First upgrade in 3 years - Spec Check please!

[Nelson15]

Ello folks.

Spent about £1k on the works over 3 years ago and finding its a bit stodgy running all the new games and things, so looking to get new one! I'm not too up to date with recent happenings and not too very good with computer things, but I managed to build the last one fine!

I've got a Lian Li PC-7B which I will be using and a Creative SB Audigy which I'll also reuse, everything else is new, with no need for any other peripherals.

Computer will be used for mostly day to day things, some minor photo editing, and playing some games, like ARMA 2 and COD:MW2 which barely run on minimum settings on my current computer.

Does this spec look decent? It's based on the one in the sticky at the top of the forum.

I was baffled by CPU coolers a bit and just plumped for the above one, but if anyone has any recommendations for cool and quiet, for the same budgetish, then I'm open to suggestions!

I'm also looking for 1TB worth of space, and WD seem to get a good write up, but again, if anyone has any preferences over the above one, then let me know!

Also been considering trying to quieten my case down a bit, there's only the two standard 120mm Lian Li case fans in it at the moment, front and rear. Would a fan controller (something like this) reduce the noise without comprimising air flow? Or would you recommend doing something different?

Your help is much appreciated and these are some excellent forums!

Thanks,

John

 

[SMAndy]

Well, here's my input.

Caviar Green are power saving, and slower. If you bought that to be your main drive, i'd say no, add another drive, or change that one. It's good for a data drive, but I'd recommend a WD Black for a system drive.

The rest of your system looks good though. That CPU cooler is a good one... there are better ones, but for price/performance, that one you've chosen is unbeatable.

If you can splash out for more, then something like a megahalems, or TRUE would get you better performance, and a more stable overclock. (it's illegal/highly irregular to have an i5 and not overclock it.)

If you want suggestions for a decent system drive, go for something like a 640GB WD Caviar Black or Blue. Both decent drives, the Blue is slightly cheaper, but the black has two processors in it and is optimised for random access - makes for a pretty good system drive.

 

[Nelson15]

Thanks for the reply!

Looking at the WD Drives, the 1TB Black is only £8 more than the one I've specced so that looks like its sorted.

As far as I can tell, there's not a massive amount of choice regarding the CPU cooler fitment for the i5 chip. I wasn't planning on overclocking, but I take it that its a good one for results, so maybe I should look into it. I'm a little concerned about the space in my Lian Li Midi case. Its got two fans both 120mm front and rear, but with my current MOBO they're a bit intermittent, they're never on for as long as I would have thought. There's a Scythe Ninja inside though and its fans always on. With all the cables and other things I suspect things might get a bit hot if I crank up the heat.

Then again, I don't think an H50 would fit easily either, and its a lot of money to spend on a gamble!

What CPU cooler would you gents be looking at?