Major system upgrade need ideas - help!

kezles · 23 May 2013 at 19:02

Hey guys, I would be really grateful for your opinion on a system build.

My current computer is destroying itself and is long due an upgrade.

My main requirements are being powerful enough for gaming, good sound and being as silent as possible.

Ive never built a system from scratch but have done a bit of upgrading, I recently installed a high end 850w power supply (i bought a corsair one that said it was quiet :/) and have a Nvidea 560ti (thinking just getting a second in sli would cut it for a year or 2?)

As i would say they are good to go, all I need is a good motherboard, CPU, RAM, SSD, with a normal hardrive aswell, a sexy case and a relatively good sound card.

Looking at spending about 500-700 on just those bits so any recommendations would be great! (may be able to push higher if the gains are worth it)

I also stumbled accross an asus motherboard that you can control with your phone/tablet with an app? Anyone have any experience of this as I use my computer for music A LOT and this would be really useful.

Thank you in advance you lovely people! I look forward to seeing some great build suggestions.

kezles · 23 May 2013 at 19:06

Oh and should I go with fans or water-cooling? I want silence but low maintenance :/

Kill_Phil · 23 May 2013 at 22:11

Well firstly if you want a combination of lowish price point with low maintenance then air cooling is the way forward.

Also are you set on brand new? For example you can pick up an i5 2500k for £100 2nd hand which is an excellent CPU and further drops are likely with the haswell chips around the corner, which brings me onto my next point... It may be worth holding off a couple of weeks for haswell (early June) and see how the market prices change and hopefully get more bang for buck

zakblood · 24 May 2013 at 07:45

air is cheap, water/liquid costs more, so budget i guess

kezles · 25 May 2013 at 10:28

But can you get an air cooled system near silent? my current build sounds like a typhoon jet taking off, its ridiculous! What would be a good silent case/ case fans/ cpu fan?

Im thinking of getting an i5 bundle with motherboard and cooler around the £400 mark (great tip about next chips, thanks!) not too sure i would want second hand considering the build will be worth over £1k (probably snobery on my behalf!)

Something Else · 25 May 2013 at 20:18

It's easy to get great cooling and silence with air, just need a large heatsink and one or 2 pwm fans.

YOUR BASKET
1 x "Z77 Gamer" Intel Core i5 3570K 3.40GHz @ 4.50GHz DDR3 Ivybridge Overclocked Bundle £379.99
1 x Standard Build Systems - Approximately 5-7 working days £0
Total : £391.39 (includes shipping : £9.50).

That would be a good bundle thats pre overclocked, just ask that the fans be swapped for a PWM variant, the zaward golf fans are fantastic but I dont think ocuk have used pwm ones.