I hate these threads, but spec check please :p

[Werewolf]

My Brother in Law (henceforth he shall be known as BIL*) has asked me to look at building a machine that must

1: Be reliable
2: Be relatively quiet (he leaves it running all day in the living room)
3: Be ok for games, but he mainly plays things like Football Manager (so more ram = better than bigger video card I think).

Budget between £6-800, lower is better but he doesn't want to have to upgrade in a year...

What I've worked out for now is an I5 on a P67 mobo, with 8 gb of ram, and a 6870 video card.


Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM
(£129.99) £155.99

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6850 Cyclone Power Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
(£104.16) £124.99

MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION **
(£81.66) £97.99

Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
(£59.99) £71.99

Cooler Master CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black
(£55.82) £66.98

Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM(ST2000DL003)
(£48.32) £57.98

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A)
(£35.99) £43.19

LiteOn IHAS324-32 24x DVD±RW ReWriter SATA (Black) - Retail LiteOn (£16.66) £19.99

Sub Total : £532.59
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £109.02
Total : £654.11
Add on an OS and it's about the middle of his price range..


To me that reasonable but I'm not sure about the noise level, and case size.
Noise is likely to be the kicker, but I really don't want to muck around with non standard cooling options if I can avoid it, hence a fairly solid case that can take big fans (and has plenty of room for the air to rise straight up).

The case is a bit bigger than I'd like to use ideally, but it should fit under his desk and i've chosen it in part because it's got plenty of room, and space for a slot in drive on top.

I'd prefer to use 4gb memory modules over 2gb ones, as that means he can upgrade the ram in the future without having to take out modules.

If anyone has any suggestions I'll be more than happy to hear them




*Not his name...

 

[Werewolf]

Cheers guys, I knew there was a reason I don't normally spec up machines at 2am

How's the Intel cooler for the CPU these days?

Bremen, I'm used to the support thing, fortunately BIL and nephew are both reasonably PC savvy (they've been using PC's for long enough).

I'll look at the 460

I'm going to have to discuss everything with him before any order is placed, so at the moment pretty much everything is up in the air

 

[Werewolf]

Cheers for the input, Lemin, that looks interesting but i'm trying to keep it as simple as possible
I think for the use he's going to have the F4 should be ok, as he's not doing much that requires a speedy hard drive, although I'll ask him

Here's the updated spec, with the 460 (msi cyclone for the cooler...), and the retail CPU.

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
£172.99

MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£119.99

MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £97.99

Cooler Master CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black
£66.98

Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
£59.99

Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003)
£57.98

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A)
£43.19

LiteOn IHAS324-32 24x DVD±RW ReWriter SATA (Black)
£19.99

Total £639.11

The silly thing is, that when I'm buying for myself I pretty much decide on a spec and go for it (usually if need be leaving some of the parts for later purchase, say HDD's and reuse an existing one), but whenever I buy/build for someone else I tend to be much more cautious and hesitant over it.

 

[Werewolf]

In the end we stayed with the MSI (but went to the G45), and Dominator case and it went together a treat, using the kingston ram.

I'm surprised at how quiet it is with the default Intel cooler, BIL was impressed with how quiet it was, although it wasn't until I turned the machine off that I realised something - most of the noise I thought was the machine was in fact my BIL's telly (he's got a huge LCD rear projection screen which has a cooling fan...), and V+.
It was actually quieter than his previous machine that was a store bought model with a custom case/cooler (the case had a side vent with a funnel onto am 80mm fan for the heatsink)
and quite poor GPU.

I am definitely going with the 690 for my next case, as it seems to be able to keep the machine quieter than my Sonata 550, and is much nicer to work in/on.

The downside is, I've now been asked to look at how cheaply I can make a simple web browser/net machine for one of his friend - I'm thinking that ASrock motherboard and the silverstone case with an I3.
But that will have to wait until I've confirmed it