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Jongo

Jongo

Jongo

Soldato
Joined
2 Mar 2006
Posts
3,194
Location
The Wirral
So my ageing laptop is slowly dying and i thought i might as well splash out on a new computer now than wait for it to fully die.

This will be my first ever build, so any advise on the components would be great :).
The budget at its max is around £500 for tower + keyboard, i might need an OS but not sure yet, ive specced without one for now. Anyway heres the spec i came up with.


Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £116.99

Asus M5A97 EVO AMD 990X (Socket AM3+) DDR3 PCI-Express ATX Motherboard £94.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £89.99

Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £39.98

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £34.99

Logitech K300 Compact Keyboard (920-001488) £14.99

OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99

Comes to around £471

First question is, my monitor i have is 20" and only connects via vga, does the 5850 come with a dvi to vga converter?

Second question is will cooling in the case be sufficient? or should i throw in a 120mm exhaust fan for the rear of the case?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated and if i have missed anything out let me know :D Thanks
 
Can you not afford a P67 motherboard and a i5 2500K?

The 5850 does come with the adpater.

And the case has decent cooling at stock.


Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £116.99
(£97.49) £116.99
(£97.49)
Gigabyte Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £26.99
(£22.49) £26.99
(£22.49)
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Logitech K300 Compact Keyboard (920-001488) £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Sub Total : £439.93
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 : £90.09
Total : £540.52
 
Last edited:
No, If i did use a p67 mother board and a 2500k i would probably have to cut down in other areas which im not too fond of doing tbh. The £500 budget is very inflexible.
 
stulid said:
Can you not afford a P67 motherboard and a i5 2500K?

The 5850 does come with the adpater.

And the case has decent cooling at stock.


Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £116.99
(£97.49) £116.99
(£97.49)
Gigabyte Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £26.99
(£22.49) £26.99
(£22.49)
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Logitech K300 Compact Keyboard (920-001488) £14.99
(£12.49) £14.99
(£12.49)
Sub Total : £439.93
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 : £90.09
Total : £540.52
Click to expand...

Its mighty tempting but the £500 is the max i have really ideally under 500 would be great.

Just been looking at some benchmarks on AnandTech, and it does do very well im some games but others it can be close between the two.

I think for my budget AMD might be the better choice, im coming from a 2ghz duel core laptop with a 8400M GS, just to play modern games on pc would be awesome, i think with the amd 900 chipset it gives support for bulldozer so theres potential down the line to upgrade (if bulldozer ever comes out).
 
if you've got £500 to spend, then go for an i5 + h67 mobo. even without overclocking sandybridge eats phenom II's for breakfast:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £145.99
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £116.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £39.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £34.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £490.52 (includes shipping : £10.50).

if you had £400, then i would recommend AMD, but with £500 intel is the way to go
 
Reaper 392 said:
if you've got £500 to spend, then go for an i5 + h67 mobo. even without overclocking sandybridge eats phenom II's for breakfast:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £145.99
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £116.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £39.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £34.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £490.52 (includes shipping : £10.50).

if you had £400, then i would recommend AMD, but with £500 intel is the way to go
Click to expand...

That is certainly looking good, how is the intel motherboard for future upgrades? the amd motherboard i specced had 2 pci express slots meaning i could xfire in the future and also supported AMD3+ so i could upgrade to bulldozer one day.
 
Jongo said:
That is certainly looking good, how is the intel motherboard for future upgrades? the amd motherboard i specced had 2 pci express slots meaning i could xfire in the future and also supported AMD3+ so i could upgrade to bulldozer one day.
Click to expand...

You could upgrade the processor but the motherboard doesn't support Crossfire.

It only has 1 PCI-E x16 slot.
 
Right turns out im going to have to fork out for a OS now. So ive changed my original spec to include that in.

build.png


This is a revised spec i came up with, i will probably add another hard drive in down the line. Chose the asus motherboard since ive heard a lot of good things about them, there is an option for a cheaper msi one or a same priced gigabyte but im not sure how they compare. Its not as future proof but hopefully it can last a couple of years.
 
I think it was a limited time offer when it first came out, i used it to get 32bit win 7 for my laptop. I also think it was an upgrade only. Not sure if i could do it again. I will have a look into it.
 
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