New i3 build for colleague

Dogboy73 · 21 Mar 2011 at 20:40

Putting together a budget (sub £500) i3 based system for a work colleague. How does this look?;

They also would like to connect to their wireless router. No that up on the whole wireless networking thing but I assume they would need a suitable network card as well? Would this one do for the mobo selected above?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-001-TP&groupid=46&catid=1597&subcat=

Many thanks people

cmndr_andi · 21 Mar 2011 at 20:45

Hi there,

May I ask what this PC will be used for? (eg gaming, word, internet browsing, CAD, photoshop, video editing)

One thing I would certainly suggest changing is the PSU. This one would be much better (review here) and is a bit cheaper.

Dogboy73 · 21 Mar 2011 at 20:48

It's not for gaming. The onboard GPU will surfice. This is really just a basic system for general use.

cmndr_andi · 21 Mar 2011 at 21:03

Ah, good stuff.

Here are two specs I put together.

This one uses the rather fast Sandy Bridge i3 (this chart shows how it compares to the i3 540)

Here is a Quad core AMD system (this chart shows how this CPU compares to the i3 2100 used in the above system in a range of tasks):

titan13131 · 21 Mar 2011 at 21:07

nice builds cmndr_andi

J-FRO · 21 Mar 2011 at 21:08

For a start you could save a tenner getting this instead of that Corsair RAM:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-188-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1516

And it may be backwards compatible with that mobo (AFAIK this just means it will work, but wont run at the top 6GB/s speed) but you can get this and upgrade the HDD to 1TB and save about £2 extra as well and the HDD is probably a bit better anyway:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-000-OP

Dogboy73 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:19

Cool. Cheers people

Any ideas about that Wireless PCI card?

J-FRO · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:30

The reviews on it are pretty positive:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-001-TP&tool=3

I've always used wireless since I've had my first ever PC in my bedroom and have never really had any major difficulties and that's with using a Netgear 108 Mbps WG311T that I've had about 6 years. So as for those TPLink ones, I should imagine they're just as good if not a whole lot better and for general browsing etc it should be fine.

Many will try and deter you from going wireless, but where needs must you should. Plus, I can still hit 90FPS on games so it's cool with me.

Freddie589 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:46

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-001-TP&tool=3

same here I'm in the furthest room from the router in the house o. Wireless n and still get 19mb (pay for 20)

cmndr_andi · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:46

To connect to the router I would strongly suggest you use a wired connection (ethernet) if you can.

If that isn't possible then getting a £35 powerline kit like this is an excellent alternative, and compared to wireless it offers lower latency, better reliability and higher transfer speeds (useful for sharing files between other devices on the network - especially if streaming HD video, though wireless won't impede your internet connection speed - unless you have a very fast service).

If you must go for wireless then I would go for this USB adapter. Its a bit cheaper than the PCI card, it doesn't use up a crucial PCI port and the wireless signal isn't obstructed by a massive box of metal.