Spec check/advice £700 roughly

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

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6 Jun 2011
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Hi guys,

I am currently getting some specs together for a friend. He's looking for a nifty upgrade that will run all of the latest games. Ideally it will last him a few years as well.

This is what I have cooked up so far but as always some advice would be good. My experience with Haswell/faster RAM is next to none.

Also I realise the price is over £700 but what I have is the absolute limit. If better components are available for the current cost or I can get cheaper ones then that is also beneficial.

Thanks as always! :)

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 WindForce 3x OC Rev2 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Black PCB** £179.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD128BW) £115.99
1 x MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £106.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Predator 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (KHX24C11T2K2/8X) £65.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020048-UK) £59.99
1 x Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £49.99
Total : £763.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
Hi,

Well your spec looks a bit wrong to be honest.

Are you just needing the bits to make a base unit for gaming without an OS?
 
Hi there,

Its a decent spec you have there, but I would recommend a few changes:

- The samsung 840 Pro 120GB is a very nice SSD, but for your uses the Samsung 840 Evo 250GB will be almost as fast and cost the same (but offer you double the storage).

- The MSI board you picked is a good one, but the Gigabyte Z87X-D3H is currently on offer and offers the same level of features.

- I would suggest going for this PSU over the corsair CX 600W

- The Antec 300 is a well loved case, but for £50 this much newer case is a lot nicer.

- Also you may want to go with RAM modules without the massive heatsinks - so there are no issues with CPU cooler compatibility. I would personally go with this well liked 2400MHz kit for £10 less.
 
Last edited:
wildest_jjk said:
Yes please, may I ask what is wrong with it? I'm not disputing but would be good to know :)
Click to expand...


The case is ancient, I mean it was released over 5 years ago and it shows with poor cable management, restrictive room inside for modern day parts which seem to get bigger and bigger (especially the cooler and gfx card)

The PSU is pants when you can find equal priced solutions using better quality internals.


YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £185.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x MSI Z87-G43 Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £92.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £61.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD38G2133HC11ADC01) £53.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Zalman Z3-Plus Midi-Tower - Black £39.95
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
Total : £684.48 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming Edition OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £88.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £61.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £41.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £746.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
Many thanks for all of your responses.

It's nice to know that I was at least on the right track with most things.

One thing I do keep noticing are the suggestions of the TeamGroup RAM and SuperFlower PSU's. Are these fairly new or something? It's just I've never heard of them before.

With regards to the component selections there are some similiarities between what you have all suggested. I was thinking of these as a baseline:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
Total : £337.46 (includes shipping : £11.25).



One question I have is regarding the SSD's. Which one would be a better choice out of the Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA and the Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO?

Also in terms of the motherboards are they all pretty similar?

Thanks :)
 
Teamgroup have been around for awhile now, their xtreem RAM is fantastic stuff, but a bit tall so large coolers have clearance issues.

Superflower are also another company that have been going for awhile and have actually supplied the innards to other manufacturers to use and slap their own name onto, EVGA for example use some of their designs.

It is just that OcUK now stock them which is why they look like they have appeared from nowhere.
 
wildest_jjk said:
Also in terms of the motherboards are they all pretty similar?
Click to expand...

It largely comes down to the electrical arrangement of the PCIE ports and the number of peripheral connections.

The Z87X-D3H and MSI Z87 G45 Gaming have their PCIE ports set up so the second main x16 port is able to run at x8 speed (so the 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU are shared equally when running two graphics cards). This is great if you plan to ever run two graphics cards, but not too useful if you are pretty sure you will always be sticking with one card.

The Z87-D3HP and MSI Z87 G43 Gaming are excellent boards, but their second slot only runs at x4 speed and doesn't support SLI (only CrossfireX). So these boards are not quite as good for running two cards. For the other tasks like overclocking they are still pretty good and very nice value.

The Z87X-D3H would be my pick since it offers the same feature level as the MSI Z87 G45 you picked, but for £92 (due to a weekly offer).
 
What do you guys think to this as the final spec list?

Still unsure on the SSD, GPU and cooler really.

Thanks!

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming Edition OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £169.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £91.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £71.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £702.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
The Powercolor Devil 270X has a ruby voucher included which allows you to pick four games from AMD's never settle list.
 
For the SSD I would go with the Samsung 840 Evo 120GB as it's one of the best SSDs in that class. Here is a review.

The Toshiba Q series 128GB is likely pretty good and the price sure is very tempting. However the only review I can see online of this version doesn't paint it to be too great (admittedly not an excellent source for SSD reviews).

For the graphics card I would suggest considering a R9 280 (non-X) as these are effectively HD 7950 3GB cards with a new name. This would give you get a relatively beefy GPU with a lot of memory.
 
wildest_jjk said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming Edition OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £169.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £91.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £71.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £702.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Click to expand...

Bit of a delay on this but I am now getting nagged again. By the sounds of it he would like a better graphics card so I was thinking a 280/280X like this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-322-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1842

What do you guys reckon? Apart from that I think we are done, any other suggestions?

Thanks! :)
 
 
 
lee32uk said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus Z97-K - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£14 Saving** £268.54
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £215.99
1 x Crucial MX100 128GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT128MX100SSD1) £56.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £44.99
1 x Deepcool GAMMAXX S40 CPU-Cooler - 120mm £19.99
Total : £712.48 (includes shipping : ).

Click to expand...

MX100 destroys all for price/performance, I have two of these 256GB drives and they are great


YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus Z97-K - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£14 Saving** £268.54
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £209.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £44.99
1 x Alpenföhn Brocken ECO CPU-Kühler - 120 mm £24.95
Total : £749.44 (includes shipping : £12.50).



280X in there along with a 256GB SSD with good speeds at a great price. Also has that 200R you chose and a great cooler
 
Last edited:
full spec:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £68.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £41.99
1 x BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Silver £29.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
1 x OcUK Tech Labs Zaward OEM 120mm Golf Ball Fan £2.59
Total : £760.49 (includes shipping : £12.50).



ps: you get free shipping
pps: look in the MM to get fantastic deals (eg, for graphics cards, ssd, psu)
 
Ok thanks for all of the responses. I have updated a spec list based on everyone's suggestions. The budget has also adjusted slightly and is £800 plus the operating system (so £880 or something).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £109.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £68.99
1 x Pioneer BDR-S09XLT 16x BluRay / 16x DVD±RW 50GB Drive - Black (Retail) £57.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £44.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
Total : £887.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).



A couple of concerns I have are:

  • Is the cooler any good? Are there alternatives?
  • I'm not sure on the motherboard/CPU. Is it OK to buy an OEM CPU at this price?
  • Finally are there any alternatives to the optical drive I have chose? He wants a blu-ray player of some kind in his PC.

Thanks guys!
 
get the crucial mx100 256gb instead, better bang for buck
and the nzxt 550w gold psu. same internals but 6 quid cheaper. win win.
re: corsair 200r, cheapo case. paying for the corsair badge imo
the bdrom you specced is retail, so you pay slightly more to get the program to decode bdroms. if your mate already has a decoder program, just get a cheaper bdrom
 
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