New components for a friend

[ElliorR]

Hello good people of General Hardware.

A friend of mine got Thief and his 5 year old build, which just happened to be my old computer, told him to get lost whilst trying to play it. He only needs the following 5 items as I have a Corsair A50 cooler that is boxed and unused as well as a spare HDD. The rest of his desktop PC will be used in this build.

As he has to sneak the build under his wife's radar, yes I know and we take the **** out of him constantly for it, he wants to order next week when she goes to visit her parents.

So the build (I was trying to work out how you lot link the components from "Your Basket" but can't work it out....)

Intel i5 4670k £161.99
MSI Z87-G43 £92.99
TeamGroup Vulcan 2400mhz Ram £55.99
MSI GTX 770 £249.95
Corsair CS650M PSU £67.99

Total £628.91 (I can order it for him so he doesn't have to pay the delivery charge)

He wanted to keep it to around £600 then I realised his old PSU, my old PSU, was at least 5 years old and rated at 550w so that knocked the price up a bit.

So please good people of GH, the only thing he wants to do is stay with Intel for the CPU, how can he improve on this spec?

 

[t31os]

Not sure you can really improve, any changes are going to be on a personal preference level more than anything, imho.

For example, i'd choose the D3HP or D3H on this week only over the MSI. One because the last 4 systems i've built are using Gigabyte boards(minor hitch with one build, but that was shoddy vista support - solved moving to win7), and secondly because they have a UK returns department.

I also don't like what i've been reading about Corsair changing the OEM on PSUs whilst maintaining their price point. Eg. Some models were originally built by Seasonic, but later changed to another lower quality OEM, whilst the price never changed. So on that basis i'd opt for another brand(again personal preference here).

 

[cmndr_andi]

That's a good build you have there - it will certainly make for a good system for playing games.

One thing to consider changing is find some way to fit in an SSD in there (as they really are that good). Perhaps change the MSI GTX 770 to a R9 270X (such as this one) and pick up a nice 240-250GB SSD like this one.

Also, I would suggest changing the motherboard to this one - since it has two PCIE gen3 slots (with the second one able to run at x8 speed). The MSI board you picked has a secondard PCIE slot which only runs at PCIE gen2 x4 speed.

Does he have an OS he can use?

 

[korgtronix]

Hello good people of General Hardware.

A friend of mine got Thief and his 5 year old build, which just happened to be my old computer, told him to get lost whilst trying to play it. He only needs the following 5 items as I have a Corsair A50 cooler that is boxed and unused as well as a spare HDD. The rest of his desktop PC will be used in this build.

As he has to sneak the build under his wife's radar, yes I know and we take the **** out of him constantly for it, he wants to order next week when she goes to visit her parents.

So the build (I was trying to work out how you lot link the components from "Your Basket" but can't work it out....)

Intel i5 4670k £161.99
MSI Z87-G43 £92.99
TeamGroup Vulcan 2400mhz Ram £55.99
MSI GTX 770 £249.95
Corsair CS650M PSU £67.99

Total £628.91 (I can order it for him so he doesn't have to pay the delivery charge)

He wanted to keep it to around £600 then I realised his old PSU, my old PSU, was at least 5 years old and rated at 550w so that knocked the price up a bit.

So please good people of GH, the only thing he wants to do is stay with Intel for the CPU, how can he improve on this spec?

I would recommend this PSU over that one.
YOUR BASKET
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
Total : £59.59 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Only because I haven't heard great things about Corsair PSUs recently and Superflower are a great brand and the PSU is 80+ gold.

I would also possibly look into the r9 280x as an alternative. Not sure which is faster out of the 770 or 280x (think they trade blows in most games) but the 280x is a little cheaper at the moment I think and has extra VRAM.

Edit.

Also check this link for the shopping cart http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18371076

 

[ElliorR]

Cheers all, and thanks korg for the link to the basket thing.

Would a 550w PSU be good enough? When I run the components through a PSU calculator it's in the low to mid 500w range but I do know that's done at 90% load.

 

[korgtronix]

Cheers all, and thanks korg for the link to the basket thing.

Would a 550w PSU be good enough? When I run the components through a PSU calculator it's in the low to mid 500w range but I do know that's done at 90% load.

They do have a 650w version that is still cheaper than the Corsair one you originally list. Think I may have clicked the wrong one the first time anyway

There is this one as well but stretches your budget a little http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-014-SF&tool=3

 

[cmndr_andi]

550W will be plenty of power for that system (88W CPU, 230W GPU), however as korgtronix mentions: Superflower do have a 650W which is still cheaper than the Corsair original picked. That will give you plenty of headroom for any single GPU system you may use it with. The only downside is that it's not modular.

Another PSU worth considering is the Seasonic M12II EVO Edition 750W which is modular and gives you a whole 750W of power capacity for the price of £78. Considering how well made these units are (see here for the review of the 850W version) its a pretty nice bargain IMHO.