New PC Build

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b3n

b3n

b3n

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Hey All,

I want to build a new PC for mild gaming, media server/centre and compiling. The problem is I cannot afford it off the bat, I am a father of 1 and me and the missus don't have much spare.

To remedy this, I have decided to build a PC over the next 2-3months, as cash becomes spare (I'm am not very good at savings :P). This isn't exactly convenient nor the best way to do it, but it is the only option I have.

Anyway's, here is the list I have put together for the more eagle eyed to have a gander. I am completely open to suggestions and that includes cases. I am aware Haswell is around the corner so any suggestions in the area also appreciated.

Intel Core i5-3450 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £146.99

Asus P8Z77-M Pro Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £116.99

Asus GeForce GTX 650 DirectCU 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95

SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £84.98

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £61.99

Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £49.99

Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99 (Purchased!)

Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card £39.98

Samsung SH-224BB/RSMS 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £19.99

Total: £670.86


Thanks for any advice :)

b3n
 
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You could get away with a cheaper motherboard if money is a problem. Cheaper motherboards should be fine for your build
 
Perhaps the Asus P8Z77-M Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard (£89.99)?
 
Depending on how much you actually want to spend, you could get a Blu-Ray drive in here also.

This is what I've come up with:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ FARCRY3, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £155.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3450 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £146.99
1 x SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £84.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £78.98
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £72.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £38.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
1 x Samsung SH-118AB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £641.89 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Do you have a case?

Also, the AMD card would be better over Nvidia unless you require Nvidia for CUDA/Physx, they a more for less.

I've also removed the soundcard you chose, as you can use the on-board SPDIF if you have an optical enabled home theatre system. You can get a £3-4 SPDIF lead from a popular auction site which would be perfect. I've got 2, cannot fault them.

Hope this helps :D
 
If you want to do the build in "installments" then start by finding a case and PSU (i see you have the RAM already). I'm a fan of the Zalman Z9 U3 as for a sub £50 case you get an awful lot of kit for the price.

It might make sense to hold fire and stay active on here to work towards the free delivery to loyal members of the forum, it will take a little time but then Haswell will be even closer on the horizon. Then you can grab parts as they appear week to week on offer without the P&P costs mounting up :) For example the Shinobi case is on offer this week and is quite nice especially for £40 odd

YOUR BASKET
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £66.95
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black £46.98
Total : £125.63 (includes shipping : £9.75).



The 650 GPU isn't very good to be honest. I wouldn't suggest buying anything less than the 2GB 7850 new. The 1GB 460 and 6850 GPUs are still capable and go for around £50 2nd hand......they outperform any GPU you can buy new for £100, till you hit the 7850.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and possibly seeing more of you on the forums :)
 
To be honest OP, the components you've picked are pretty much top notch except for the VGA!

Nice cases are BitFenix, Antec and Lianli. The Antec 900 is really cheap these days and has been a popular choice (Antec sought out ideas from a forum and specifically built the nine hundred from everyone's suggestions).

The VGA is pretty crap, so you could get the i5-3570 and live with the onboard i5 HD4000 graphics chip until you save a little more for a decent VGA. I've just built a new miniITX rig and tested the HD 4000 chip, was really surprised with it's performance... blocky but played SplitSecond, Dirt 2 and MW3 without issues.
 
snips86x said:
Depending on how much you actually want to spend, you could get a Blu-Ray drive in here also.

This is what I've come up with:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ FARCRY3, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £155.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3450 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £146.99
1 x SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £84.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £78.98
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £72.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £38.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
1 x Samsung SH-118AB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £641.89 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Do you have a case?

Also, the AMD card would be better over Nvidia unless you require Nvidia for CUDA/Physx, they a more for less.

I've also removed the soundcard you chose, as you can use the on-board SPDIF if you have an optical enabled home theatre system. You can get a £3-4 SPDIF lead from a popular auction site which would be perfect. I've got 2, cannot fault them.

Hope this helps :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions! BluRay player is not really required but I will keep that in mind mate. I have purchased the RAM in my OP so that is covered, could perhaps get another 8gb of the same too, totalling 16gb but do I need that much?

I'm pretty easy going about the GPU so I will put your suggestion on the cards for sure and as noted below, 7850's+ are the way to go., is that much grunt needed? I'm not a great fan of MSI but have had a few ASUS boards in my time and been pleased with them all, any reason to go MSI in particular? As for sound, I just want the best sound possible from FLAC and high bitrate media, I'm willing to pay for it but I will read more into this at a later date :)

Thanks and Happy 666th Post!!



honosuseri said:
If you want to do the build in "installments" then start by finding a case and PSU (i see you have the RAM already). I'm a fan of the Zalman Z9 U3 as for a sub £50 case you get an awful lot of kit for the price.

It might make sense to hold fire and stay active on here to work towards the free delivery to loyal members of the forum, it will take a little time but then Haswell will be even closer on the horizon. Then you can grab parts as they appear week to week on offer without the P&P costs mounting up :) For example the Shinobi case is on offer this week and is quite nice especially for £40 odd

YOUR BASKET
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £66.95
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black £46.98
Total : £125.63 (includes shipping : £9.75).



The 650 GPU isn't very good to be honest. I wouldn't suggest buying anything less than the 2GB 7850 new. The 1GB 460 and 6850 GPUs are still capable and go for around £50 2nd hand......they outperform any GPU you can buy new for £100, till you hit the 7850.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and possibly seeing more of you on the forums :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the warm welcome and I will be as active as possible :) I like that case a lot! Was looking at it last night along with that very same PSU. It looks modern and sleek with good looking curves and the PSU seems sturdy and reliable judging from reviews etc..

As above, I will be taking the advice and will try to hold out on GPU and CPU.

Thanks again!

trentlad said:
To be honest OP, the components you've picked are pretty much top notch except for the VGA!

Nice cases are BitFenix, Antec and Lianli. The Antec 900 is really cheap these days and has been a popular choice (Antec sought out ideas from a forum and specifically built the nine hundred from everyone's suggestions).

The VGA is pretty crap, so you could get the i5-3570 and live with the onboard i5 HD4000 graphics chip until you save a little more for a decent VGA. I've just built a new miniITX rig and tested the HD 4000 chip, was really surprised with it's performance... blocky but played SplitSecond, Dirt 2 and MW3 without issues.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the advice mate, I quite like the BitFenix above :P Altough I will weigh up all suggestions on cases, including the Antecs and Lian-Li's. I'm guessing the onboard has inproved in recent years hehe One game must run on this PC, shouldn't be too hard, QuakeLive (I have 2 accounts, b3n and Jini).

Thanks mate!


Just out of curiosity, could I go for a 200gb+ SSD and and 2 HDD in a RAID configuration?
 
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b3n said:
Just out of curiosity, could I go for a 200gb+ SSD and and 2 HDD in a RAID configuration?
Click to expand...

Yeah Quake Live would run like butter on even the lowest of VGAs out there. Love that game too!

Personally I've played about with RAID and it's just not worth the bother. Especially when it's for SSD drives, you'll get no noticeable speed but you'll get all the invulnerabilities of RAID. I find a 120GB SSD is the absolute lowest size to get and I install all games on a seperate HDD.
 
trentlad said:
Yeah Quake Live would run like butter on even the lowest of VGAs out there. Love that game too!

Personally I've played about with RAID and it's just not worth the bother. Especially when it's for SSD drives, you'll get no noticeable speed but you'll get all the invulnerabilities of RAID. I find a 120GB SSD is the absolute lowest size to get and I install all games on a seperate HDD.
Click to expand...

I play iCTF and the normal CTF, love it :)

How does the Intel 330 180gb SSD stack upto the SanDisk above? I will skip raid for now but i think a bigger SSD is needed as I will be dual booting aswell.
 
Crucial, Samsung and OCZ are currently the top ranking SSDs. I know the Crucial are very reliable but don't have the blistering speed of the OCZ.

Sean's SSD Guide will tell you everything you need to know and more. Post #7 goes through the recommended SSD's and if you follow his Windows instillation guide you'll get the most speed and life out of it.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1179518/seans-ssd-buyers-guide-information-thread
 
Nice one pal, I shall have a perusal! I quite like Samsung products in general :)
 
Hey all! I'm back again with a small question, seeking some advice etc

A may be able to get a small loan from a family member, no promises yet but it's on the cards.

Basically if I was to get an i7 3770k and an Asus Sabertooth, would the other parts in the above list and suggested on thread still be viable options?

Thanks!

b3n
 
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More grunt for compiling Android ROM's and kernels is what I was going for mate. I'm also more partial to Asus motherboards....

Thanks for suggestions but not exactly what I was looking for.
 
Just realised I will need 16gb of RAM minimum :-(

Btw the 3570k is a definite if I can't get the i7 due to funds :-)
 
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