Multi-use PC

Bacon?

Bacon?

Bacon?

Soldato
Joined
21 Apr 2012
Posts
4,991
Location
Bristol
Hey guys now I have some money in the pocket its time I went ahead with the new PC.
I currently only have £450 which I know is enough for an i3 system but was looking at an i5. Would people recommend using Overclockers "buy now pay later system".

i3 wise I was going to buy one of the premade systems since the difference is negotiable price wise and I have my mum breathing down my neck :D

i5 I was looking at the "Titan 8700i Pulse" system but its just so frickin expensive! Although you do get good parts.

This is my alternative spec:


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £53.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x Asus HD 6450 SILENT EDITION 1024MB GDDR3 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card £31.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £524.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).




I want to keep it as cheap as possible, no going over the cost of the Titan!

What I need: Tower only. I have everything else.

EDIT:

I will be using it for college work which will include photos, CAD and word. I will also be gaming the but the games are not graphics intense much more VRAM and CPU intense.
I am only looking at prebuilts because my mum does not believe that manufactures and Overclockers will replace broken parts... :confused: So if you guys could give me an excuse for custom built...
 
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You need to tell your mum that parts have a full 12 month warranty and can returned just as easy as anything else.

If you can build the system yourself you will get more for your money

What games will you be playing and at what resolution?
 
I already told her they come with a long warranty but I think she has it out for the PC industry...

I will be playing Supreme Commander and EVE Online at whatever resolution my 18" TV will play it at, will be replacing that ASAP for a 22".
 
You would be better of with a 6850 graphics card it will give you a lot of scope for future gaming, especially if your going to get a 22" monitor.

Recommended system configuration for running EVE Online

ATi Radeon 5750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460

A 6850 is about the same spec as a gtx 460.
 
as far as i know, for the most part pre built systems will only carry a 12month warranty. individually purchased parts however will normally have much longer warranty albeit after 12 months it's with the manufacturer. eg psu's 3-7 years warranty, ram is often lifetime, gpu's around 3 obviously this depends on manufacturer
 
To be honest I think the 6850 would play EVE at max settings fairly easily and at £80 it was more than I was hoping to spend since I dont have enough money for the i5 system anyway.
And the monitor will prolly be bought around christmas so I might be able to upgrade to a 7850 around then as well.

EDIT: Kawngo, Yeh I don't understand her reasoning since the components indivual warranties are longer than the pre-built ones :?
 
With the recent weekly deals what do you guys think of this as a build for £700?


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £181.99
1 x MSI Z77A-GD65 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** With FREE GeIL Black Dragon 8GB Kit ** £142.99
1 x BenQ G2222HDL 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £119.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £89.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £57.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £729.02 (includes shipping : £20.10).




If i do get this it will be on the finance option. Anyone had any experience with this.
 
 
Cheers for that hono but I really won't need that graphics card as nice as it is.
Also I went with the more expensive mobo for crossfire support and the RAM.
 
Haven't you learnt yet not to argue with me? ;)

The 460 is better than the 6850. The GPU is preoverclocked to 6870 performance, you get HDAO occlusion lighting and most importantly of all CUDA support. Have you checked if your CAD software supports CUDA? Or considered what other software you use that might be able to use it for better performance?

The MSI mobo may well do Xfire but are you actually going to bother to Xfire a 6850 when it only has 1GB of VRAM? The 550W PSU isn't man enough to Xfire the 7850 or a 670 if you upgrade the GPU. You are paying a good £25 extra for a feature you probably won't ever use. That's why i bought the better single GPU. Better gaming performance and CUDA to help your software for work.

Not to mention i squeezed in double the capacity on the HDD, no doubt you will add a SSD at some point. The 1TB drive is a nice round number for storage at a good price.
 
I still stand by the 7850 would have been the good choice because he asked for a gaming pc lol. But I did notice you managed to get him go from £500 to £700 :D

EDIT: Yes CUDA is supported, by how does drawing lots of lines mean I need a better graphics card? :P

I would prolly upgrade the PSU at some point, very tempting to put it in right now but not sure about the already high cost. I was originally thinking of cross-firing the 6850 but I forgot about the VRAM. How much difference does that stuff make?

Trust me I would only need 500GB, my current 250GB laptop has still got 150GB roughly remaining :D

EDIT 2: Monitor wise is the BenQ better than the OcUK?
 
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I can't lie. I'm shocked to be hearing these questions when you have been spec'ing other people to spend their cash. As i told you before the key is balancing the build to the budget.

If your software uses CUDA then you want to use a nvidia GPU, so it's effectively "turbo charging" your CPU in those tasks. The cuda cores are linked to the core speed of the GPU, so as it's overclocked, CUDA also gets a boost as well :D

Stuff Xfire and SLI on the mobo, your PSU is good enough for a single GPU setup so get the best GPU you can for your money. This happens to be the 460, technically it's better than the 6870 (£120 GPU). Seeing as it performs in games just as well but brings HDAO and CUDA support. You are getting a better gaming experience and some of the cost can be "justified" to assisting with more serious work.

Upgrading the PSU later is false economy. For the price you can't grumble at 550W, I use a 460 and i'm fully aware how good they are. It's a console killer and in all honesty once the next gen consoles arrive i'm expecting them to be "on par" with my gaming HTPC.

2GB of VRAM would be nice, however you are not gaming at very high resolution. The 1GB of VRAM on the 460 or 6850 stops you being able to completely max the graphics settings. That said i can run BF3 on high-ultra custom settings well above 30FPS, as I said "console killer" ;)

1TB might seem excessive but the price wasn't much more to double the capacity. If you think 500GB is ample you could partition the 1TB 50/50. Then use the second partition to keep a cloned image of the other partition so you can easily recover the rig from a backup. The barracuda drive is also faster than the WD blue drive FYI.

If you read the customer reviews for the Ocuk monitor everyone seems very happy for the price. It also comes with a 3 year warranty whereas the Benq only has 2 years. Incase your mum is reading this, I would like to say that what you spec'd would work and it's a much better system than you could get from the highstreet (better warranty too). Hopefully you can now understand why the changes I made make the system better and actually slightly cheaper as well :)
 
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Dont get me wrong I know that VRAM does make a big impact at high resolution, but I was unsure if it was something to do with the physical elements on screen?

Im not too worried about the monitor warranty really since I have never had faults with them, but then again ive always had Dell ones. And the only reason I chose the BenQ was because it seemed to be better?

Yeh I can understand the changes, personally I dont think CUDA would make any difference to my work because its really base level stuff and I doubt I will even be rendering :D

Its quite tempting to stick with the 6850, 500GB HDD and UDH3 mobo and put in a SSD. What do you think?
 
Also I dont mind paying for a decent mobo <£150 if it has good overclocking abilities and has decent sound/extras.
 
Having seen your post count, I think you are better off waiting till next month. By then you will qualify for free P&P surely, saving you £20ish.

So i'm not really going to argue the spec considering you shouldnt really buy it. Next month there will be all new offers to consider to balance the build to the budget. I was just showing that there was a better way (I think most would agree with this) to divide the cash than your spec.

Once you have free P&P you could consider not buying a GPU at all and look to add one later. You arent penalised with an additional postage charge like "noobs" and hopefully the kit you can't afford now will have depreciated so you get better bang for buck by waiting.
 
More waiting... :(

It would be nice if all the parts I wanted went on offer :P
I would definetley need to buy some form of GPU, even if was only a 6450.
I never quite understood the P&P cost, since if you spending a lot of money then covering the delivery costs is easy from the retailers point of view.

Also dont think im not taking in what you say but for what I would use the PC for anything above a 6850 for now would be a bit overkill for me as I have never ever played in anything above low so just medium would be nice :D
Ohh and case wise does the Z9 have good cable management and is it roomy?
 
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Would people recommend using Overclockers "buy now pay later system".
Click to expand...

Good rule of thumb most people these days don't follow is don't spend money you don't have. Money in hand is real. Money you expect to have next month or the month after... well, something might happen and you won't have it.
 
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Doyll I know I can pay it back since I have a small part time job currently and have to pay no fees since I am under 18 and do not own my own house. Worst comes to worst I will pay it back christmas latest, its about £250 I would need.
 
Bacon? said:
Doyll I know I can pay it back since I have a small part time job currently and have to pay no fees since I am under 18 and do not own my own house. Worst comes to worst I will pay it back christmas latest, its about £250 I would need.
Click to expand...

You will need your parents to do it then.
 
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