New member, First build! What are your thoughts?

Rhyswh

Rhyswh

Rhyswh

Associate
Joined
10 Jan 2012
Posts
806
Hey,

I have been trying to buy a PC for about a year now but never got the funds together to go ahead with it! I have always wanted to build my own so I decided to take the plunge!!!

This will be a slow process as I will have to buy each part one month at a time!

Anyway, this is my spec (working on a budget of about £600 maximum). I will be using it for music recording and editing so I'm trying to build a very quiet(not silent) PC. Let me know what you think, any improvements you suggest will be much appreciated!

Case
Casecom CB-341 (nothing special to keep costs down)
Motherboard
Asrock H67lM-GE
or
Asrock H67DE3
Processor
Intel i7 2600
Ram
16gb Corsair RAM
Hard drive
Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB
or
WD Caviar Black 1TB
CD drive
Samsung BD-Combo
PSU
Be Quiet 530W Pure Power PSU (I'm worried that this isn't enough!)
or
Corsair TX650W V2
Extras
Addon NWP210 300mbs wireless card
Firewire 800 card
Antec Truequiet 120mm Case Fan (anyone got one? is it quiet?)

I think that's it!

One thing I'm struggling with is the CPU cooler. I want it to be as quiet as possible but at a budget price of £30 max. Any suggestions??

Thanks for your time
 
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Hi and welcome to the forums. :)

You are going about it the wrong way. It's far better to save up until you can afford the whole thing at once. There is no point in buying one part a month as new parts will be out or prices may have dropped. Ivybridge (Sandybridges replacement) will be out in 3-4 months and will be faster but similarly priced.
 
pastymuncher said:
Hi and welcome to the forums. :)

You are going about it the wrong way. It's far better to save up until you can afford the whole thing at once. There is no point in buying one part a month as new parts will be out or prices may have dropped. Ivybridge (Sandybridges replacement) will be out in 3-4 months and will be faster but similarly priced.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this, save up and buy in one go.
 
But everytime I try to start saving something comes up and I spend the money! So if I buy it bit by bit then at least I'm constantly getting their!!!! Hopefully it won't take more than 6 months though! I am on a budget as well so I wouldn't buy the ivybridge anyway because the current i7 2600 is more than capable of doing the job.

I have already gone over my original budget of £500 because of the HDD and the mobo!

Apart from how I'm putting it together, what do you think of the set-up??

cheers
 
you can send the money to me every month if you want then when it comes time I might give it back to you...

If you are going to be editing music etc can you really afford to have all your data on a single HDD? what it if dies? Will you be compressing the music? (i7 vs i5)
 
Rhyswh said:
But everytime I try to start saving something comes up and I spend the money! So if I buy it bit by bit then at least I'm constantly getting their!!!!
Click to expand...

you can do this but make sure you start with bits that you will not want to change so start with stuff like the PSU, cooler, fans, case, and leave the motherboard, cpu and gfx till last so that they are are up to date :)
 
I never intend on overclocking to be honest but I guess I should future proof it!

I did think about getting 2 500gb HDD in a RAID 1 set up but I think my plan now is to save completed work onto External HDD so I can have the impressive WD HDD!!!

Just thought I should mention, I won't be using a GPU because I don't intend on playing games or rendering photos/videos and I will be using an external sound card.

Anyone used one of these before?? http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=277
 
Because when your editing up to 30 tracks of audio with multi plug-ins and effects on each the CPU is working it's behind off!! I'd rather have something that has some headroom to play with.

As for the cooler, I'm not looking for amazing performance from the CPU cooler, I'm more interested in the noise it makes!
 
If you want a quiet cooler then forget that Zalman. I had one a couple of years ago and even on a fan controller you can't turn the fan below 1500rpm. As a result you can always hear the thing. Mediocre cooling as well.

I still stand by my original statement though. It's madness buying a component a month when there are constant new releases coming out which can lead to price drops on existing components. Ivybridge will be released along with the 7 series chipset motherboards which should lower prices on the current Sandybridge cpus and their mobo's.
 
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When is ivybridge due for release??

As you suggested I'm going to buy all the little bits first and leave the mobo and CPU till last, so chances are the ivy bridge components will probably be out by then.

Apart from my method of putting it together, what do you think of the set-up?
 
panyan said:
you can do this but make sure you start with bits that you will not want to change so start with stuff like the PSU, cooler, fans, case, and leave the motherboard, cpu and gfx till last so that they are are up to date :)
Click to expand...

agree, took the words right out of my mouth!
 
:/ Save and buy.. as new stuff comes out no doubt all the stuff u mentioned will go down. Except RAM.. Its rising overnight at the moment so i would look at that..
 
Apart from The CPU and mobo, what other new releases are coming out in the next six months??

I think it's going to be very hard to beat the HDD without going for a SSD which I cannot afford.
 
Always new cases coming out but tbh i don't know if they really drop, Mobo's too, Fans u wont care about new or not :') Aslong as it quiet and works .. If not keep an eye out here and elsewere on daily deals! I have picked up some good bits off them before
 
Rhyswh said:
Apart from The CPU and mobo, what other new releases are coming out in the next six months??

I think it's going to be very hard to beat the HDD without going for a SSD which I cannot afford.
Click to expand...

The rest of AMD's new 7000 series gpu's, Nvidias new Kepler gpu's, not that you are interested in those. Ivybridge should be 3-4 months along with the new 7 series motherboards. AMD's new FM2 socket with the Llano replacement should be around the same time as Ivybridge but not comparable in performance. Hdd's could start to come down in price as production ramps up again.
 
I'm going to stay away from AMD just out of preference and like you say I'm not interested in GPU's. So I'l hold off buying the CPU and mobo until May and buy the rest before then.

Thanks for the help guys.

I've seen the word 'bottlenecking' on a few threads, what exactly does this mean and am I going to have this issue?
 
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