Building a PC in a couple of months time.

LozBlake15

LozBlake15

LozBlake15

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Joined
8 Aug 2011
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6
Hello,

I'd really appreciate if you could take the time to quickly read through this assembly and give me some advice.

I've built PC's before, but not for about ~4 years so I'm a bit out of the loop in terms of current technology and there strengths. Reading about though this is what I've come up with. My budget is £800-£850, I'll be using my machine two fold. I'm a programmer by trade and will be doing some home stuff outside of work, I'm into web and app development so think lots of visual studio and IIS, quite resource intensive. Also of course, I'll be doing some gaming. I'm more into Civilization, Total War games than Crysis etc. On a side note, I'm trying to make this machine as quiet as possible. It doesn't have to be completely silent, but the quieter the better.

Case : Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Case
Mobo : Asus P8P67 EVO R3 P67 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
CPU : Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Memory : Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Memory Kit CL9 1.5V Non-ECC Unbuffered
HDD for OS : OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SSD - 2.5" SATA-III - Read 525MB/s Write 475MB/s 50,000 IOPS
HDD for Storage : Seagate 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - Retail Box Including Cables & Screws
PSU : Antec TruePower New 650W Modular PSU
CPU Fan : Zalman CNPS7500-CU LED Socket LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA775, AM3, AM2+, AM2, 754, 939 and 940 CPU Cooler

The obvious exclusion here is a graphics card. I'm going to take the 4850 out of my current rid and use that for the time being, I'll be buying a new graphics card a month or two later. Recommendations for the graphics card are very welcome!

The main parts I'm not too sure of at the moment is the Motherboard, the PSU and the CPU fan.

I've gone for a large amount of memory, one because it's very cheap, also because lots of visual studios and firebug really eats your ram. I'd also like to consider getting rid of the page file, would this be advisable with this amount of memory? Is it worth it for the performance boost?

I'm eager to overclock this a little as well, mainly as a hobby, maybe for a slight performance enhancement too. That's why I've gone with the 2500K, I've heard it's a great processor and the K range can be overclocked too. What about the Mobo and the Cooler, will the take kindly to me overclocking it?

Thanks for reading this, any and all criticism and advice is very much welcome!

Taaaa,
Loz.
 
4GB(2x2) is enough for gaming, but get 8GB(2x4) if you have the money as RAM prices are pretty low atm.
 
I do a lot of programming which is why i'm considering 12gb, however 8gb might well be enough. Will this RAM be fast enough to allow me to overclock my CPU? Ram speeds and there relation to CPU speed is one area i'm not very educated on.
 
1600mhz ram is all you need for sandybridge.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3.html
Therefore, we believe that inexpensive DDR3-1600 SDRAM with not very aggressive timings would be the most reasonable choice for contemporary LGA1155 systems: in our opinion, memory like that offers the best price-to-performance ratio today.
Click to expand...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2011/01/11/the-best-memory-for-sandy-bridge/1
you're the type of person that runs dozens of applications all at once, then a higher memory frequency does help, particularly when you're running demanding software. However, our testing shows that memory rated at over 1,866MHz doesn't give much extra performance. Worse still, in some applications only 1,333MHz memory gives a performance penalty, meaning that 1,600MHz memory is fine.
Click to expand...
 
two things..

not that i,m an expert maybe someone will correct me..

2600k with hyper threading better for heavy programming
and is the dark fleet a quiet case
 
Unfortunately it's a noisy beast at these speed settings - but thankfully, the Dark Fleet performed only slightly worse at its slowest fan speed setting. The CPU only became 2°C hotter while the GPU actually remained the same so in most situations, using the fans at their lowest speed setting will mean a small difference in temperatures while the difference to your ears will be huge.
 
Thats interesting point about this case, I won't be doing major overclocking so I should be able to survive on the lowest speed setting. Do you know if it's quiet at that setting? Or just less quiet if that makes sense. It might be worth me taking another look around though, as noise is a big factor for me, as is size, I want something spacious and quiet.

As for the 2600k I do agree, hyper threading would be very welcome. My machine at work using the 2600k and it's an absolute dream. It's another ~£75 on the price though, I'm not sure if I can justify it really being worth that. Would my performance increase over the 2500k really be the much?
 
as far as i,m aware it all depends on the programmer as to how much you will benefit from the 2600k.. and i know nothing about that..lol. so difficult to tell but might be worth trying to do some research. is the 2600k at work overclocked as maybe a 2500k with overclock will be just as fast in certain application without hyper threading. not sure..

as for the case a lot depends of the fan make and speeds needed to keep you overclock cool but there are cases designed for quiet use that cool well.. but i think with the right fans you would be ok but could get quieter..
 
It's stock at work, no overclock, I think i'll stick to the overclocked i5, It'll only be casual programming at home, so it should be more than enough. And if I can get the i5 up to 4ghz, which is my plan, then i'm sure it'll be more than enough.
 
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