Please check out my pre-order spec

[moon_monkey]

Afternoon all,

I'd be grateful if you could check out my pre-order spec and make sure I'm not doing anything too stupid etc.

This will be for my first build from scratch so I'm, obviously, anxious not to screw it up royally.


Asus ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £164.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £160.99

MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £159.99

Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card (90-YAA055-1UAN00Z) £83.98

Corsair P128 128GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (CMFSSD-128GBG2D) £269.99

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £66.99

Noctua NH-C12P Top-Down CPU Heatpipe Heatsink with NF-P12 Fan £56.34

2 x OCZ Platinum AMD Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P1600LVAM4GK) £54.99 x 2

Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99


It will be going in a Silverstone TJ07, and be powered by my PC Power And Cooling Silencer 750W.

I intend to do a clean install of the W7 release candidate on the SSD, along with my favourite current games - everything else goes on the F1.

The machine will largely be used for gaming (FPS - TF2, HL2, Bioshock etc., RTS - Total War series, Starcraft 2 when it arrives).
My monitor is a 22" widescreen Samsung with a resolution of 1680x1050 and I'm not likely to be upgrading this any time soon (as the missus won't let me have anything bigger ).

I don't do folding or any video editing etc., but it will also be my day-to-day work/internet browsing PC as well. My plan is to overclock at some point in the near future as well.

I don't want to have to upgrade this for a long while and this spec pushes my budget very close to its limit.

A couple of more specific questions.
Is 8GB RAM overkill?
Will I be able to install straight to the SSD? Or will I have to muck about installing to the mechanical drive first, and then switch?
Will my power supply be enough?

Any comments or advice about anything in the build will be gratefully received.

Cheers,
mm

 

[Happy]

That looks sound, should be a great system!

No messing around with the SSD I believe, just straight in and install. There's no such thing as overkill, however based on what you have listed I think you would be more than fine on just 4GB. 8GB would be for the likes of Virtual Machines, large photoshop files etc. A 520W PSU would be fine, so you have plenty of spare power for future upgrades, ie another 4890! Although why the MSI mobo, it's pretty expensive. I'd be tempted to either get on of the Asus or Gigabyte boards.

 

[moon_monkey]

Thanks for the feedback Happy. Very quick response.

I'm still "umming and aahing" over the amount of RAM. I suppose a sensible approach would be to buy 4GB and give it a few months to see if I need more.

I went for the MSI motherboard as they are very good for overclocking.
I was tempted by the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (not stocked here) but can't remember exactly what tipped me towards the MSI. Possibly the prices were closer at the time. Also may have had something to do with the number and placement of the PCI-E slots. Maybe it's worth some more research.

mm

 

[PESolution]

the gfx card you are ordering is on deal of the week i believe, have a look, about 20£ cheaper and with 2xgames