Comments on spec - PC has to last a while!

ahar

ahar

ahar

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It's been over 5 years since I last bought a PC so I've been surfing these forums for the last few weeks and have finally worked out wat I think my spec will be.

I play a few games (currently Starcraft II and World of Tanks at the moment) but I'm going to get the new Duke Nukem for nostalgia's sake :). I also edit photos and the odd family video and sometimes rip a film or two from my DVD collection to my NAS box to watch around the house. My wife has a core i3 laptop for general surfing, so the desktop has to do any heavy lifting !

The main requirement is that the PC will last for some time. I've deliberately got a MB capable of doing crossfire as in a couple of years I'll buy another 6950 to keep up with the current games (they should be nice and cheap then). It's what I did with my current PC and it worked well. I've not gone with the Z68 chipset as I will have an SSD big enough to put the OS and a couple of games on, I don't transcode many videos and I don't want integrated graphics.

Budget max (as set by the wife, spoilsport!) is £1200.

8Gb of RAM - should last me some time.

No overclocking atm, but will consider in future

The case has been carefully chosen as I have a height restriction due to my desk of 430mm - the coolermaser 430 is one of the few midi towers that fits this.

A new monitor is needed as my current one is too small (19 inch) and I want something to tax my new graphics card!

Any comments / substitutes I should think of?

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As you need an OS and you haven't spec'd yourself a regular HDD, this is probably a deal you will want to look at. If you already have one then carry on with that.

As Moothead said, you could save some money by getting the card and RAM he suggested over what you got, this should make including the HDD fit in the budget.
 
First of all I just wanna apologise as I've gone over budget but I really think it's worth it.

OK so here's my spec and I'll explain my choices after:


MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE DIRT3 Game £199.99

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

OCZ Agility 3 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-120G) £172.99

Iiyama ProLite E2409HDS 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £143.99

MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 (socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £139.99

XFX 850W Black Edition Modular Power Supply £112.98

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

Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £65.99

Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (Retail) £54.98

Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £33.98

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £19.99

Total : £1,215.37 (includes shipping : £13.75)






The 6950 I chose is cheaper, OC'd and has a superior cooling system.

The monitor is better than the OcUK one at like £3 more. (edit: looking at the specs not too sure about this, ask someone to confirm:))

Since your limited to the CoolerMaster 430 (which has limited to no cable management) I chose a modular PSU, which will allow for future CF/SLI and which is a great product, with a Seasonic design.

I chose the motherboard as it supports CF/SLI at x8 speeds where as the one you chose will be limited to x4 speeds. Also, as you said your not too keen on overclocking, the OC Genie II feature sounds ideal for you. All it is, is a little button on the motherboard, that when clicked in, produces a 4.2GHz overclock, and should you decide you don't want the overclock anymore, just press the button again and your overclock is gone:)

The RAM I chose is just as good, a lot cheaper and will have no issues with any aftermarket cooler, as it doesn't have tall heatsinks.

This is assuming you already have a HDD, overwise one would be recommended as 120GB isn't much.
 
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Go for the corsair ram, not because it's cheaper but because (as was put so well by another forum member) it's very slutty ram, and works well with lots of boards!

Personally i'd avoid the asus p67 boards, they have a very poor reputation for problems. this was the p67 thread I started that sent me back to MSI when I probably would have chosen asus. I'm very happy with my MSI G65, although the gigabyte boards are supposed to be pretty good.

I'd also ditch the blu-ray as they're not great for films unless you have expensive software.
 
I'd avoid the twin frozor, (I've got one) because it isn't reference, so if you want to go watercooling in the future it'll be a massive headache (I'm really regretting not returning it and spending more for a reference design one)
 
lrlcr said:
Go for the corsair ram, not because it's cheaper but because (as was put so well by another forum member) it's very slutty ram, and works well with lots of boards!

Personally i'd avoid the asus p67 boards, they have a very poor reputation for problems. this was the p67 thread I started that sent me back to MSI when I probably would have chosen asus. I'm very happy with my MSI G65, although the gigabyte boards are supposed to be pretty good.

I'd also ditch the blu-ray as they're not great for films unless you have expensive software.
Click to expand...

You get software with the retail edition do you not? Just not with OEM.

Edit: From the product page


Includes Cyberlink PowerDVD
Click to expand...
 
Thanks chaps - I should have said I have a standard HDD hanging around already.

Not sure I'm going to bother water-cooling the graphics card - is the MSI one a good card otherwise ?
 
Thanks for the help guys. I went with sk82jack's list bar a different monitor and SSD. After reading some reviews I went for a Benq 2420 monitor and a crucial SSD as the ocz ones seem to have quite a high failure rate (anectdotal forum evidence though I'll admit)
 
Too late now, but why are you guys still speccing HD6950s? They can't be flashed anymore, nor can the TwinFrozR III.

GTX560Ti is a better bet and a better card, whilst being slightly cheaper.
 
Cookeh said:
Too late now, but why are you guys still speccing HD6950s? They can't be flashed anymore, nor can the TwinFrozR III.

GTX560Ti is a better bet and a better card, whilst being slightly cheaper.
Click to expand...

Can't speak for the people who responses to my thread, but I originally went for a 6950 as it had 2gb of memory rather than 1gb. I haven't seen the 560 offered with 2gb. You could argue that I don't need 2gb at the moment, but I plan on not upgrading for some time and the mistake I made with my current system was not getting enough VRAM when I bought it.

The plan in a couple of years is to get another 6950 to put in crossfire mode to keep up with current games. The 6950 should be pretty cheap by then and it'll hopefully be a cost effective upgrade. I did that somewhat successfully (apart from the VRAM ) with the SLI'd nvidia 7600gt I have in my machine at the moment.
 
DJmartin said:
As you need an OS and you haven't spec'd yourself a regular HDD, this is probably a deal you will want to look at. If you already have one then carry on with that.

As Moothead said, you could save some money by getting the card and RAM he suggested over what you got, this should make including the HDD fit in the budget.
Click to expand...

I would go with the Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle thats suggested here save some wonga!
 
ahar said:
Can't speak for the people who responses to my thread, but I originally went for a 6950 as it had 2gb of memory rather than 1gb. I haven't seen the 560 offered with 2gb. You could argue that I don't need 2gb at the moment, but I plan on not upgrading for some time and the mistake I made with my current system was not getting enough VRAM when I bought it.

The plan in a couple of years is to get another 6950 to put in crossfire mode to keep up with current games. The 6950 should be pretty cheap by then and it'll hopefully be a cost effective upgrade. I did that somewhat successfully (apart from the VRAM ) with the SLI'd nvidia 7600gt I have in my machine at the moment.
Click to expand...

Fair enough then, they do scale really rather well :)

The extra VRAM doesn't really come into effect unless you're gaming at much higher res though :p
 
Have you considered getting a 120hz monitor?

Even if you are going ATI, if you're building for the machine to last a while, ATI's HD3D will show up in more mainstream at some point...
 
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