Check and improve this spec please! :)

[manveruppd]

Been drafted by my dad to put together a new PC for him, it's been awhile since I put together mine so I'm not completely up to date with things, so this is what I came up with:

Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £134.39

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £131.99

Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £130.00

Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache 5900RPM - OEM £54.98

OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply £50.99

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G) £49.99

Total : £564.34


Some questions:

1. I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of Intel sockets and chipsets available! I did some reading around and found out that 1155 was the most recent, and decided to go for a Z68 chipset in case my dad decided to get an SSD at some point in the future. Did I make the right choice?

2. This system will be overclocked, though not massively. Most of the overclocker-friendly motherboards (like this Asus one that I picked) seem stupidly expensive to me. Could I get away with something cheaper like the Gigabyte Z68A-D3 instead, and still be able to overclock the CPU?

3. Is the graphics card ok for that price range? I notice you can pick up a 6850 for only a little more, should I go for that? (I'm open to NVidia too of course if there's something better at a similar price range) My dad's not a massive gamer, no need for the latest and fastest.

4. Can someone spec me a decent aftermarket cooler for that chip? I know I said I'll only be doing light overclocking, but my dad lives in Cyprus, and it was 47C there last August - PCs we've had in the past have been known to crash if we switched off the air conditioning and left them running!

5. Can someone put together a competing AMD spec for a similar (or smaller) price? I'm really tempted by the simplicity of knowing that they'll keep supporting AM3+ for awhile, whereas it seems Intel are releasing 2 new sockets a year these days!

6. Can someone spec me a case with decent airflow, so the whole thing doesn't burst into flames? (I might end up getting one from down there purely because of shipping costs, but I like to have some options.)

7. If any of the bits in my spec seem like not the best choice please feel free to suggest alternatives!

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there:

1) Z68 is great, but at £130 it isn't cheap and unless you plan to use the Z68-only features like SSD caching and Intel Quick sync then you may as well save some money and get a cheaper P67 board like this (here is a review of this board).

2) As above for the motherboard, but the i5 2300 CPU you picked isn't great for overclocking. With sandy bridge CPUs you can't change the BCLK (FSB) which is fixed at 100MHz. Instead, you need to increase the multiplier to overclock. This is very simple on K-series CPUs like the i5 2500K as these chips have an unlocked multiplier that (theoretically) can take them over 5GHz, however non-K chips like the i5 2300 can only be taken 400MHz past the standard maximum frequency. If you plan to overclock at all then I would strongly suggest you go for the i5 2500K (and go for the cheaper MSI P67 board to help pay for it).

3) Personally, with the 5850 now over £130 (it used to be much cheaper) I would either go for this GTX 460 1GB for £110 or find a HD 6870 for around £130.

4) If you want some serious cooling then I would look no further than the thermalright silver arrow. It's an excellent cooler and very quiet, just make sure your case can fit it. If you don't want to spend this much then I would go with the titan fenrir.

6) This is a good quality, low cost case. I would suggest adding a few extra 120mm fans to fill out the fan mounts and maximise airflow, but apart from that it's great.

7) If you are needing a primary hard drive in this spec - then I wouldn't go with the hitachi 2TB - mainly because it is only a 5900rpm drive. For primary HDD duties (ie running the OS and applications) you really want a more responsive 7200rpm drive like this one.

 

[95thrifles]

Sound advice by Andi as usual, only thing I'd add is even as a storage drive there's better than the Hitachi, imo

 

[Reaper 392]

*lots of advice*

i would go for the Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

the F3 series is quite a bit faster than the F1 series.

and as andi has said, PLEASE get an i5 2500k with that Z68 board so you can overclock it properly

 

[cmndr_andi]

i would go for the Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

the F3 series is quite a bit faster than the F1 series.

Aye, good point - the F3 is certainly the faster drive. I guess the shiny offer banners pulled me into the F1

 

[Buchanan0204]

I thought they stopped making the F1. I have one in my system, had it for over two years now. Just used for storage however.

 

[cmndr_andi]

I think they may be EOL, but as with all things OCUK found a bunch of them at the back of a shelf somewhere and now they are on sale for a pretty good deal (for a 1TB 7200rpm HDD). Though as you say, the F3 for £5 extra is the better bet unless money is super tight.

 

[olivier renault]

this for a bit of gaming? What games? What's the budget? £550? Does he needs OS? Does he really need that much HD space?

A water cooler (H50, Antec Kuhler) could be nice for hot weather.

a quick spec...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £161.99
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
1 x MSI P67A-G45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £99.98
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £49.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £44.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £30.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £29.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £604.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 

[manveruppd]

Thanks for the advice folks! I had no idea about the i5 overclocking issues, I'll definitely switch it out with one of the K-series! However I'm curious, if you can only overclock by changing the multiplier, why do people ever need to buy RAM that's faster-rated than what the CPU's FSB runs at? The fastest of the i5s seem to only go up to 1600MHz memory speed and I see OCUK at least stocking much faster stuff than that!

This'll be interesting though, I haven't been able to touch the multiplier on any chip I've overclocked since my Athlon XP-M 2500+!

Bit embarassed that I didn't notice that Deskstar only being 5400RPM! Should've known there must be a reason it was so cheap!

As for the motherboard issue, the plan is to add an SSD at some point in the future, which was why I chose Z68 - but does SSD caching make that much of a difference? If not then I'll drop to P67, that should cover the price difference for moving to a K-series CPU.

The budget isn't particularly tight, he was prepared to drop 1,400 Euro on a pre-built i7 system, but knowing what he plans to use it for I told him it was complete overkill (he's not that big a gamer, doesn't do video editing or anything demanding like that, he's been thinking of getting into Autocad for his work but he's a bit of a beginner at it). So I'm trying to keep it at under £800 including case and OS (gonna go for Win7 Home Premium OEM I reckon). So I'll switch out the CPU, HDD, graphics card and mobo for the ones suggested, but I'll probably get a case from down there somewhere due to shipping costs. The trouble is that products in the rest of Europe are sometimes sold under different brand names so I don't know the good ones. I remember shopping around for a PSU down there years ago, there were virtually no brands I recognised, but out of sheer blind luck I ended up buying one that was essentially a rebadged Tagan.

Just out of curiosity, can anyone put together an AMD spec for similar money?

 

[cmndr_andi]

I'm curious, if you can only overclock by changing the multiplier, why do people ever need to buy RAM that's faster-rated than what the CPU's FSB runs at? The fastest of the i5s seem to only go up to 1600MHz memory speed and I see OCUK at least stocking much faster stuff than that!

Yea, for overclocking with sandy bridge you don't need faster RAM, since the FSB/BCLK doesn't need to be raised and the RAM doesn't need to keep up. The main reasons people buy faster RAM are 1) If they are running memory intensive applications then faster memory can help a bit (see here), 2) bigger number is better, right? For gaming a cheap 1333-1600MHz CL9 kit is ideal.

As for the motherboard issue, the plan is to add an SSD at some point in the future, which was why I chose Z68 - but does SSD caching make that much of a difference? If not then I'll drop to P67, that should cover the price difference for moving to a K-series CPU.

If you can afford an SSD 60GB or larger then I would ignore SSD caching and instead run the SSD as the primary drive (instead of a cache drive for a slow mechanical HDD) as this is much faster. To do this you don't need Z68 and any P67 board will do this fine.

The budget isn't particularly tight, he was prepared to drop 1,400 Euro on a pre-built i7 system, but knowing what he plans to use it for I told him it was complete overkill (he's not that big a gamer, doesn't do video editing or anything demanding like that, he's been thinking of getting into Autocad for his work but he's a bit of a beginner at it). So I'm trying to keep it at under £800 including case and OS (gonna go for Win7 Home Premium OEM I reckon).

If he can afford an SSD right off the bat then I would strongly suggest going for it - it really does improve overall system performance and makes the machine feel much more responsive in general use.

Just out of curiosity, can anyone put together an AMD spec for similar money?

TBH, I wouldn't recommend an AMD system at this point - Intel Sandy Bridge just trounces the Phenom II CPUs (even the high end hex core ones) in terms of both performance and efficiency, plus the Intels aren't a bad price either.

However, AMD are releasing their next generation "Bulldozer" CPUs in a month or two - so if you are not planning to build until around that time anyway then you may want to see how these CPUs perform when they arrive. However, if you want a system now then Sandy Bridge is a much better bet.

 

[manveruppd]

If you can afford an SSD 60GB or larger then I would ignore SSD caching and instead run the SSD as the primary drive (instead of a cache drive for a slow mechanical HDD) as this is much faster. To do this you don't need Z68 and any P67 board will do this fine.

Aaah, that's what SSD caching does? I assumed it was something that minimises the number of writes or something, to prolong the life of the drive. No, he'd definitely get something big enough to put a Windows 7 installation on, and possibly a few of his most frequently-used applications or a game, so I definitely don't need Z68 if it's just for that! He has been warming to the idea of getting an SSD, so which one would you all recomment I should get for him?

The only thing that concerns me is if Intel stop supporting P67 for future CPUs on this socket and screw up our upgrade path, but tbh the way they've been switching sockets every 6 months lately it's more likely that Z68 will also become obsolete at around the same time!

However, AMD are releasing their next generation "Bulldozer" CPUs in a month or two - so if you are not planning to build until around that time anyway then you may want to see how these CPUs perform when they arrive. However, if you want a system now then Sandy Bridge is a much better bet.

That's partly why I want to keep my options open tbh, and also because I know that AM3+ will support Bulldozers just fine. However I was planning to put it together for him while I'm home over July, so I think I'm just gonna go with i5 and be done with it.



SPEC AMENDED AS FOLLOWS:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £173.99

MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £114.98

OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99

Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £68.39

OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply £50.99

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.99

Titan Fenrir Evo CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156//LGA1366/AMD K8/AM2/AM2+/AM3) £32.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.98

Yate Loon D12SL-12 120mm Fan - Black £4.39

Sub Total : £575.90
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £64.61

Total : £768.61

Shame OCUK don't also do discounts to international shipping for forum members! I might order some of the lighter stuff to be delivered to mine and take them with me in my suitcase though

 

[olivier renault]

I would take low profile RAM with that cooler.

 

[manveruppd]

I would take low profile RAM with that cooler.

Point taken, I've changed them to these Kingston sticks. 1600MHz is fast enough for i5, right? Seems to be the highest frequency the CPU will support.
Thinking of changing the cooler to the Antec Kuhler Shelf since I'm not really going to be doing any hardcore overclocking. I'll probably just push it to 4GHz and leave it there tbh, just want an HSF powerful enough to stand the Cyprus heat.

Thanks to all who helped for their advice!