a quick google suggests that some of the add-on effects for post processing are multithreaded, so depending on what you are doing it might be worth the effort; best to pop over to a Corel user forum to check first though.

TBH I was dubious about going quad core when I built this machine, but I'm a total convert now; admittadly 8gb of RAM helps, but I can't remember the last time the computer hung, churned or had one of those 'thinking...' moments outside of when I have been running benchmarks; it's a much smoother experience IMHO and I'm glad I did it. Whether it's worth the extra £50-£100 is highly subjective, but I wouldn't hesitate these days, to me it's worth it [especially if you fancy running virtual machines - although if you do, avoid the Q8xxx series!] :)

Anyway, if your main concern is gaming, you really want a good GPU - 4870 would play most things very nicely, with the exception of Crysis, which nothing outwith multiGPU setups plays properly. I have a 4850 and it's adequate, giving abouut 25fps average on Crysis Warhead with a Q6600.
 
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ThorpedoUK said:
Hi Claire

Check out my post below:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18054974

I asked this very same question (£400 initially, then £500 and now £750) and got lots of builds recommended between those prices, so take a look :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting ThorpeoUK and helping me out, had a look through your post and sounds like with your new price range you'd be getting a really nice comp :) I wish i was more computer savy because after looking through the posts I always find myself getting a bit lost and can't really see the differences between similar builds of similar prices!
 
Nocky24 said:
Yeh definitely go AM3, a dual 550 will be fine and for your gaming and budget a 4850/4870 will do everything you want :)
Click to expand...

Thanks I'll definitely go for the AM3 then, is there much difference between the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 or the XFX Radeon HD 4850? Is there much difference between them because i know theres a difference in price.

And finally will all the parts I've chosen work together okay?

Thanks for your help! :)
 
There won't be a MASSIVE difference at the resolution your TV will run at to be honest. If you want to be on the safe side I'd go for the XFX as it's double the ram and only £7 more.
 
Final spec

Thanks for the help Redache

Think this is the final spec I'm going to go for:

vyrzb6.jpg



How's that sound?


Also is there any real advantage of getting a solid state hardrive to run alongside my other one at this kind of spec level? Just someone mentioned it to me. Thanks ;)
 
claresiobhan said:
Thanks for the help Redache

Think this is the final spec I'm going to go for:

vyrzb6.jpg



How's that sound?


Also is there any real advantage of getting a solid state hardrive to run alongside my other one at this kind of spec level? Just someone mentioned it to me. Thanks ;)
Click to expand...

That looks absolutely fine to be honest. Cpu and that xfx gpu is great, the only thing i'd change is the optical drive and go for the sony 24x lightscribe, for a couple of quid more you might as well as its a slighlty better drive. Also yeh SSDs are great if you really need the faster OS loading times and storage access times, but for the average user its not worth the premium in my opinion- i can wait :)
 
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