Spec me a £300/450 system

[naknakkus]

Things from my old PC that I can still use:

320gb Seagate
500gb Seagate
640gb WD Green

I'll use those drives for storage.

HD4850 512mb - Is this still a decent card? I thought that I'd stick with it until the 5850 becomes available/cheaper.

Antec 182 case
Noctua 12" CPU cooler
Akasa 500W Greenpower PSU - want to replace this with a better quality/quieter PSU in the near future.

So I need:
CPU
MB
RAM
System hard drive - are any SSDs good value now?

I was thinking a Phenom 955 with one of the Asus MBs and 4gb of DDR3 - what I wanted to ask was whether I should go for the overclocked bundle that OCUK has, though it would put my Noctua to waste since it comes with its own cooler. I would also consider the tri core CPU bundle.

The machine would be for gaming and occasional encoding.

Cheers

 

[MCH]

Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM + Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Game £199.99
(£173.90)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £142.98
(£124.33) £142.98
(£124.33)

Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) Intel XMP DDR3 12800C9 1600MHz Tri-Channel Kit (KHX12800D3K3/6GX) £89.99
(£78.25)


£443.88 (inv vat)

upgrade to 58xx when u can and that will be niiiiiice , upgrade to a corsair 650TX when u get the new graphics card or maybe a slightly larger one depending on ur cash.

 

[naknakkus]

Looks great. Can't believe how cheap DDR3 is nowadays...

On top of that, what SSD is a good compromise between performance and price at the moment?

I'm also looking for a 22" monitor, preferable IPS.

 

[Kennysevenfold]

My offerings.?

Product Name Qty Price Line Total

Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SNV125-S2/128GB) £165.99
(£144.34) £165.99
(£144.34)

AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £97.99
(£85.21) £97.99
(£85.21)

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £76.99
(£66.95) £76.99
(£66.95)

G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL) £66.99
(£58.25) £66.99
(£58.25) Sub Total : £354.75 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50 VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £54.64 Total : £418.89

 

[naknakkus]

That AMD set up is a lot cheaper, allowed me to get an SSD, but wouldn't there be a big performance drop compared to the i7 set up? Or would it not be that noticeable unless I were to do a lot of multitasking.

Thanks for the spec, though, it looks like a great deal with the hard drive included.

 

[naknakkus]

Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SSDSA2MH080G2C1) £179.99
(£156.51) £179.99
(£156.51)
Asus Crosshair III Formula AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £139.99
(£121.73) £139.99
(£121.73)
AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £97.99
(£85.21) £97.99
(£85.21)
Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel (PDC34G1600ELK) £70.99
(£61.73) £70.99
(£61.73)
Sub Total : £425.18
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £65.20
Total : £499.88

What do you guys think of this? I'd get the Ripjaw memory, but it looks like the heatspreaders wouldn't fit under my Noctua... I also opted for a dearer motherboard because it seems like AM3 will have a certain degree of longevity and I'll definitely be overclocking the 720. I went for the Intel SSD after reading some good reviews of it - it'll also have a TRIM firmware update later this month. Would all these components work together?

 

[Caracus2k]

Do your research before spending money on an SSD, the Kingston drives are not very highly rated (a recent magazine review in a well known UK magazine focusing on modified PC's gave the 64GB V series drive 38%) The Crucial drives seem to offer the bestvalue for the performance they offer......

 

[naknakkus]

That's why I want to go for the Intel one, since they seem to be the best, though they are very expensive.