New PC

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Joined
7 Jul 2008
Posts
1,336
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Looking to buy a new PC

Processor: Intel Core i7-3820 (3.60GHz, Four Core, 10MB Cache)
•Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
•1 TB 3.5inch SATA III Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
•8 GB Memory (4x2GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Quad Channel
•Graphics : Dual 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555
•English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)
•24X DVD +/- RW Drive
•875W Chassis

Costs £800. How does this sound?

Used for the odd game. surfing, movies, editing photos
 
Thats the one I am looking at

Why do I get the feeling I am about to be flamed :)

No you won't..

Its just against the rules for anyone to provide prices outside the members market.

Easy mistake to make.

We can evaluate whether you can build better for your budget though.
 
OcUK doesn't like people talking about competitors, although somehow Dell outlet seems to be okay, since there's several hundred threads mentioning them in the laptops section.
 
No you won't..

Its just against the rules for anyone to provide prices outside the members market.

Easy mistake to make.

We can evaluate whether you can build better for your budget though.
Opps sorry for any infringement of the rules.

To be honest not really into building my own, thats maybe why I looked at the Dell.

They way I looked at it the CPU, Ram, GPU all seemed to be at the right sort of spec. I not that keen on the case but can live with that at the price point. I have a SSD from my old system.

The only alternative was to upgrade my existing box which is a Dell T3500 but undure if thats possible?
 
Building your own machine is like a jigsaw, most of the guys on here will help you if your worried about something, read the manuels and you'll be fine.


Sapphire HD 7870 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£239.99
(£199.99)

Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM

£167.99
(£139.99

Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

£103.99
(£86.66)

Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001)

£99.98
(£83.32)

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050)

£79.98
(£66.65)

OCZ ZS Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

£72.98
(£60.82)

BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black

£49.99
(£41.66)

Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9)

£43.19
(£35.99)

Sub Total :

£715.08



Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)

Shipping :

£12.50



VAT is being charged at 20.00%

VAT :

£145.52





Total :

£873.10
 
Cheers for the input

Its seems a pity I could not use my existing T3500 case as I know I will probably get little for it if I sell it.

That was I would just need a mobo, CPU (Still fancy the i7), power supply and memory.

I would spend a bit more on components:
CPU i73770 - £252
Mobo - I assume I will 1155 Z77 chipset? Infernox suggested Gigabyte although I see there are cheaper options (MSI) Just interested why Gigabyte
Power supply - Needs to be quiet but not sure how much power I will need as probable not running too much peripherals.
Memory is easy :)

Has anyone done this?
 
If you're building yourself, you should get a xxxK processor as you can easily get 15-20% extra speed for the cost differential. You are better off with an after market cooler rather than the ones that come with the processor (retail versions ship with a standard cooler).

If you don't know why you need an i7, go for an i5. It is better value for money. I have an i7, if I was buying again tomorrow, I'd go with an i5...

Power supply: I tend to build my systems with a 650W PSU. I don't do any gaming.

Depends what you mean by "light gaming", but I've never seen the need to spend more than ~£70 on a graphics card (and that was £20 more as I wanted a passively cooled card).

Go with the Z77 motherboard with the features you want on it (number of SATA ports being the key one - it's surprising how easily these get used).

If you have an old SSD, it is likely to be a pretty poor performer compared to current generation technology. Crucial M4 and Samsung 830s seem to get the nod here.

Power supply: I tend to over spec these (having had a couple go on me) and try for 80 plus gold or better. My PCs (I have 4 that run proper PC supplies and a few running on laptop supplies) are on 24/7 so efficiency is important. Also the higher efficiency supplies tend to be quieter so... I've found this page: http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm useful as a place to look for reviews of power supplies and this site: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs very useful for comparing PSUs from a noise viewpoint (as well as coolers & gfx cards - although "passive" in the description is normally a good indication ;)).

Case is personal preference, but I reuse my cases over time, so I have invested in the ones I bought. I can recommend the Antec P183 v3 (I have the 182 case and love it) or the Fractal Design Design cases (I use for a fileserver as it has loads of disk trays). Not cheap, but to get quiet cases needs some engineering and deadening...

Hope that helps.
 
Cheers for the input

Its seems a pity I could not use my existing T3500 case as I know I will probably get little for it if I sell it.

That was I would just need a mobo, CPU (Still fancy the i7), power supply and memory.

I would spend a bit more on components:
CPU i73770 - £252
Mobo - I assume I will 1155 Z77 chipset? Infernox suggested Gigabyte although I see there are cheaper options (MSI) Just interested why Gigabyte
Power supply - Needs to be quiet but not sure how much power I will need as probable not running too much peripherals.
Memory is easy :)

Has anyone done this?

Na, get a 3570K, a Z77, a 7850, that's all you need. Save on CPU and get better everything else.


YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £179.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £83.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £52.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x Thermalright True Spirit 120 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/AM2/AM3/FM1) £24.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Total : £806.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).



or

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £179.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £89.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £85.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £83.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £52.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x Thermalright True Spirit 120 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/AM2/AM3/FM1) £24.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Total : £782.89 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Pre-build, you can get


YOUR BASKET
1 x "Titan 8100i Triceratop" Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz @ 4.40GHz DDR3 Quad Core System £503.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Case - Black £59.99
1 x System 12 Months Standard Warranty £0
1 x FREE PANDA 180 Day Trial Anti Virus £0
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £83.99
1 x No Hard Drive Upgrade £0
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £89.99
Total : £758.95 (includes shipping : £17.50).



or


YOUR BASKET
1 x "Titan 8100i Triceratop" Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz @ 4.40GHz DDR3 Quad Core System £503.99
1 x Sapphire HD 6950 OC "Dual Fan Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x No Hard Drive Upgrade £0
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Case - Black £59.99
1 x System 12 Months Standard Warranty £0
1 x Opt Out of FREE AV Software £0
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £83.99
Total : £818.95 (includes shipping : £17.50).

 
Last edited:
Cheers for all the ideas. Very much appreciated

Don't hit me but I have started to consider the idea of building however I am thinking of going the route of small form factor

Just seen this case - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-073-BX&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=1850 and could fancy the idea of a smaller system - remember its for video and photo editing not games

Video and photo editing, then yeah, you might be better served with a i7.

you will need a itx motherboard. There are even smaller cases. This is more a m-atx sized case, however it's still small and easily transportable.
 
remember its for video and photo editing not games
That's exactly what I do with mine (when it's not a glorified web browser!). You'll get ~10% extra encode speed from an i7 (I use ffmpeg for all my encoding) and unless you do heavy filtering you probably won't notice whether it's an i5 or i7 for photography. Cores x clocks are king, not hyperthreading for both those apps...

Far more important will be decent amount of memory and fast I/O - i.e. SSD(s).

For video, if you're going to use Premiere Pro, a reasonable Nvidia graphics card (I have a 450 and it's way quicker than the o/c i7-2600k I have here) will enable you to use the Mercury Playback Engine and enable far more responsive video editing.

Other than that, I'd just get a cheap (~£50) graphics card or try with the onboard of the i5/i7. If you use photoshop, only a very few operations are accelerated and that's only in CS6. This: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html tells you what PS6 accelerates. If you don't use those often, save a bunch on the graphics card. The CS5 accelerations are handled fine by almost any current graphics card and by the time CS7 comes out, what costs you £200 in graphics card technology today will cost you £50 then.... There's an awful lot of people on this site who game and can't possibly make do with something that suffices for the job for others when it comes to graphics cards ;)
 
. Cores x clocks are king, not hyperthreading for both those apps...
Can you explain this please.

I was going to buy the i7 3770. You suggesting an i5, possibly the 3570
According to benchmarks the i7 is quite a bit faster

I will be using an Intel SSD

Back to the case I was thinking about what Mobo would people suggest and what power supply should I use. Also which graphics card, I have a Radion HD5770 at the mo, would that be good enough? I must say its been problematic in my current setup give me the famous error message and freezing for a couple of seconds (this may possibly be the power supply not being man enough Dell 350w)
 
Last edited:
Can you explain this please.

I was going to buy the i7 3770. You suggesting an i5, possibly the 3570
According to benchmarks the i7 is quite a bit faster
OK. Hyperthreading (which is what the i7 has over the i5) is essentially giving the CPU 2 hands instead of one. That is, if you can find a job that you can really do with two hands independently, you can go twice as fast. Unfortunately, the real world isn't like that.

I'll try and illustrate it with a tenuous example........ Let's suppose you were a card player. If you were, you could probably deal with one hand pretty quickly. Add a second hand into the dealing and you could probably go a bit faster, but it is unlikely you could go twice as fast as a single hand dealing on it's own. Add a second dealer and it would be very easy to go twice as fast. That's what hyperthreading compared to multi-cores is like.

If you look at the benchmarks, (for example the second pass x264 encode one here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive/5) you'll see that the 6 core SandyBridge-e is ~50% faster than the 4 core SandyBridge 2600K at similar frequencies. If you also look at the benchmarks, you'll see the i7 is 20% faster than the i5 on pass 2, but 10% slower on pass 1 of the x264 encode. x264 is about the best app we have at the moment to show real world performance of multi-threaded apps.

What does that tell me... Well, to me, it's simple. i5 4 core:i7 4core+multithreaded = 10% overall improvement. i7 4core:i7 6 core = 50% improvement. The performance is ~= number of real cores x actual max frequency.

Given the price of i7 vs i5, the smart money is on i5's as the best bang for buck (unless you can afford 6 core i7's ;))
 
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