Complete system for under £1600

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28 Aug 2008
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Hi all - I'm Looking for a little bit of help please!

My current system is starting to show it's age - comprising of an i7-920, 6Gb ram and a Radeon 5850 - and I'm looking at a complete refresh and passing this one along to the missus along with something like a 7950 or R9 270X to satisfy her light MMO habit (she currently uses my old Alienware M14X w/GTX 550M and it's constantly overheating).

It'll mainly be used for a mix of casual gaming (EVE Online and the occasional FPS) and photo processing with Lightroom/Photoshop CC. My work also involves a lot of building and testing VMs .

My requirements are

  • I7 4770K - I tend to do a lot at once, whether running multiple VMs, watching a 720P video in VLC, browsing some forums or running a couple of Eve clients and, while I realise HT isn't black magic, I do believe it helps the way I work.
  • R9 R290 or GTX780 - I have no brand loyalty - my current 5850 has lasted for about 4 years without a hiccup so far but then again, I haven't had any bad experiences with previous nVidia cards so either is fine.. I think the best compromise between power, price, noise and temps seems to be one of the 290s with aftermarket coolers.. like the DirectCU II or Tri-X.
  • 16Gb RAM - working with libraries of 24-megapixel raw images tends to consume RAM fairly quickly.. my current 6Gb system struggles badly so I think 16Gb should be a happy medium.
  • 256Gb SSD - I tend to keep my OS and critical apps on the SSD (not games or data) - my current M500 128GB has about 20Gb free - I could probably free some more but I've never been overly comfortable with that size. I'll also probably be looking at a 3TB HDD to partition for games and data (I do keep my active photo library on the data drive although this is synced with my QNAP NAS daily)
  • Keyboard and mouse are more of an afterthought - I've been using the same old Logitech G15 II and MX518 for years and I see no reason to change them.. but the missus will need something for her gaming.. she doesn;t really care about them as long they work ;-)
  • Monitor - I currently have two monitors on my desk - an old Acer 1080P LCD and an even older Samsung 1200x1024 LCD. I'll be passing on the Acer one and sticking the Sammy in the attic, and I'd like to replace both with a single larger monitor (preferably IPS) with at least 2560x1440. I know that without spending a fortune, I'm not going to get anything exceptional but something that is of reasonably quality and that I can calibrate later would be good. A height adjustable stand would be useful too.

So with that said, my initial stab at this is below - came out a bit above budget and doesn't even include an OS. I *can* flex my budget a bit but I suspect people on this forum can come up with better.

PC2014.jpg
 

i think ASUS DCII is pretty decent as well?
 
EDIT: The build was messed up. Fixed now.

mATX build a nice bit under budget. You can decide for yourself what you want to spend a little more cash on:

YOUR BASKET
1 x aoc q2770pqu 27" widescreen led monitor - black £349.99
1 x powercolor radeon r9 290 pcs+ oc 4096mb gddr5 pci-express graphics card £329.99
1 x intel core i7-4770k 3.50ghz (haswell) socket lga1150 processor - retail £249.95
1 x kingston hyperx beast 16gb (2x8gb) pc3-17100c11 2133mhz dual channel kit (khx21c11t3k2/16x) £109.99
1 x crucial m500 240gb sata 6gb/s solid state hard drive - (ct240m500ssd1) £89.99
1 x gigabyte z87m-d3h intel z87 (socket 1150) ddr3 micro atx motherboard £82.99
1 x superflower golden green hx 650w "80 plus gold" power supply - black £67.99
1 x seagate barracuda 2tb 7200rpm sata 6gb/s 64mb cache - oem (st2000dm001) hdd £59.99
1 x cooler master n200 nse-200-kwn1 midi-tower windowed - black £39.95
1 x cm storm devastator gaming bundle - usb keyboard & mouse £29.99
1 x alpenföhn matterhorn pure edition cpu cooler £29.99
total : £1,457.30 (includes shipping : £13.75).



this is why i chose the m500: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-m500-1tb-ssd,3551.html
Somebody correct me if this review is no longer applicable.

You could decide to go for liquid cooling, maybe a H100i.
You could get more storage if that's what you need.
You could go for a 780 or maybe a 780ti.
You could get the Corsair 200R and the Z87-HD3 and go for a more open ATX build so you could potentially run Crossfire later (you could run it in this mATX build but it would be hot as ****).
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the feedback folks, I'm re-jigging my build in excel now based on the replies so far. I'd be looking to order fairly soon (this week) though so the AOC monitor being out of stock may be an issue. I'm partially tempted to wait for Weds to see if any new deals will make a difference but I'll probably decided tomorrow.
 
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