First build, please help.

The Game

The Game

The Game

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2011
Posts
78
Hi all,

This is my first post, nice to meet you all.

I am building a new PC for my brother as he has a Pentium 4 that he bought in 2006. I am slightly more knowledgeable about pc’s than him, so I said I would have a go at building one for him. I would like the challenge as in future I would like to also build one for myself.

Budget is between £700,£900 & he wants the best he can possibly get for around this price. I have a new Antec 300 case already for this build, but nothing else as yet.

I have looked at some of the i7 sandy bridge over clocked bundles on overclockers, & a competitor’s range that has a bundle over clocked at 4.9 & 4.8.

I would be very grateful for any advice on parts for the build as it is my first build.

I would like to try and over clock this build but I am a bit out my depth on this subject. So far I have come up with this power supply as a possible, but I am needing help with the rest as don’t know whether to go Asus/MSi/other for motherboard & graphics card is a tough one as keeping in budget with this build is getting quite tricky.

Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX850 High Performance 850W

Other stuff I want to include:

Solid state hard drive & possibly a Mounting Kit for it
HDD – 1 or 2tb
RAM – 4 or 8 GB
DVD/Blu-Ray drive
Corsair Hydro H70 or Air Cooler
Windows 7 64bit
Apache Black 120mm x2 front, 1 for ‘side?’
Rear 120mm fan?
Top 140mm extractor?
Would like to change Usb 2.0 on front of antec 300 case to 3.0, is this easy to do?

Any help anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the wall of text, just a bit frustrated as don’t know which way to jump ‘over clocked bundle or buy all bits individually’.

Thanks.:)
 
This is the top end of your budget.

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK ATI Radeon 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £234.98
(£195.82) £234.98
(£195.82)
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Lost Planet 2 PC Game - Retail £188.99
(£157.49) £188.99
(£157.49)
Foxconn P67A-S Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1) £95.99
(£79.99) £95.99
(£79.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £83.99
(£69.99) £83.99
(£69.99)
Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply £73.99
(£61.66) £73.99
(£61.66)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.49
(£10.41) £12.49
(£10.41)
Sub Total : £727.83
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 : £147.57
Total : £885.40

Looked at some of the OCUK overclocked bundles, and it just puts the price closer to £1K.

The motherboard above will do Crossfire/sli at 8X/8X so adding a second 6950 is simple, the psu is more than good enough.

Add any cooler you want, or just use the stock supplied one.
 
Last edited:
stulid said:
Snip
Click to expand...

+1 to this build. The i5 2500K is a very easy chip to overclock, as all you have to do is fiddle with the CPU multiplier.

What does your brother do on the PC? Unless your brother does rendering, then there's no point in going for the i7 2600K, as the only difference between the 2500K and 2600K is Hyper-threading, which is useless in gaming.

As for changing the USBs to 3.0, unfortunately that's impossible to do as it's case/motherboard dependant.
 
There is maybe one problem, and thats the room available inside the Antec300 to fit long GPU's, have seen some pictures of the harddrive cage removed to fit certain cards in.

Could you measure the gap?
 
The budget is proving a slight problem, as I would like to get him quite a good mother board. Asus/msi/gigabyte but don’t know out of these makes which would be best for him. I like the new bios so possibly narrows it down to asus,msi but not sure.

Also want a good gpu for games & is the psu a mentioned the one to go for if he wanted to go sli/Crossfire in future.

I would not say my brother is mega gamer, but if any new games come up that he might want then I don’t want the gpu to be a problem.
 
Last edited:
you will have to add a cooler at a later date, budget just doesnt allow for it.

would you like to see a AMD build?
 
Don’t know weather to go for the Asus Pro/deluxe or msi, but what are people’s thoughts on the following spec:

CPU: i7 2600k
Mboard: Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB or GeIL RAM
CPU Cooler: Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler
PSU: Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX850 or cheaper but modular
GPU: XFX ATI Radeon 6970 2048MB GDDR5
SSD: Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA-II 64MB Cache
Optical Drive: Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
 
Last edited:
How much is that all together?
Get this PSU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-018-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=
Still good for crossfire and the build quality is just as good as the AX series. Personally I see the AX series too overpriced, and the HX series are still popular and reliable.
This SSD is cheaper: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-060-OC&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427
I know he won't upgrade in a long while, but if he's only gaming and not doing any HD video editing then 4gb RAM will last him for a very, very long time.
Also, get the 2500K, the 2600K is simply not worth it for gaming at that price. Most games are usually console ports, and I can't see this changing in the next 10 years or so.
 
My bother wants to use his photo shop & possibly edit video/burn to DVD & be able to play any current/upcoming game with no problems. As mentioned he is on a budget, so any more spec help for this £700/£900 (max) build would be grate.
 
Last edited:
Then if that's all he's doing, this will be enough for years to come:

866build.png
 
6950 is still a powerful GPU and can be compared with a 470. Also if you want, you can flash the 6950 to a 6970. There's a very high chance that the flashing will work. Check out a few reviews and you'll see the fps it gives on 1920x1080 is quite high.

850 is overkill, the Antec 650w is more then enough.

8gb RAM is nice and will help him in video editing, so if you can extend your budget more replace the RAM in my build with this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-105-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

SDDs are nice but for your budget they're quite expensive. I think it's best to add a SDD in a later upgrade if you really want one.

And last question, by any chance are any of you university students? You can get a free copy of Windows and that will help bring costs down.
 
Should my new antec 300 case that I bought last year be sold for a better one, was going to use this for my brother’s build but if you think something else would be more suitable for cooling etc any help would be grate.
 
Last edited:
An I5 build would be fine for gaming, and you wouldn't need to SLI a 580, it has more than enough power.

USB 3 isn't too important atm as not many devices use it yet. However, a few years from now and it will have taken off. The motherboard may come with a PCI-E card that allows you to plug USB 3 devices into the backplate. If not, you can just buy one in time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom