My first build

[phannon86]

Over the last few years I've gone through a few machines, some nice prebuilds, and just last week sold my old MacBook Pro of 2 years. I've finally decided it's about time I built something!

Been chatting with a friend of mine who's more into hardware than me, I'm a Software Engineer and in recent years, totally lost touch with hardware.

My budget is £600, I've already got a keyboard, mouse, monitor. How would you change this puppy?

-AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz Black Edition - £139.99
-Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 - £91.99
-Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel - £89.99
- Asus M4A77TD Pro AMD 770 Socket AM3 PCI-E DDR3 - £68.99
- Wester Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 64MB Cache OEM £67.99
- OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W Silent SLI Ready Modular PSU - £62.99
- NZXT Apollo Gaming Case - Black - £53 99
- Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD+-RW SATA Black OEM - £18.99

Totalling £609.28 with delivery.

Cheers

 

[Nocky24]

I'd proably try and stretch to a 5770 if you can for the newer tech +dx11, i think the XFX is £120 at the moment. For the HDD id go for the 1TB Samsung F3- its better than that WD drive. Also for the optical drive i'd go for the slightly better 24x Sony optiarc

 

[95thrifles]

Hi and welcome, not bad spec but first off the HDD youve included is more of a storage drive than a boot drive, change for the black version or even get a samsung F3
Id swap the gfx card for a 5770, thats gonna push your cost up a bit so how about this case and PSU combo, its great value, that saves £30 which is difference in cost of gfx cards plus a little extra
Re the mobo, if you want the option of going for xfire (2 gfx cards) later then look at upgrading to a 790 chipset, the cheapest one is only about £15 more, course if youre not going to need this then dont bother but its best to keep options open imo
You could get slightly cheaper RAM too if you want to keep costs down, doesnt effect performance much at all tbh

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition 3.40GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £139.99 (£121.73)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £119.98 (£104.33)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £83.98 (£73.03)
Coolermaster Sileo 500 Silent Case - Black (500w Extreme Power Plus PSU) £76.99 (£66.95)
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9) £72.99 (£63.47)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £68.99 (£59.99)
Samsung SH-S223B/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £18.99 (£16.51)
Sub Total : £506.01
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £77.66
Total : £595.42

Included the retail optical drive just for the software really, same cost

 

[jms198]

In Xfire the second PCIe slot will run at x4; not sure if that is much of a problem.
I prefer cases with the PSU at the bottom venting out the top of the case. In the £50 range there are loads of nice cases but is down to preference. Samsung F3(?) is meant ot be the fastest single platter HDD atm. 4870s 512mb can be had for the same or les sthan the 4850 (check the cooler for the 4850; generally stock ATI coolers are rubbish); I suppose its down to your monitor size. Again a lot down to prefernce. I would also shop around for ram getting the lowest CAS to speed trade off. I'm still a DDR2 dinosaur so not too hot on DDR3.

 

[siumatfung]

 

[Nocky24]

If you're not too fussed about getting cas9 ram get this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-083-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

Also if you're not looking to have a multi gpu setup then that mobo will probably be fine, but as people have said if you are then get that memory i've spec'd and put the money into a 790 chipset.

If not then put the money you've saved into a decent cooler like the freezer 7 pro

EDIT: Very nice spec siumatfung. Just got to wait for the i5 vs 965 debate to get started now aha

 

[phannon86]

Damn, that's a lot of opinions and options to process! Quick response as well, cheers! Looks like I'll have to see about pulling the trigger on it tonight, a number of these components are "this week only". I'll keep looking out for anymore responses that come in.

A couple of things for sure though, that WD 1TB can be swapped out for an Samsung F3 500GB, don't really think I have the need for a TB yet! Use that saving to swap the graphics for the 5770.