Advice please

CliffyG

CliffyG

CliffyG

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
17,756
Location
Cambridge
My friend is looking to buy an I7 setup mainly for video / music editing but also with a bit of gaming too, we've come up with the following between us:

Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £199.99

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £142.98

Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (TR3X6G1600C8) £126.98

Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply £86.99

OcUK Value ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £84.99

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £66.99

Antec 200 Two Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £37.98

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM2+ / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £19.99

Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99

Sub Total : £682.49
Shipping : £11.75
VAT : £104.14
Total : £798.38

Is there anything he can do to get it significantly cheaper? Also, are all the components ok or should he be looking at something different?
 
As Huddy has already stated you've put together a solid build.

The only thing i would substitute is the case for Antec 300 - link - it's only ~£5 more but it's a more conventional looking case with cleaner lines (This is a personal preference - so if you've picked it because it's what you like the look of then it's still a great value case.)
 
Cheers, yeah he liked the look of the case, he was planning on getting an LED fan to sit behind the front grill for some blueness. I shall inform him to get his credit card out!
 
Out of interest, if he goes for an AMD Phenom X4 965 Black Edition with dual channel memory what sort of performance hit would he be looking at. Can save around £100 that way.
 
If money is tight then the AMD route is still a solid choice as the impact on overall speed, in day-to-day usage, would be minimal - gaming especially wouldn't suffer.

My only *slight* hesitation would be that he would lose 2GB of memory and depending on how intensive his video/music editing is - it might be that he could have made good use of the extra memory that the i7 provides (If it's just general editing then it won't be a problem - 4GB would be ample).

Basically, if his editing isn't that intensive (i.e. pages of samples open at a time) then the AMD would be a sensible buy if budget dictates. I would even go so far as to suggest you buy the 955 and add a moderate clock to save him a little more money.
 
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