My dads new build to be (all threads into 1)

snadge

snadge

snadge

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11 Oct 2010
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right heres the thread to roll all the other ones into one... I didnt mean to have lots as I asked about one comnponent not thinking I would ask about another...then I had to ask again for something else... blah blah.. ended up with 3 or so posts...

anyway...

basic parts that arent changing...

Core-i5 2500k
4Gb (2x2Gb) 1600Mhz Memory

...erm...thats it hehe , anything else could change.. we have pencilled in a SATA DVDRW too but that might get scrapped if I test his current one to be OK , he is struggling playing movies from it but copied to hard-drive fine but seemed to take longer than it should - 3 mins or so for 700Mb file - it used to play movies fine.

this PC is only for web browsing and 1 or so hours on FSX everynight before bed - he loves it and is dying for fluid gameplay with decent graphics... he has been plaing it previously on a 256Mb nVidia 6200GS (which is now dead and is back to SiS Graphics onboard) and a 3Ghz P4 with HTT and now can only play on new laptop with the ATI HD 4000 series (4150 i think) and 2.2Ghz AMD chip... the laptop he bought for the missus as she couldnt get on PC for him, now he is pinching it off her to be able to play FSX a little
we are fixing this for him
he does NOT play any other games or install lots of software - his current 160Gb drive is barely used with XP, FSX SP2 (stock) and 2Gb of Photos and Music..

budget is £600 - it was originally £500 but we just couldnt do it with good parts etc so he said £600 but not a penny over..im sure a couple of pounds would be OK but not more than that...


HARD-DRIVES
we would like an SSD - particularly the Vertex 2E as it has 50,000 IOPS and excellent read and write rates but mostly its the attractive IOPS figure, the Agility 3 instead if it could be afforded , he has a SATA 160Gb drive currently and we plan to install this to install FSX onto - although he is giving his old PC to his partners sister so he may consider buying a new small drive for the new PC to partner the SSD for FSX installs and backups so he can keep the old drive with PC for new owner. plus the old drive is noisey.

CASES
a MIDI size, not huge, something black, shiny and smart, no gamers cases - just plain but but smart, has to have a door or sorts as lots of unused bays is UGLY! the one he liked as the Asus TA-9L1 but not on OCuk

GRAPHICS
as FSX does not require absolute top GFX cards as its more CPU intensive we require something that quiet and cheap - has to be quiet as thats what we are aiming for - summit like a quiet 460 OC ? I had eye on GTX 460 OC HAWK which is known to be super quiet and is equivelant to a GTX 560 (336 cores) but running at 780Mhz or so instead of 810Mhz and was only £125

PROCESSOR
Core-i5 2500K @ 4.4Ghz.... nuff said

MEMORY
2x2Gb 1600Mhz 1.5v ...nuff said

MOTHERBOARD
Any reliable P67 board that has decent warranty.

PSU
Anything quiet , reliable brand so has good caps and good build, 80+ cert and 3yr warranty is a must (I think) - maybe 2yrs if had too...

so if anyone can help or has advice - thats what we need, ive also just found out Iam still going up to his later on at end of month (we were gunna build it next week while he is down) so we can wait for SSD to come in stock.

he has windows 7 unopened to go on it

thanks
 
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this is what i came up with while waiting for this thread to emerge. has everything except for the newer SSD (SSD is a 1st gen 30GB version) and the door on the case:


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £159.98
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 460 HAWK "Super-OC" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £125.99
1 x Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** *LOWEST UK PRICE* £78.98
1 x OCZ Agility Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT30G) £46.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £44.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £29.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £29.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x Xigmatek Midgard Midi Tower Case - White £24.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.98
Total : £597.47 (includes shipping : £10.50).

*edit*
hmm, just remembered the DVD drive is black, while the case is white.
ask this person how he made his stealth drive:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=19543389&postcount=44
 
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thanks for the spec up - but the case needs to be black and preferably with door too hide all the blank empty bays

also - think 30Gb SSD would be OK? be about 27Gb formatted and win7 64 use about 16Gb... leaving 11Gb for apps - so yeah prbs fine

oh its not the 50,000IOPS one... does that make much difference?

is BeQuiet a good PSU brand?

thanks for the list... opened my eyes it did as i didnt think you could do it never mind with two drives and P&P
 
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Subliminal Aura said:
:rolleyes:

I think you need to know that FSX is cpu bound. The 2500K will perform 'OK' but the 2600K will be golden in comparison.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18182894&postcount=24

I would probably spend an extra £100 and go with a 2600k on a Z68. Current SSD of choice is the Vertex 3 MI but that's probably beyond of your budget
Click to expand...

I know this...but, like you say WAY OUT OF BUDGET... also reviews say that you get less for your money once you start paying £240 for Core-i7 2600k, while it would be better its not really worth paying another £100 for and thats why they recommend the 2500k as best gaming CPU - think it was on Toms Hardware I read just recently - yeah if you have the money, but i dont.

also, FSX does not use more than four cores so HTT on a quad core CPU would be next too useless
 
snadge said:
also reviews say that you get less for your money once you start paying £240 for Core-i7 2600k, while it would be better its not really worth paying another £100 for and thats why they recommend the 2500k as best gaming CPU - think it was on Toms Hardware I read just recently - yeah if you have the money, but i dont.
Click to expand...

Did you read the synthetic / compute sections ? - Gaming is not real computing... Look at cpu benchmarks and you'll find the 2600k wipes the floor and flushes the 2500k.

FSX is heavily cpu bound so you're looking at a very big performance gap for just £100.

If however you want to use your dad's computer to play your run of the mill gpu bound games then you wouldn't notice much difference between the 2500k and the 2600k. Have a look on these forums for fritz benches for the 2500k and 2600k - the gap *will* shock you
 
Im running FSX on a OCZ Vertex 2E with an old E8400 @ 4GHz, 4GB RAM and a GTX460. It runs very well indeed so the i5 Sandybridge should run it even better! I found the SSD made quite a difference due to the large scenery files and textures that FSX needs to load in game so to speak.
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Did you read the synthetic / compute sections ? - Gaming is not real computing... Look at cpu benchmarks and you'll find the 2600k wipes the floor and flushes the 2500k.

FSX is heavily cpu bound so you're looking at a very big performance gap for just £100.

If however you want to use your dad's computer to play your run of the mill gpu bound games then you wouldn't notice much difference between the 2500k and the 2600k. Have a look on these forums for fritz benches for the 2500k and 2600k - the gap *will* shock you
Click to expand...

The OP has stated their budget is £600 so if you can do a 2600K build for £600 then go for it.
 
had a little rethink. you could split the build between two shops. get the case + SSD + whatever is cheaper from one competitor, then get the rest from OcUK:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £159.98
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 460 HAWK "Super-OC" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £125.99
1 x Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** *LOWEST UK PRICE* £78.98
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £44.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £29.99
1 x OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) £25.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.99
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.98
Total : £514.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).

ive changed the RAM in an attempt to save more money. the corsair RAM is better, but im trying to save money wherever i can.

couldnt bring myself to change the heatsink because anything cheaper than the gelid on OcUK is a big step backwards
 
Surveyor said:
The OP has stated their budget is £600 so if you can do a 2600K build for £600 then go for it.
Click to expand...

Yep granted.

I'm just suggesting a review to up that budget as I feel in this situation it's worth it, had it been for a build just to play a fps or dirt 3 then I wouldn't have bothered.

If it is strictly to budget then I'll back track but I'd rather cpu > gpu for an FSX rig
 
Just thought I'd add my 2c. With FSX there is no proven benefit from hyper-threading at all. This was shown by both the Intel i7 9xx 1366 CPUs and the i7 2600K. The 8MB cache it has over the i5 2500K again is negligible when it comes to performance. It's all about CPU clock. I'd really recommend investing in a decent cooler to push the processor as far as you can. As for GPU, yes, fsx is most limited by the CPU but don't disregard the GPU. My overclocked GTX 470 regularly hits 95% GPU usage whilst in flight. As for the SSD, I personally wouldn't mess around with a 30GB drive. Get a decent fast mechanical drive for the time being then upgrade to a decent sized SSD when you have more money or for a birthday/xmas present! My FSX file is currently 80GB excluding things like Real Environment Xtreme and all my photoreal scenery! At a minimum you really shouldn't get anything below 60GB and ideally a 120GB drive at a later date. With regards to RAM, FSX is a 32bit programme, so will not utilise more than 4GB. However, certain addons may push this up so I'd recommend going for 8GB of RAM with prices how they are at the moment.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 460 HAWK "Super-OC" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £129.98
1 x MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** *WITH FREE MSI GRENADE* £89.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £62.39
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £44.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.99
1 x Silverstone SST-PS03B Precision Midi Tower Case - Black £40.84
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222AL/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £623.23 (includes shipping : £11.75).
 
thanks for the support re 2500k etc... like I said HTT is next to useless on FSX on a quad-core chip, ive been told this on FSX forums that no more than 4 thread CPU as it wouldnt use any more threads

WE HAVE A PROBLEM

OCuk have confirmed they do not deliver to different address on first orders, they may be able to ask my dad for other documents (which he wont have as he will be here tomorrow then on holiday after that and both of us meet up at his on 26th and I leave his on 30th... so as you can see its a tight gap... unless we order the parts and ask for delivery to be made on 26th (Tuesday) but it can not be any earlier and not later as he is unable to build it himself and I live 360 miles away

I want to say THANK YOU to everyone on this forum who has helped.. it is simply the best forum ive used, you get replies instantly and many of them and everyone is very helpfull, going out of your way to spec up and price up parts... brilliant. also OCuk seems to be cheaper overall when you total in a full build across other popular websites.

also... for FSX ive been told that the better scenery add-on could interrupt gameplay as it takes long to load from HDD - is this true? before we were just going to get HDD 500Gb Seagate 7200.12 anyway... but thinking of adding that 30Gb SSD just for OS - he is here tomorrow I will speak with him but he wont break that £600 budget as he already pushed it up from £500 - he will just see it as creeping up and up as keep saying...well if yer getting this and paying this much you may aswell get that.
 
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