Old system dead, have £1300 for a new system, Please help!

Raelthorne

Raelthorne

Raelthorne

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26 Mar 2005
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143
Hi folks,

After a weekend of fighting to keep my old machine alive, it finally died. Although I'm not delighted at having to buy a new machine, at least I'll have a nice shiny new one.

I have a budget of £1300 to spend on a new box (don’t have to spend all of this but would like a rerally good machine). I don't need a monitor, speakers, keyboard or mouse. I can reuse the SATA DVD-RW and the X-Fi Gamer Soundcard drive from my existing machine, unless you can recommend a worthy upgrade :)

I also have a Corsair HX620 modular power supply which I could use but I'm not sure if it'll be powerful enough for the new GFX cards.
I don't need an OS as I have a retail copy of Windows 7 Professional.

I also have a 24” Dell 2405fpw monitor which is okay. I'd also like to get an SSD for fast boot times and installing the OS to.

I'd like to build a new machine and I have a few preferences as far as components go.

CPU: Intel
Motherboard: Asus
CPU Heatsink & Fan: ???
OS: Have Windows 7 Professional Retail
Graphics Card: Asus Nvidia 5 series preferably (Upper mid to High end)
SSD: ???
Regular HDD: Definitely Seagate (Never had a WD that didn’t fail and had 1 Samsung which failed.)
Memory: Corsair preferably
Optical Drive: Have NEC SATA AD7170S DVD±RW or could get new one
PSU: Have Corsair HX620W ATX or new one
Sound Card: Have Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer or could get a new one
Case: Preferably black (Can live with Silver/ Aluminium) would like good cooling and able to house an Nvidia 5 series card.

My main uses for such a system are for playing games: Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, FPSs (Seems an opportune time to upgrade with BF3 on the horizon & for some newer games coming out), Real Time Strategies (C&C series, Starcraft). I also use my PC for image editing (I do some mild processing of RAW files in Adobe Lightroom).

I’ll appreciate any and all recommendations, if there’s something better than what I’ve outlined above, please don’t hesitate to suggest it.

Thanks for any and all help!
 
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is your DVD drive a SATA drive or an IDE drive? if its sata then keep it, if its IDE then you'll need a new one

personally i'd recommend this:


build without case
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £254.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £172.99
1 x MSI Z68A-GD65-G3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £156.98
1 x OCZ Z-Series 850W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £99.98
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £47.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £41.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £1,015.49 (includes shipping : £10.50).

i've put the DVD drive in there, but obviously if your current DVD drive is SATA then dont buy it)

if you do a lot of the image editing then change the processor to the i7 2600k. however, since it will not help in gaming it would be a waste of money if you dont do that much image editing because the i5 2500k is still very fast

as you may have noticed, i havent chosen a case. when you get to this kind of money for cases 99% of them are good, so its really down to you to choose the one you like the look of best

heres a few really good cases that come to mind:

cases
1 x Silverstone Fortress 2 FT02B-W Windowed Gaming Case - Black £219.98
1 x Cooler Master HAF X Gaming Tower Case - Black (RC-942) £145.99
1 x Silverstone Raven 3 RV03B-W Full Tower Windowed Case - Black/Gold £134.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600T Midi Tower Case - Limited Edition White £129.98
1 x Silverstone Raven 2 RV02B Full Tower Case - Black £129.98
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £119.99
1 x Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower Case with Window - Black £84.98

i'm sure theres more good ones around, but those are the ones that come to mind quickly.

the corsair one i've put in the list is more suited to watercooling, but it isnt that bad at air cooling


also, i feel ive forgotten something in the build above (except for the case, obviously) so i'll wait until someone else gives the green light because i'm damned if i can see anything wrong with it
 
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That spec looks good to me, and in the future you can just pick up another 570 cheap and that will extend the life of your system a lot further. These I5 2500K's seem to be great chips like the rest of sandybridge ( coming from an AMD fan that is praise indeed)
 
With re-using the PSU and optical. I'd transfer my HX620W in there. It's still under warranty, but I have a ANtec HCG620W as backup :) Gives you room for a 580.

Note that the CPU is OTT imo, a 2500K will be perfectly fine. Unless you do a lot of rendering (povray, that sort of thing). Even for video encoding.

This setup is pretty much the high end of what you can get, with a single GPU. YOU can replace the cooler with a Corsair H60, or a Antec H2O 620, unless you want to experiment with extreme overclocking. The SilverArrow or the Noctua NH-D14 are the top of the pile, even compared with all-in-one water cooling kits, and especially regarding noise.

A second opint about that, if you want the best air cooling case, look up the Raven RV02W-EB (black version of the RV02W-EW). My favorite case, but it's not available on OcUK.

You can replace the GPU with a TwinFrozr if you prefer the looks. Both cards perform.

As for the memory, the HyperX is very good, but can use Corsair Vengeance Low Profile, or XMS3.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £371.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £169.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £156.98
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £119.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £47.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
Total : £1,214.39 (includes shipping : £13.75).



YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £379.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £169.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £156.98
1 x Silverstone Raven 2 RV02W-EW Evolution Windowed Case - White £155.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £71.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £45.98
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
Total : £1,275.89 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Imagine the second with the case black... :)

650D or Raven... hmm... Another good, cheaper case is the Lancool DragonLord PC-K62.
 
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Write speed aint that big of a deal, I/O and read speed are more important. The problem is do you want to take a chance on one of these (read up on the stream of problems associated with these drives). At over £150, I'd rather not. Plus, OP is interested in reliability as well.
 
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MasterPlan1 said:
The Crucial SSD's don't impress me much, I'd rather go with a Corsair or an OCZ, the R/W speeds on the Crucials are lacking in comparison to the Corsairs, as seen here:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-021-CS&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427

Unless I'm missing something, the Corsair is faster?
Click to expand...

Don't just go on numbers.. :rolleyes: my OCZ agility lasted 5 days. 5!. heard many stories of a similar nature and the same can be said about corsairs...
 
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