Spec: £800 prodigy ITX build

Kill_Phil

Kill_Phil

Kill_Phil

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England
more for a friend, I have already thrown together a spec for him, but was wandering whether you guys can trump it.

base unit is all that is required, and no OS is required. the only main requirements is an SSD as a boot drive (so small capacity will be fine) and 16gb ram as he does a lot of video encoding /editing, graphic design etc with uni.

look forward to your responses :)
 
Does he need it soon? i ask as the Prodigy M is out in a few months maybe.. :D

It's the same outer dimentions as the prodigy ITX case just with the ability for a matx board which opens up a lot more possibiliites. Such as bigger coolers and more avalible RAM slots..
 
Doomedspeed said:
Does he need it soon? i ask as the Prodigy M is out in a few months maybe.. :D

It's the same outer dimentions as the prodigy ITX case just with the ability for a matx board which opens up a lot more possibiliites. Such as bigger coolers and more avalible RAM slots..
Click to expand...

Indeed, I have already told him to wait, but he's eager to buy in the next week... so waiting around for the prodigy M isnt really an option
 
Here's a quick crack at it:

YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 670 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (67NPH6DV5ZVX) £197.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £155.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £149.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10) £119.99
1 x ASRock B85M-ITX Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Passion Red £69.95
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020060-UK) £62.99
Total : £841.48 (includes shipping : £10.50).



Things to be careful of in a Prodigy case:
* M-ITX obviously means only 2 slots for RAM
* There's not a lot of room for power supplies so need to check the dimensions - modular ones often require more space (I have this one in mine so know it fits)
* A full length GFX card requires removing the top hard drive bay which limits how many HDD's will fit in there to 2 or 3 (can't remember which off hand)
 
I would lean towards a smaller SSD (as you said, boot drive only), and spend the extra money towards a more powerful, and preferably overclockable, processor. Platter-based drivers aren't really an issue, since you can get for like 60 pounds a terabyte drive.

Video and rendering stuff likes to hog on the CPU, so it's not a good idea to skimp monies on it.

It takes a handful of minutes to render a single 800x600 frame of a relatively complex model on Sketchup on my Thuban @4... Imagine if you were to crank the resolution.

Dat patience... I never went higher than that because it took ages to render.

Oh, I second the 7950. It beats the GTX670 in general gaming, with the OpenCL added. Now the entire Adobe suite supports it, and dayum does it fly. You friend is most likely interested in that, too :)
 
 
Thanks for the responses guys, nice to see the i7 in there! He does do a lot of gaming so I will need to ask him what he wants to compromise on i5 and better gpu or i7 and weaker gpu.

Also not having a haswell cpu myself I was concerned about psu - as ocuk list compatible ones seperately?
 
phil_c_ said:
Thanks for the responses guys, nice to see the i7 in there! He does do a lot of gaming so I will need to ask him what he wants to compromise on i5 and better gpu or i7 and weaker gpu.

Also not having a haswell cpu myself I was concerned about psu - as ocuk list compatible ones seperately?
Click to expand...

Haswell compatiblity is a bit subjective as the motherboard chipset help regulate any issues it may have.. So any decent PSU will be grand. :D

The Most important word in their is Gaming. :D

I think i5 with a better GPU (7950) as this will achieve more FPS in game than a better CPU will. SOme games do benifit from hyperthreading but not enough (and not to a great extent) to drop from a high end card 7950 to a mid-range card (7850)..
For example (these figures are made up, they are just providing as a generic example)

i5 + 7850 = 40 FPS
i7 + 7850 = 42 FPS
i5 + 7950 = 60 FPS
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
Does he do more gaming or does he do more video rendering?

May have to pick between the two using Doomed example.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the question as well.

Make sure he chooses the right thing, because an i7 in rendering completely trumps an i5. And not by a 20%, precisely. Maxxon's Cinema3D engine shows almost double the performance (!)
 
Again, thanks for the responses very helpful!

So on the psu front a corsair cx500 would be haswell compliant? Just know it easily fits into the case as I have one
 
phil_c_ said:
Again, thanks for the responses very helpful!

So on the psu front a corsair cx500 would be haswell compliant? Just know it easily fits into the case as I have one
Click to expand...

It is yes.

though i'd personal get the Antec 520W or Seasonic 520W (£60 :))

Do you know the answer to this question:

ThaReaperGuy said:
Does he do more gaming or does he do more video rendering?
Click to expand...
 
phil_c_ said:
Id say its 50/50 and long term I may push for him to get an i7 and upgrade the gpu in 12 months time - best of both worlds then?
Click to expand...

Well really you can have the best of one world now,

We were just trying to figure out what was more important.

If its video stuff; i7 and 7850.

If gaming i5 and 7950..

Then its upgrade to a 7950/9****

or upgrade to a i7..

Personally as its 50/50. I'd go i7 + 7850 as new GPU's ar eon the horizon. :D
 
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