Spec me.....£2000+

dangerstat · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:03

AcidHell2 said:
This is not a server

£200 case
£150 psu
£350 HDD ssd + storage
£360 monitor and 3d glasses
£500 gfx card
£120 printer
£80 K+M
£100 cooling
speakers
headphones

so no you can't do it.

MB + CPU + RAM - £1300
New "top end" ATI - £300
SSD + STAT BU - £350
Monitor with glasses - £360
Printer - £120
Case + Cooling +PSU - £300 (easily do able)

Grand cost = £2730 and it'd smash those single i7 builds to dust

Glaucus · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:13

dangerstat said:
MB + CPU + RAM - £1300
New "top end" ATI - £300
SSD + STAT BU - £350
Monitor with glasses - £360
Printer - £120
Case + Cooling +PSU - £300 (easily do able)

Grand cost = £2730 and it'd smash those single i7 builds to dust

you forgotn speakers and headphones
your forgoten K+M
he wants the 800 thats £200 for the case, a decent psu will be around £150 a decent cpu cooler will be £50 for 1 and you can easily add another £50 for fans.
You can not use ati with 3d glasses and he wants a 300 when released. So probably £500

So again no you can't do it anywhere near on budget. doesn't mater f it smashes them in the ground if its way outside budget.

Also not sure where you get your xeon prices for 3.2GHZor ram prices from as all are well under what you would actually pay.

ejr22 · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:15

dangerstat said:
MB + CPU + RAM - £1300
New "top end" ATI - £300
SSD + STAT BU - £350
Monitor with glasses - £360
Printer - £120
Case + Cooling +PSU - £300 (easily do able)

Grand cost = £2730 and it'd smash those single i7 builds to dust

Need to budget for the new Nvidia card - £500 not £300?

Keyboard, Mouse (+mat), Speakers, Headphones - All fairly good quality - £250?

Thermal Material, TIM Cleaner, Extra Case Fans, P&P - £100?

To be honest I think I will stick to a i7 1366 solution - There will be more support on forums and the like if anything goes pear shaped etc. Thanks for your input though, didn't even consider the Xeon route tbh.

dangerstat · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:29

ejr22 said:
Need to budget for the new Nvidia card - £500 not £300?

Keyboard, Mouse (+mat), Speakers, Headphones - All fairly good quality - £250?

Thermal Material, TIM Cleaner, Extra Case Fans, P&P - £100?

To be honest I think I will stick to a i7 1366 solution - There will be more support on forums and the like if anything goes pear shaped etc. Thanks for your input though, didn't even consider the Xeon route tbh.

No worries I can understand why an i7 route is a more simple option. And to get a polished spec you would be pushing your budget a little. It might be worth (if you fancy having it built for you) contacting a few vendors though, as they might well be able to get this in for about £3000, people we work with normally give a decent 15% discount for a system of above £2500. We essentially got a similar machine (but with a Quatro GPU and only 12GB DDR3 and no SSD or montor and it was a 1U case too) for just under £1800. It might seem a hard route to go down, but of all our machines we still use a five / six year old quad Xeon machine with 16GB RAM at the time it cost a small fortune but it still shifts and will probably be in use for another 2 years before it goes to the big PC graveyard in the sky - where has all the high spec but "desktop" range machines are loooonnngggg gone from that era. I did what you're doing about 3/4 years ago and spent around £1800 on a new machine - didn't go down the Xeon route and with in about 2 years it was next to useless

Anyhow good luck with it all

dangerstat · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:32

AcidHell2 said:
you forgotn speakers and headphones
your forgoten K+M
he wants the 800 thats £200 for the case, a decent psu will be around £150 a decent cpu cooler will be £50 for 1 and you can easily add another £50 for fans.
You can not use ati with 3d glasses and he wants a 300 when released. So probably £500

So again no you can't do it anywhere near on budget. doesn't mater f it smashes them in the ground if its way outside budget.

Also not sure where you get your xeon prices for 3.2GHZor ram prices from as all are well under what you would actually pay.

As I pointed out acid, the 3.2GHz Xeons would ablitterate his budget hence why I said MID RANGE Xeons in my post. I think, like any one building a PC, you a have to be flexible. Essentialy I'm spec'ing for the best value machine for £2750, and there's no question in my mind for that budget a Xeon based route is better value - but he's said he wants i7 so hey

rexehuk · 3 Oct 2009 at 22:36

Another idea for you...

My mate bagged an Alienware for £700 with i7 / 6gb Ram/ dual GTX 280s / Asus P6T Deluxe / Hard drive and 1200W PSU on the bay...

Maybe try find something like this then tear our what you don't like and sell it, then buy additional bits from OCUK? The one he bought was purchased in March for 2.75k, and my friend got it for 700.

Do the math and it's an awesome deal ^^ and to be suprise, the majority of his components (hard drives) are cooler than my silverstone fortress setup!

thevet · 3 Oct 2009 at 23:07

dont buy anything till gt300 comes out...sit tight and hold out

StarSolitude · 4 Oct 2009 at 00:37

thevet said:
dont buy anything till gt300 comes out...sit tight and hold out

When is it coming out?

Nate Silvers · 4 Oct 2009 at 00:52

JonJ678 said:
I stand by every word I have typed here.

I have to say after reading this thread I stand by Jon. He obviously got you a little mad but Jon's advice was spot on. He cuts through the bs so he comes across a bit harsh but he was helping. I spent maybe just under that on my whole setup including monitor and everything so I think it's okay but a bit wild!

madindehead · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:13

rexehuk said:
Another idea for you...

My mate bagged an Alienware for £700 with i7 / 6gb Ram/ dual GTX 280s / Asus P6T Deluxe / Hard drive and 1200W PSU on the bay...

Maybe try find something like this then tear our what you don't like and sell it, then buy additional bits from OCUK? The one he bought was purchased in March for 2.75k, and my friend got it for 700.

Do the math and it's an awesome deal ^^ and to be suprise, the majority of his components (hard drives) are cooler than my silverstone fortress setup!

One bad thing about Alienwares...the case is too small. Don't bother. Build your own. Hell of a lot more fun.

madindehead · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:16

dangerstat said:
Firstly I'd veer away from the i7's on your bugdet and move to Xeon's actually I'd move to a dual Quad Core Xeon setup, mainly as that'll still be up there performance wise when the 8 core i7's are released - though it has the downside of being more power hungry. But it will absolutely fly with games that are core dependant like GTA4. I won't beat around the bush though socket 1136 Xeon's are *expensive* and after buying two top end 3.2Ghz models you'd barely have any money left at all. But the mid range models would be affordable.

Since when did we need servers to play current PC games? I'm sorry, but unless the guy is doing HEAVY CAD work, or encoding 25 movies a day, he doesn't need this.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:21

madindehead said:
Since when did we need servers to play current PC games? I'm sorry, but unless the guy is doing HEAVY CAD work, or encoding 25 movies a day, he doesn't need this.

He's spending £2750 on a machine. With that price tag you want it to be FUTURE PROOF, hence the spec. He's much better off IMO spending on a proper workstation that spending god know much on a fancy keyboard and speakers IMHO

madindehead · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:24

dangerstat said:
He's spending £2750 on a machine. With that price tag you want it to be FUTURE PROOF, hence the spec. He's much better off IMO spending on a proper workstation that spending god know much on a fancy keyboard and speakers IMHO

Yes, I can slightly agree with spending more money on the PC than the extras, but still. He doesn't do anything that needs a workstation. He games, and writes word documents etc.

All that power would be wasted on something like that. An i7 build will keep him happy for 3-4 years. By then, the world of technology will have changed once again, and god only knows what we will have. I understand he wants it to be futureproof. But building a workstation/server isn't the answer here.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:27

madindehead said:
Yes, I can slightly agree with spending more money on the PC than the extras, but still. He doesn't do anything that needs a workstation. He games, and writes word documents etc.

All that power would be wasted on something like that. An i7 build will keep him happy for 3-4 years. By then, the world of technology will have changed once again, and god only knows what we will have.

Well I just personally disagree, I think if your spending £2750 on a desktop PC the first thing you want is to future proof it. An i7 with fancy keyboards and speakers will be aging much quicker than a 8 core Xeon with basic accessories. But that's his choice I guess

madindehead · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:33

I suppose it all comes down to what everyone calls future proof. The OP said he wants it to last 12-24 months before any major upgrades. That's not exactly a long time.

Given what the majority of people have as a PC, an i7 will still be amazing in 3-4 years. Ok, maybe not amazing, but still very good.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:42

madindehead said:
I suppose it all comes down to what everyone calls future proof. The OP said he wants it to last 12-24 months before any major upgrades. That's not exactly a long time.

Given what the majority of people have as a PC, an i7 will still be amazing in 3-4 years. Ok, maybe not amazing, but still very good.

No totally, I agree, half of me suspects the OP is full of ...., well I'll let you finish that sentance. But I still stand that if you are going to spend that much money a high end workstation is better value than spending more on lots of different addons. If hardware goes down the "many core" route like it is at the moment 8 cores will be common place by this time next year, so by getting a dual Quad core he'd still be in a near top position by then. If games become RAM heavy then 24GB will put him in an excellent position. If there's some magical new 1366 chip that has 1038240982349238 cores then he's on the same chipset so all good there. I personally just think being sat with a PC that costs £2750 with an excellent surround sound speaker package, shiney keyboard and flasy case, but with a base unit that is aging off rapidly would be really really annoying. He seems certain he wants to spend £2750, so in reality would you spend ALL that on an i7 rig or go dual Xeon?

madindehead · 4 Oct 2009 at 01:44

I can see your point yes. I would probably end up taking the dual Xeon =p But simply for the bragging rights. Haha. I do however, like to have quality peripherals. But I suppose they don't make the PC what it really is. I love my i7, but if I had more money, I suppose a dual Xeon would be sexy.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 02:03

madindehead said:
I can see your point yes. I would probably end up taking the dual Xeon =p But simply for the bragging rights. Haha. I do however, like to have quality peripherals. But I suppose they don't make the PC what it really is. I love my i7, but if I had more money, I suppose a dual Xeon would be sexy.

Well exactly, and that's honest! The i7 is top end, coupled with a GTX280 or ATI 5870 it's pretty much the best setup you can have, and you'll get all that for about £1200 with a decent monitor and extras included, and an excellent choice. But oh no every so often we get some idiot starting a thread claiming to have £2750 to spend, and then members talk him at face value. If you really where planning to spend that much you'd be wanting to extend your e-peen, and it'd be awesome to watch someone spend that much on an i7 and then someone spending £1800 on a dual Q Xeon and smashing his pasty on <insert your benchmark of choice here>. This guy hasn't come on here claiming he does anything hardcore like CFD research.

Truth is, without beating about the bush, that either the OP is wasting everyones time, or he's just really an idiot with too much money. But either way recommending an i7 over dual Q xeon on that budget is just utterly idiotic.

No one seems to do the math anymore, the GTX300 would have to pack 6 tf of power to justify an extra £200, and that just aint going to happen. If this guy honestly buys an i7 then a GT300 it's resale price will drop quicker than paris hilton's knickers.

BIGBC · 4 Oct 2009 at 02:13

If your going to be spending ridiculous money, then you want to be building a ridiculous system. But for OPs uses, a ridiculous system just isnt needed. Not even close.
OCed 1366 i7 (water route) around 4.2/4.4GHz.
6GB DDR3
4890/GTX275 or second hand GTX285 to hold you over till GT3##'s
finish it all of with 'quality' peripherals and solid components and you wont have any issues for the next year or two. And it should come in a decent amount below 2000.

The dual Xeon's wouldnt perform better than the OCed i7 for games etc, even in multi threaded games. And I cant find anywhere that sells Nahalem Xeons at the suggested prices. EDIT: or dual nahalem mobos or RAM for that matter.

dangerstat · 4 Oct 2009 at 02:29

BIGBC said:
If your going to be spending ridiculous money, then you want to be building a ridiculous system. But for OPs uses, a ridiculous system just isnt needed. Not even close.
OCed 1366 i7 (water route) around 4.2/4.4GHz.
6GB DDR3
4890/GTX275 or second hand GTX285 to hold you over till GT3##'s
finish it all of with 'quality' peripherals and solid components and you wont have any issues for the next year or two. And it should come in a decent amount below 2000.

The dual Xeon's wouldnt perform better than the OCed i7 for games etc, even in multi threaded games. And I cant find anywhere that sells Nahalem Xeons at the suggested prices. EDIT: or dual nahalem mobos or RAM for that matter.

Erm I'm looking at a site now (in the UK) that is stocking the E5520 for £280, and they sell dual X boards for £280. Think you might need to keep Googling? And yes a dual Quad core Xeon WILL outperform an OC'd i7 on any game that can handle multicpu systems!