Final spec requirements... hopefully

QuickSilver7

QuickSilver7

QuickSilver7

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2 Jul 2011
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so after much more procrastination & thought I think I've come to what I believe I need / want.

I will be playing a few MMO's (LOTRO, DDO, SWTOR) & hopefully a bit of photography. I want something that is fairly future proof as much as that is constantly changing and can't be fully predicted

CPU - i5 2500k. I will probably not overclock this straight away but will eventually think about doing so. Retail or OEM?

MOBO - I "believe" I need a Z68 board as I will eventually want to buy a SSD. At the moment I see SSD's as a bit of a luxury item, so will wait for the future on these. I'm not interested in SLI / crossfire but is there anything else I should watch for? USB3 / Sata3 - something about Ivy Bridge that I simply don't understand?? :eek:

GPU - I think the nice cutoff (bang for buck) point for me might be the 560ti. Although I won't be playing the likes of Crysis, I do want to see my MMO's at their best.

PSU - Something to cater for future overclocking of the 2500k

Hard Drive - Was thinking Samsung F3 1TB, but I see offers for Windows7 (which I need) + a 500gb drive. The price seems really good but if I have to reinstall windows will I have a disk?

Keyboard - I can genuinely say that "The cat ate my keyboard!" (well chewed the cable anyway). Just need something simple

Cooling - Advice required

I have a mouse & full size Antec (not sure what) case.

Hopefully that's covered everything. I guess I'm looking in the £750 cost area. If I can get it for less, then great! :)
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
MSI GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £239.99
(£199.99) £239.99
(£199.99)
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98
(£88.32) £105.98
(£88.32)
Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £72.98
(£60.82) £72.98
(£60.82)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
(£13.32) £15.98
(£13.32)
Sub Total : £601.58
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £122.32
Total : £733.90


Included a Z68 motherboard but you can easily use a SSD with a P67 board too.

8GB of RAM as its only currently £50.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the quick response (as ever :))

Just a couple of questions...

I see this is in my budget requirements but will I notice any difference for my needs if I drop the GPU to the 560ti & maybe a cheaper PSU (I know not to skimp here)?

Ta
 
Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** *LOWEST UK PRICE* £68.98
(£57.48) £68.98
(£57.48)
XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
(£45.82) £54.98
(£45.82)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £27.98
(£23.32) £27.98
(£23.32)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
(£13.32) £15.98
(£13.32)
Sub Total : £482.40
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £98.58
Total : £591.48


£150 under budget.

560ti vs 570 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/330?vs=306 - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti/27.html


The motherboard still has SATA3.0 and USB3.0
 
well that looks groovy!

What am I missing out on comparing the P67 & Z68? (more my curiosity)

Will probably stick with the 8gb ram as that looks a good deal. Need to get my order in today lol
 
The Z68 has,

SSD caching,

Allows for a small size SSD to store commonly used files from the harddrive to speed up access, if you are going to get a normal size SSD such as 60GB etc then you wont need this feature as you can install the OS and a few games/apps on it easily enough.


Lucid Virtu+Quicksync,

Lucid Virtu uses the CPU's onboard GPU core to speed up certain applications rendering times, quicksync will switch a discrete graphics card into idle mode and use the CPU's onboard GPU core while you are just running simple tasks instead of gaming.


Theres more detail here - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/05/13/what-is-the-intel-z68-chipset/1
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that :)

I just remembered that I was thinking of having a blue ray drive instead of DVD. A friend of mine has warned me that quite a lot of them come without software so I should be careful. Any thoughts?
 
If you get a Retail Blu-ray drive it will come with a simple piece of playback software, oem are just the drive in a piece of bubble wrap.
 
Cool.

You will also notice the i5 2500K retail has been reduced by a further £3 till tomorrow morning.:D
 
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