Is it worth self building? Spec me please!

wallofillusion

wallofillusion

wallofillusion

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Hello all!

My pre-built 2007 computer finally died a few days ago, and after a period of grieving, I'm ready to move on. I don't use my computer for anything particularly intensive. I'm not really into gaming, although I do use the Adobe Suite quite a lot.

There are some really cheap bundles out there and with my lowish spec requirements, I'm not sure if it's worth me bothering to put something together my self? I already have hard drives and a wireless card. I don't know enough about components to know if my RAM is worth anything, but due to the age, I suspect not.

I would definitely like a separate graphics card, and the option to play games would be ideal but not essential - I certainly don't need to be able to run the latest releases with the settings maxed out.

I'd like at least 8GB of RAM. I'm not particularly bothered if the case isn't an uber self-illuminating masterpiece, but it would be nice if it wasn't horrendously ugly.

So, can anyone offer any advice or perhaps a potential build? My budget is around £500-£600 I suppose, but I don't really want to spend more than I need to.

Thanks for any help!
 
 
Retail i5 3570k's should come with a cooler already so you can save a few quid (£32.99) on the Hyper 612 cooler unless you are going to overclock. You could grab a secondhand 5870 or 5850 for about £50 too if you wanted to save even more.
 
£500 - £600 is easily enough money for your perfect PC (given your needs.)

If you would like to re-use your RAM we will need a bit more info - speed/type (DDR3?)

As for snip86x's spec, it seems okay apart from a couple of things:
- the 7850 graphics card may be overkill for the adobe software you are using. The 7850 is great for games though, but definitely get a 2gb version, not the 1gb version posted in the spec above.
- the hyper 612s is a fixed speed fan. Not a huge problem, but i bought it and then found that i wanted my PC to be silent which it wasn't with the fan spinning at min. 900rpm. I'd recommend not getting a cooler immediately, as you don't need it if you're not overclocking, and if you do get a cooler, then get one with a PWM fan (variable speed) for silence.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX16C9T3K2/8X) £35.99
1 x Aerocool Qs-200 Lite Midi Tower Case - Black £34.99
Total : £543.49 (includes shipping : £10.50).

The GPU is quite a bit better than the one posted above (this one is the 2gb version).
The case is preference really, the one i chose is £5 cheaper than the one above
The RAM is the same price but looks nicer.
- NO aftermarket CPU cooler, but a stock one comes with the CPU anyway.

What do you think?
 
martinoheat said:
The GPU is quite a bit better than the one posted above (this one is the 2gb version).
The case is preference really, the one i chose is £5 cheaper than the one above
The RAM is the same price but looks nicer.
- NO aftermarket CPU cooler, but a stock one comes with the CPU anyway.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

With the case, it is personal preference, but I would go with a Xigmatek Asgard Pro.

Ram wise, stick with the Avexir, as if you want to add CPU cooler, you won't have issues with clearance.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £89.99
1 x Asus P8Z77-V LX2 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Cooler Master Silencio 450 Midi Tower Case - Black £49.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £34.98
Total : £453.53 (includes shipping : £10.50).



YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Silencio 450 Midi Tower Case - Black £49.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £34.98
Total : £443.48 (includes shipping : £10.50).




A couple of budget builds based on Intel i3 (dual core) ivybridge and an AMD six core piledriver.
 
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It might pay to wait a little bit.

AMD have announced a new games bundle for the 7850 and 7950 GPUs but I don't see the cards being sold with the games just yet (the games bundle can be bought though :/). If you do some homework and watch some vids on youtube for building you can see it's not difficult at all really. Once you have an idea of the spec you want and have some confidence to build you can pull the trigger and hopefully cop Tomb raider and Bioshock infinite for free with the GPU :)

If it was my cash I would consider something like.....

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £66.95
1 x Zalman Z9 USB 3.0 Midi Tower Case - Black £54.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £35.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £608.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Included an optical drive not sure if you need one. Please make sure your HDDs are sata as well as IDE has been dropped from pretty much all modern mobos.

Case can mount two 2.5inch drives, has USB3 ports (Mobo header adapter sold sep), three fans (two led blue), fan controller, digital temp display, dust filters, large side window, cable management and an extension for the aux mobo power is included. Lots to like for the price.

PSU is modular, you add most of the cables that you need to the unit. This makes life easier on you, there are fewer "spare" cables to hide. It helps the case as with fewer cables there is better airflow for the case which means better temps. 500W(ish) is ample for a single GPU setup and overclocking.

i5 3570K can be overclocked on the Z77 mobo (an aftermarket heatsink is advised for OC'ing higher than 4Ghz), it also has an improved IGP over the non K CPU. The IGP is used by Quicksync to help boost video encoding and the LucidMVP software for the mobo can use the IGP to boost the GPU during gaming or switch to the IGP for general tasks to save power.

Mobo has a 3 year uk based warranty and a dual (UEFI) BIOS which is a nice safety feature. It allows overclocking as I said, has sataIII ports and the lucidMVP software support. Paired with 8GB of RAM, 1600mhz is the sweet spot for this socket. The Geil RAM is a good price, it's low profile and has a good CAS rating. It also happens to colour code with the mobo colours which is nice :)

The 2GB 7850 is the GPU to aim for. They overclock very well, which will help it's gaming performance and it's software suite acceleration duties. As I said it should come with a games bundle soon, you'll kick yourself if you buy it and then the games become available.

How you balance the spec is really down to you. For sure I could have used a cheaper case and PSU, this in turn would have helped get an aftermarket heatsink into the spec for example. I hope this helps, I look forward to seeing what you settle on :)
 
I saw the Radeon cards for sale with the new games at a competitor but they were only available for "pre-order" the next day lol maybe were put up by accident
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 Black Knight 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £155.99
1 x **B Grade** Intel 520 Series 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail (With Cakewalk Musi (HD-022-IN) £80
1 x Asus P8Z77-V LX2 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £39.98
1 x NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - White £39.98
1 x Samsung Green (MV-3V4G3D/US) 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz 30nm Dual Channel Kit £35.99
Total : £626.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).



included a ssd, it may be b-grade but its the intel 520 ;p
specced the 660 instead of the 7850, if any of ur apps takes advantage of cuda
 
Thanks so much for all of your suggestions.

Just going to answer a few questions that people have asked.

This is my RAM - judging by the cost of that auction, I suspect it's worthless.

My Hard drives are both SATA - one of them is only a few weeks old, actually.

I already have an optical drive, and I use it so rarely that I don't think it's worth getting a new one.

I don't have the luxury of waiting a while, unfortunately. I only have my Chromebook at home, which is pretty useless for my work (I'm a web designer and developer).

I've got a lot of options in this thread, but in all honesty, I'm not really sure which to go for. I'll have a read about the various components and see if that helps at all.

Is a 2GB GPU a necessity?


Edit: Forgot to mention, I do have a bit of experience in self-building, but only with components that were chosen by someone else. I put my nephew's PC together a few months ago, but he ordered the components himself.
 
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wallofillusion said:
Thanks so much for all of your suggestions.

Just going to answer a few questions that people have asked.

This is my RAM - judging by the cost of that auction, I suspect it's worthless.

My Hard drives are both SATA - one of them is only a few weeks old, actually.

I already have an optical drive, and I use it so rarely that I don't think it's worth getting a new one.

I don't have the luxury of waiting a while, unfortunately. I only have my Chromebook at home, which is pretty useless for my work (I'm a web designer and developer).

I've got a lot of options in this thread, but in all honesty, I'm not really sure which to go for. I'll have a read about the various components and see if that helps at all.

Is a 2GB GPU a necessity?
Click to expand...

No it is not, I have a B machine that runs The Suite with no problems at all with a GTX460. (1gb). I would recommend you get an SSD of at least 120gb.
 
I hadn't considered an SSD at all, to be honest. Might take me a bit over what I want to spend, but if I'm going to get a significant performance increase, then I'll go for it.

At the moment I'm leaning towards honosuseri's build, I think - but can anyone let me know if it would be beneficial to sacrifice some GPU power in favour buying an SSD? Or should I just bite the bullet and pay a bit more?
 
wallofillusion said:
I hadn't considered an SSD at all, to be honest. Might take me a bit over what I want to spend, but if I'm going to get a significant performance increase, then I'll go for it.

At the moment I'm leaning towards honosuseri's build, I think - but can anyone let me know if it would be beneficial to sacrifice some GPU power in favour buying an SSD? Or should I just bite the bullet and pay a bit more?
Click to expand...

I would really think about going any less that 2gb on the graphics, would get used to quickly these days.

As for the SSD, it could be something which you invest in later on. The loading times for the OS & games would decrease dramatically. If it wansn't for my external USB drive, I could boot Win 7 in about 10-15 seconds over 50+ for a mechanical drive.
 
Just want to post a quick thanks to everyone in here, especially honosuseri - I've ordered the components he suggested.

I haven't ordered an SSD, but I'm thinking of going for it. Can anyone recommend a good 120gb SSD please?
 
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