Help with new build around £1300

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Gti

Gti

Gti

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Main use will be gaming, looking to have everything cranked up to max at 1920x1080, will want to do some light overclocking and would like to keep the build as quiet as possible without sacrificing too much performance or turning to water cooling.
Possbile sli/xfire in future.

For light overclocking I'd prefer not to mess around with voltages if at all possible, for example on my E6600 2.4ghz i got it to 3ghz on stock volts and according to everything i read this was more than comfortable and could infact be taken to over 3.5. So i'm looking to get more juice out of the processor and gpu but at levels that don't stress the hardware too much.

What i'll be coming from (built over 3 years ago) is:

E6600 2.4ghz oc'd to 3ghz stock fan
Asus COMMANDO P965
Asus 320mb 8800GTS
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz
Hiper 530W
Viewsonic VX922 19"
Antec 900

==============================================

I'll be giving the current pc to my old man so will need everything except keyboard and mouse.
What i've come up with so far is:

£235 Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz
£150 Asus P6X58D-E
£235 ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470
£134 Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 12800C7 1600MHz Triple Channel
£80 Corsair TX 650W
£20 Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM
£265 Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23"

= £1,119

What I really have no idea on is what case to get and hard drive.
The spinpoint F4 is coming out in the next couple of weeks? I was thinking about waiting for that, if it doesn't come out what quiet but good performance hard drive could be had around 1tb.
For the case again i was going to wait for the release of the R3 to see what that's like but whatever case i do get i'd really like it to be quiet and not over the £100 mark unless really exceptional.
I assume i'd need an aftermarket cpu cooler to keep the noise down too?

I'm flexible in what components i get and will pay more for the right parts so please make your suggestions. :)
 
Are you planning to overclock?

If yes, then go for the cheaper i7 930, as it will clock just as far as the 950, with the same effort.

For harddrive, you could probably salvage the HDD out of your old rig, and use the money you would have spent to get a nippy little SSD for your OS and a few commonly used apps/games. It's really a MASSIVE performance boost after using mechanical for so long.

edit, didnt see you were giving the rig away - nevermind the ssd then unless you wanna spend a lil extra :p
 
Yes i'd like to do some light overclocking, nothing that would stress the chips too much. I thought with the price drop the 950 would be a good deal, if i over oc'd the 930 to the speed of the 950 does it equate to the same performance clock for clock or is there some fancy extra tech on the 950 that sets it apart?

I'd love an SSD but i think i'll have to wait another year till they come down in price as the minimum id want for OS and games is 120gb.
 
Personally, for gaming I'd not bother going i7 and would stick to the 1156 platform and an i5 750/760 with 4GB ram. The difference in gaming will be unnoticable and the considerable saving will allow you your SSD or a better GPU - and that will be noticable.

I love my H50 cooler and from that biased position I'd recomend one (or the H70) for you. The small size (compared to monster air coolers) aids case cooling and it's efficient and quiet itself. That will then allow some decent overclocking! I'd emplore you not to be so scared of it - read up some good guides and have a go. This generation of Intel chips are some of the best overclockers ever, and anyone interested in bang-for-buck is missing out if they dont exploit that. You'll be able to get a stable 4GHz with relative ease that will not 'stress' the hardware - if the OC is stable it just works.
 
For example...

Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £264.36
OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G) £229.11
Asus GeForce GTX 470 V2 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with MAFIA 2 £224.99
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £157.99
Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £109.99
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMD4GX3M2A1600C9) £79.89
Antec 900 Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £72.99
Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket LGA775/1156/1366/AM2/AM3) £59.98
OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply £52.98
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £32.99
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
Sub Total : £1,299.28

How's that? 120GB SSD and a 500GB mechanical for storage. Keeping the expensive monitor too, though for mainly gaming use you could just as well get the popular BenQ 24" LED and save £100 towards, say a better GPU. I can understand wanting a nice monitor though. You have your old case back :), but just consider that a placeholder for something else - not sure what your style is. Personally I love my Xigmatec Asgard which was only £27.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 57.478 MB/s
Sequential Write : 54.463 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 20.702 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 20.773 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.274 MB/s [ 66.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.640 MB/s [ 156.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.548 MB/s [ 133.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.629 MB/s [ 153.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 98.8% (147.3/149.0 GB)] (x2)
Date : 2010/09/08 5:54:53
OS : Windows XP Professional SP2 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)

As much as i'd like an SSD even going to an F3/4 would be such a massive leap over what i have now that it will tide me over till SSD's drop in price.

Liampope that motherboard doesn't support sli (from what i can see) and wouldn't mind having the option in future for that so maybe the Gigabyte P55A-UD4 Intel P55 for £150.
The 5 year warranty on the Zotac 470 is worth it for me as this one will eventually go to my dad as well.

That H50 looks pretty damn good if i don't have to **** about with reservoirs/maintenance etc. is it truly no maintenance? Is there much difference with the H70?
I think you've sold me on the i5 argument though, i'll only be gaming and looking at benches there's little to no difference so that's £70 saved over the 950, thanks!

In regards to the case im not fussed over looks, I'm going for quiet and not too pricey. What's the quietest PSU I can get that would support 470 Sli? My current PSU is the loudest component in my current build and would really like it lower than this.
Also with the OEM drives do i still get the necessary cables and warranty just no fancy packaging?

so...

Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £264.36
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £157.99
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 Intel P55 £150
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 £235
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM £44
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel £79.89
OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply £52.98
Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler £60
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S £20
Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler
Coolermaster CM-690 II £81

=£1166.56
 
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