quick spec check please :)

SGWills

SGWills

SGWills

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Joined
24 Jul 2007
Posts
1,894
Location
Swansea, Wales
so a friend of the misses has asked me to build him a pc, he uses it as a general pc, no real useage, he said he has plenty of money but im not on a mission to select the highest priced parts, he just wants it to be quickish, quite up to date so that he doesnt have to spend money on it straight away and i also get a bit of money for sorting it, now its been nearly a year since i built a pc so have i missed anything out ?


Palit GeForce GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Geil Black Dragon 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Triple Channel (GB36GB1333C9TC)
Fractal Design Define R2 Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail
Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD753LJ)
Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card
LiteOn IHAS524-32 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter with LabelTag - (Black)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366)
Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000 120mm Fan - 3/4 Pin
Akasa AK-455 Thermal Compound

Sub Total : £580.06
Shipping : £13.75
VAT : £103.92
Total : £697.73
 
Change the Ram, 1156 doesnt support triple channel memort rest looks fine dude, I would also drop the sound card and save abit more there too. Finally if he doesnt game then Get a cheaper GPU
 
I would leave out the sound card, the onboard sound will be fine - saving £34.99
I would go for the Sony Optiarc CDRW instead of the Liteon and its a whole £1 cheaper!
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £34.99 instead of the £46.99 750Gb drive. - saving £12
Unless you're going to Overclock (why bother if its for general usage?) you can leave out the Artic Cooler saving a further £16.99

The Fractal Design case is a good one, no doubt about that but why choose that over a cheaper alternative. The Antec 300 £46.99 or Zalman Z7 Plus £42.99 or Coolermaster Elite 335 Case £29.99 are all perfectly fine for this build and considerably cheaper than the Fractal at £80.99.

Again if you aren't going to overclock why buy a further 120mm fan? Again a fine choice of component, decent airflow with this one and very quiet but the above cases come with fans and you could save your buddy a further £10.21.

Finally, if you use the stock cooler that comes with the CPU (fine if you're not overclocking and reasonably quiet as well) then you won't need any thermal compound - Saving £2.34. Besides, I believe the Arctic Cooling MX-3 Thermal Compound is superior.


I know you stated that your friend had pots of cash, but there is a reason for my cost saving attempts. If you do as I suggest (and go with the cheapest case option), you can save a total of £128.53 on your spec. Why? Because then you can go for the i5 760 CPU which is much more future proof (quad core) and even step up the graphics card a touch to a 1024mb 460 card. If he likes Movies, then perhaps include a Blueray optical drive instead of the CDRW.

So my spec:
3d524868.png



Dont forget to include Windows, its something that can easily be overlooked. Windows 7 Home 64 Bit - £77.54. Does he already have: keyboard/mouse/LCD display?
 
Last edited:
here's a much better AMD spec.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line
Total
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB
GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £176.24
(£149.99)
£176.24
(£149.99)
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black
Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket
AM3) - Retail £111.61
(£94.99)
£111.61
(£94.99)
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3
PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
(F3-12800CL8D-4GBRM) £88.11
(£74.99)
£88.11
(£74.99)
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket
AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £84.99
(£72.33)
£84.99
(£72.33)
Be Quiet! Straight Power E7 600W Power
Supply £58.99
(£50.20)
£58.99
(£50.20)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB
Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £34.99
(£29.78)
£34.99
(£29.78)
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £26.99
(£22.97)
£26.99
(£22.97)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA
ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91)
£13.99
(£11.91)
Sub
Total : £507.16
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland
with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)
Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £90.81
Total : £609.72

Quad core CPU.

sata and usb 3.0

and supposedly will take the next generation on AMD cpus in the future, intel are changing their sockets soon make the above specs dead ends.
 
Depends, i5 760 is better for gaming, but as the OP says the PC is for general usage, so depends on whether you want AMD or Intel. Stulid's build is good, there have been some troubles reported here with some of the Samsung CDRW drives though.
 
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