Spec Help

[Ben643]

I'm looking to build a new PC for my girlfriend but I'm pretty out of date with hardware at the moment so looking for some help.

Budget is £5-600, don't really want to go over £600 though.

She an artist and it's mainly going to be used for photoshop, web, music, email, and a media centre (xbmc) at times. Needs to be quick with everything and most importantly, stable. Was hoping for an i5 with 8gb of memory if possible?

She's quite picky p) on cases and wants a card reader on the front of the case so realistically need to include these in if possible:

Case

Card Reader

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ben643]

Tried to throw something together myself, any feedback on whether this will be decent? Should I swap anything or avoid any of these components? Anything missing?


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM (0F12115) (HDS723020BLA642) £104.99
1 x OCZ ZT 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £69.98
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - Cooler Master Elite 310 Case - Black/Blue - Noise Dampened £54.98
1 x Asus P8H61-M Intel H61 Chipset (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £49.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9B) £44.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
1 x Akasa BayMaster Card & Drive Reader (AK-ICR-10) £13.99
Total : £541.50 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 

[Fire_fly]

I have changed a few bits, mainly the motherboard as Z77 allows you to overclock the K series Intel CPUs. Depending on the size of the images that your GF is planning on playing with in PS it may be worth adding a dedicated graphics card, one of the lowish end Nvidia card should do. If you can afford to spend a bit more then adding an SSD for the OS and some apps will give make the system feel much quicker.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £85.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £63.98
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - Cooler Master Elite 310 Case - Black/Blue - Noise Dampened £54.98
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38192M1600HC11DC) £35.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £24.12
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
1 x Akasa BayMaster Card & Drive Reader (AK-ICR-10) £13.99
Total : £561.62 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 

[Ben643]

I was a bit wary of overclocking it, have overclocked mine in the past but I want this to be stable as it can possibly be, and it's also used in a conservatory which gets insanely hot in the summer! With wanting to keep it relatively quiet I think heat might be an issue if I start overclocking?

Would the motherboard you picked offer other benefits? or was it just for the overclocking factor?

 

[Fire_fly]

It has extras such as USB 3.0 and extra RAM slots should you want to upgrade. It also has some extra features that come into use should you chose to have a discreet graphics card, such as quick sync which helps video encoding times and Lucid Virtu which uses the onboard GPU to boost performance of the installed graphics card.

Oh and Gigabyte has a UK based RAM center should anything go wrong, ASUS is fairly poor from what I have read.