New system build for a friend ~ behind the times

mthornton · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:27

Hello,

I am building a new system with a friend but my hardware knowledge isn't as good as it used to be when I built my system a couple of years ago.

His budget is £750 for everything not including a monitor/keyboard/mouse. He is looking to use it for general use and moderate gaming.

Any hints you can give re is now the best time to build a system i.e price wise and are there going to be any major hardware advances in the next few months? Also an idea of spec for that price would be great.

Cheers!

stulid · 17 Sep 2011 at 13:08

Well building the PC yourself is the cheapest way of getting the best parts for the budget.

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £169.99
(£141.66) £169.99
(£141.66)
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** LOWEST UK PRICE ** £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £69.98
(£58.32) £69.98
(£58.32)
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
(£57.00) £68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
LG GH22NS70 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)
Sub Total : £607.75
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £13.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £124.30
Total : £745.80

Thats a spec including a copy of Win7.

• The PSU is made by one of the best (seasonic) and is modular cabling.
• 8GB RAM and 1TB HDD
• The motherboard has all the Z68 features (SSD caching, Lucid Virtu+Quicksync) it also does SLI/Crossfire at an equal 8X/8X, Review - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/z68xp-ud3-dz68db,review-32228.html
• The case is good too as it includes plenty of fans and a fan controller and temperature probe - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcwlHsyUC20

are there going to be any major hardware advances in the next few months

AMD will have their new CPU's called Bulldozer soon, Intel will release Ivybridge CPU next year, these are still compatible with socket1155 boards such as above.

ATI should release the new 7 series cards before the end of the year (November) Nvidia will have something new next year.

roger_37 · 17 Sep 2011 at 13:13

nice spec stulid

stulid · 17 Sep 2011 at 13:22

roger_37 said:
nice spec stulid

Cheers.

mthornton · 30 Sep 2011 at 23:23

Thanks for your intial setup stulid, looks great.

He's now come back to me with a revised budget of £950 including a monitor! He also wants an overclock and likes the look of http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-080-OE

His or my knowledge of overclocking is little to none. Could you incorporate that into a new build?

Thanks in advance.

mp260767 · 1 Oct 2011 at 01:02

well if you take out the processor/mobo and memory from stulid's spec and add in the overclock bundle (adding the extra 4gb of memory coming to £361) the total will come to around 792.

lflowers · 4 Oct 2011 at 21:52

Hi, the build is for me! The components have been sorted and i was just wondering whether i will need any extra cables to complete the build? (e.g. molex)

olivier renault · 4 Oct 2011 at 22:17

nope.