quick check on a build im recommending to a friend

Reaper 392 · 12 Nov 2011 at 12:19

he has £500 to spend and currently has a good PSU (antec HCG 550W or 650W), a 5870 and an IDE DVD drive and hard drive.

he really doesnt want to spend money on new hard drives right now, so ive recommended a PCI card with two IDE slots on it for ~£10, along with what im going to recommend to him

the PC is mainly for gaming.

i'm not really sure which route to take, so ive shown him both builds. i've tried to make sure he isnt spending too much on a temporary solution to the 'missing' bit of the build

option 1: 120GB SSD, upgrade cooler later
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £167.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £149.99
1 x MSI Z68A-GD55-G3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £124.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £39.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £26.99
Total : £523.44 (includes shipping : £11.25).
with the MSI motherboard deal thats going on this should end up about £10 over budget
only bit thats missing is the cooler, which can be upgraded later. 8GB RAM would have been nice too, but most games dont use more than 4GB anyway so i figured this wasnt a major thing
the SSD should come in handy, especially since he will be using an IDE HDD
*edit*
ram should be £23.99 corsair 4GB kit in this one, not the kingston stuff
*/edit*

option 2: SSD upgrade later
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £167.99
1 x MSI Z68A-GD55-G3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £124.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £45.59
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £39.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
Total : £418.04 (includes shipping : £11.25).

this one comes way under budget, but leaves a lot of money to be put in the SSD pot for later. i dont really want to recommend a 64GB SSD because it will get filled up very quickly

one thing he has told me is that he doesnt want to spend too much on the cooler, just as long as its quiet. he also really likes the coolermaster case and wouldnt want to spend much more on a case

can you see any problems with what ive recommended him?

olivier renault · 12 Nov 2011 at 12:53

I would say #2. SSDs are nice, but not crucial (wink wink). However, it would be best to re-install the OS from fresh on the SSD if he gets one later, unless he wants the drive only for games and apps. 8GB is good, although tbh 4GB is plenty for gaming / everyday.

I would double check the Gelid fits the 430. It's a big cooler in a small case. Plus, the 430 will also need an extraction fan, as I don't think it comes with one.

If you want an alternative, look up the Zalman Z9 plus, not that much more expensive, and comes with a plethora of fans, a (cheap) fan controller and is a better all rounder.

Also, a nice trick you can do is to move the user folders (My Documents, My Pictures, Downloads...) onto a hard drive using the shortcut option (right click on the folder, change location to a hard drive).

For games and big apps, I also do the same using the "mklink -J" command (run command line as an administrator) to 'shortcut' (it's a bit more than that really) from the where the folder would be on the SSD to the folder on the hard drive. Of course you can do the reverse, and put games you want fast loading on the SSD and do another shortcut from the HDD. That means you can manage quite easily with a 64GB drive.

I usually try keep the same folder hierarchy to keep things clean.

....Hmm, here's an idea for an app

Reaper 392 · 12 Nov 2011 at 13:27

gelid definitely fits in the 430. the gelid was actually one of the coolers i was considering for my elite 342. would the 430 need an extraction fan, or would it just be helpful?

surely with all the folder moving round stuff it will take a long time to move an entire game from the HDD to the SSD. not exactly something he will want to do before he plays each game
mechanichal HDDs read at ~50Mbps iirc, so that would be a minimum of a 5 minute wait while the game moved to the SSD

olivier renault · 12 Nov 2011 at 14:09

you move them once of course.

I would put another fan at the back. It will help the case temps.

moody89 · 12 Nov 2011 at 14:22

The Elite 430 looks a very capable budget case. I've recently suggested one in a budget build to a friend. I would say it definitely needs of those exhaust fan slots filled up though. Off the top of my head I think it has one rear and two top 120mm exhausts so I'd fill up the rear one at least and if possible one or both of the top ones.

Reaper 392 · 12 Nov 2011 at 23:30

olivier renault said:
you move them once of course.

i think we're talking cross purposes here. i'm thinking that if he has a selection of games that he currently plays that will more than fill up the spare space on the SSD then he will quite often have to move games around, which could be a pain, especially if he is using an IDE HDD. with just HDD caching and win7 there would only be ~20GB left on the HDD for games, and this could very easily be more than filled by games he is into at the time

my thinking for the fans is, try it out without and if he feels he wants them i'll happily order for him so he doesnt have to pay shipping on them. (something i wouldnt be happy to do with £500 worth of PC parts obviously). i cant see any way he'd lose out by doing this, other than having a slightly warm PC for a few days. whatever happens it cant be worse than his current case for airflow

fowler002 · 13 Nov 2011 at 02:37

if you're going option 2 why not get a better case?

olivier renault · 13 Nov 2011 at 02:49

Reaper 392 said:
i think we're talking cross purposes here. i'm thinking that if he has a selection of games that he currently plays that will more than fill up the spare space on the SSD then he will quite often have to move games around, which could be a pain, especially if he is using an IDE HDD. with just HDD caching and win7 there would only be ~20GB left on the HDD for games, and this could very easily be more than filled by games he is into at the time

my thinking for the fans is, try it out without and if he feels he wants them i'll happily order for him so he doesnt have to pay shipping on them. (something i wouldnt be happy to do with £500 worth of PC parts obviously). i cant see any way he'd lose out by doing this, other than having a slightly warm PC for a few days. whatever happens it cant be worse than his current case for airflow

Fair enough. It depends how his case will handle the temps. An exhaust fan is easy enough to add later, although it is only a small investment that will ensure he won't run into trouble, especially overclocking.

freddie64 · 13 Nov 2011 at 08:51

Reaper 392 said:
especially if he is using an IDE HDD.

That mobo does not support a ide hdd. May be best to invest in a sata hdd, instead of one of those ide-sata adaptor things, (if that is what you was going to do).

Grimley · 13 Nov 2011 at 09:00

Reaper 392 said:
gelid definitely fits in the 430. the gelid was actually one of the coolers i was considering for my elite 342. would the 430

It will fit because I used both in my Nephews build last year. You wont be able to fit the top fans in this case though unless you turn the cooler round to face upwards.