£500ish for a friend.

MoridinUK

MoridinUK

MoridinUK

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Joined
16 Jun 2014
Posts
315
I have a friend who wants a new pc, mostly for photos and desktop stuff but also light gaming.

He wants to run civ, minecraft and kerbal most but has this habit of connecting it to his enmourous HDMI tv so I'm sure he wants to game at 1080dpi.

He was going to buy this:
CD/DVD Read & Write
Processor Information Quad-core Intel Core i5-4440 Processor 3.1GHz to 3.3GHz
AMD Radeon R5 235, 1GB
1TB hard drive
8GB Memory
Card Slot Information 7-in-1 card reader (MS, MS Pro, SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC, MMC Plus)
Windows 8.1 (64 Bit)
Wi-Fi- 802.11b/g/n
for around £500

But I've been trying to push him a little more towards this:

Your basket
YOUR BASKET
1 x "Liberator X4" AMD FX-4 4300 @ 4.0GHz Turbo Nvidia GeForce Quad Core Gaming PC £238.01
- 1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £59.99
- 1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
- 1 x 24 MONTH WARRANTY - COLLECT & RETURN £0.01
- 1 x Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days £0.00
- 1 x No Sound Card Upgrade £0.00
- 1 x MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N750Ti-2GD5/OC) £107.99
- 1 x No Second Hard Drive Option (ZERO Cost) £0.00
- 1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £42.98
Total : £533.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



I thought this gave him a lot more options to branch out gaming wise, he is a bit obessed with only getting latest releases on his PS4 but I'd love for him to find some love for PC games..

Am I leading him astray? The other will be easy (store bought locally) if anything happens under warranty but I know OVerclockers have awesome support...
 
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No I'm seriously coming onto the OC forum to ask how best to advise my friend. I want him to buy from OC but I want to be sure I'm offering good advice.

I want to know whether you guys think the build I've put up is overkill for what he wants, or a much better deal than the horrible shop bought. Or if you have any better suggestions? I want to convince him to buy from here.

Alternativiely you can continue to be snarky. *shurg* but I do want to convince him that this site and forum offers better value, and better support than their competitors.
 
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Doomedspeed said:
I didn't see that personally but he should remove the shop name..
Click to expand...

I've removed that and will replace the link 1 min.

There! I was mistaken it does have a small card. So you dont think either would do what he wants? He currently plays from a laptop, no idea of the spec though.
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x "ForceBox Gamer" Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 Nvidia GTX LAN Gaming PC £245.02
- 1 x MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N750Ti-2GD5/OC) £107.99
- 1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £42.98
- 1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £131.99
- 1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
Total : £612.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).



I'm just not sure I can get him up to £600. I should ask what he has now, other than his laptop.

Gah forgot an opitcal drive, but I have a slim one in my old laptop I could give him... OR os this better value:

YOUR BASKET
1 x "Defender X6" AMD FX-6 6300 @ 4.1GHz Turbo AMD Radeon Six Core Gaming PC £249.02
- 1 x Sapphire Radeon R7 260X OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11222-06-20G) £95.99
- 1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £42.98
- 1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £59.99
- 1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £83.99
- 1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
Total : £616.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).
 
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No worries, It was a little naive of me to not obscure who and where, which I have fixed. But no I'd not come on here to talk about a purchase I was planing on making elsewhere.
 
tamzzy said:
for not much more than 500 quid (well £37 quid more, to be exact)
this is my 2 pence

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £131.99
1 x Sapphire Radeon R7 265 Dual-X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Seagate SSHD 7200RPM 3.5" 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DX001) SSHD Hybrid Drive £58.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Asus H81M-E Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £39.95
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 300W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £29.99
1 x Zalman T2 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
1 x OcUK Tech Labs Zaward OEM 120mm Golf Ball Fan £2.59
Total : £536.02 (includes shipping : £8.00).



core i5 cpu + r7 265
8gb ram
1tb hybrid sshd, which gives a very nice performance boost short of getting a ssd+hdd combo
all in a neat little matx case
os included

only problem is that the case is out of stock at the moment
Click to expand...

This is pretty much what I just ordered for him. Except that we swapped the PSU for the Superflower golden green 450w 80+ gold which is currently on offer..

I have some old arctic silver 5 hanging about, will that make a useful difference on the stock cooler we'll be using?
 
WE ain't overclocking so unless it shows heat as a problem when I stress it a bit (which is more than he'll ever do to it) then I don't think he'll want to spend even £20 more.. :(
 
All the bits were in stock when I place the order yesterday but they haven't dispatched today.. :cry:

(Haven't built a pc for a while I'm looking forward to it!)
 
Ok so I need a little more advice...

Typical!

I've built this pc, removed the stock thermal paste and used some arttic silver 5 which I applied to the cpu.

Temp when idle 33
Temp when stressed (prime95 blend for about an hour) 78 with a peak of 90.

So I think this is within the limits and he shouldn't be doing anything that is going to thrash all the cores.

My main question is that the cores do not run at the same temp, in fact the one hit 90(core 2 of 4) while core 4 of 4 was running at 77-78!

Is this normal or was I perhaps too sparing with the silver?
 
What do I do? pull off the paste and try again with a bit more.. I'm always very careful with arctic silver, as it is electrically conductive...

I just put a square on the center of the cpu, but that stock heatsink doesn't seem to put a lot of pressure on the cpu.

Also I installed the 120mm fan to pull air in the front of the case, I could set it to blow air straight onto the cpu from the side, but that would rather leave the psu and gpu with very little fresh air?
 
mrham4321 said:
I had a similar issue when I tried to replace my i5 stock cooler with an aftermarket Zalman, but that one turned out to be bent so it wouldn't go back on. So I put the stock back, with an old tube of Arctic Silver. I did notice that the paste wasn't the same as when I bought it new. It had separated, into a clearly transparent liquid and paste.

Tried a pea-sized bit with the cooler pressure to spread it, but this led to load temps much higher than with the stock Intel compound. Hitting 100C under benchmarks! So my conclusions were that the Arctic Silver had not 'aged' well in the tube in a cool dark cupboard for a few years, leading to it separating out and not spreading properly/conducting heat properly.

80C sounds about right for this CPU. 90-100C with the stock cooler probably means the paste hasn't been applied properly. After my issues, I don't really rate AS5 anymore, and would recommend you give MX2 a try?
Click to expand...

I have something else, but my silver is not sepparated and I replaced the paste on my old graphics card with it a week ago and it dropped the temp well. I guess I need to reseat the cooler tonight... :)
 
Yeah I tend to do a halfway between spreading and pea, a squares blob in the middle, maybe I had too much maybe too little. I'll give it another go. While spreading my square blob I noticed it was getting quite difficult to spread.

I also hate these 'clip on' heat sinks. I never fell like they are on properly..
 
More worries, Arctic silver has a 200 hour "break in" time!!! So do I need to repalce it or not :S? I think I could do a much better job this time!

What do we think?
 
I have reapplied using the verticle line method as the arctic silver website says too and in place testing on prime 95 has hit 88 with in the first 10 mins... I have some mx-3 but I'm really unsure it will be any better than the silver?
 
Ok so 20 mins in and that peak was the peak, Peak temps across the 4 cores: 85:88:84:81

But the temp wonders up and down as far as 72 for the package and then back up and then down again... I'm a bit WTF about it all!?!?!?!?

Any ideas? Do I need to raise a ticket on the cooler?
 
1 hour in and the peak temps are package:88 (86:88:85:83)

But it still wonders about a lot, at the moment 74: (73:74:72:69) I've never seen temps move about like this underload!

Is there something funky in the i5 that i'm unaware of?

Stopped thes stress test and temps back down 2 mins later to 39 (38:39:38:36)

Do I try my mx3 or is it ok? I know it is running hot but...

If it is too hot then the stock cooler is either damaged, or not fit for purpose! (Or I'm just too generous with the silver)
 
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