Spec Me a new PC

Disaster

Disaster

Disaster

Associate
Joined
19 Sep 2011
Posts
685
Location
South Wales
£550 budget

Current system:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
600GB HDD
Geforce G210
Crap HP motherboard & power supply


I'm looking at keeping the and hard drive for my new build, with an extra terabyte added, might keep the processor too. I already have Windows. I want a PC for gaming. Help will be much obliged
 
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Are you OK with keeping your current case, hard drive and optical drive?

If so i have a spec here with

Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz
MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz
MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB
OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5"
OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus'

Total £465.85 including shipping.

Plus your current HDD, optical drive, chassis, and windows licence.

Comparison of Q8200 and i3 2100 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=52 The 3220 performs around 10 - 15% better than the 2100, however the 3220 isn't on this comparision site yet.

I think moving from socket 775 to ivybridge on socket 1155 is a wise move now, as the Q8200 will bottleneck a decent graphics card like the HD7850, not to mention the fact that you will benefit from all the features of a newer chipset, and the system will consume far less power overall.

The HD7850 is a fantastic card, it offers performance surpassing that of an HD6950 and it can match a GTX480 or GTX570 in most games. The great thing about the HD7850 is that despite it's relatively mammoth performance statistics, it consumes very little power and requires only one 6 pin power connector. It is also hugely overclockable, and takes advantage of PCI-E 3.0 technology.

The SSD is either to install your operating system to, or to use in intel smart response mode (caching the primary hard drive) and you can then use your 600GB hard drive for storage. The addition of the SSD will drastically reduce startup time and the load times of applications and games, and will make the system feel far more responsive.
 
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Oh and if someone would be kind enough to tell me how to paste the basket contents in a post, it would be much appreciated. :rolleyes:
 
I've just worked it out that I could probably spend another £100 on this so £550 would be my max at the moment. I don't mind waiting a few months for a new case and an extra 1TB HD if that means I can get a new motherboard, processor, graphics card, power supply, and ram. I'm planning on getting an SSD later on, because it isn't needed at the moment
 
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Disaster said:
I've just worked it out that I could probably spend another £100 on this so £550 would be my max at the moment. I don't mind waiting a few months for a new case and an extra 1TB HD if that means I can get a new motherboard, processor, graphics card, power supply, and ram. I'm planning on getting an SSD later on, because it isn't needed at the moment
Click to expand...

If you have an extra £100 to spend, get the i5 3570K http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-418-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567 and an aftermarket CPU cooler http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-035-AR&tool=3 instead of the i3 3220.

If you get an SSD later on, it will mean having to re-install the operating system for a second time. Entirely up to you, but personally I would want to get it out of the way in one go, and it currently still fits nicely with your budget.

The only thing missing is the chassis.

I strongly recommend saving another £50 or so and buying the chassis at the same time as everything else. Adding a new hard drive is one thing, that is easy, but transplanting the contents of a computer into another case is a lengthy and tedious process.

There are some nice cases out there for less than that as well.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-011-BX&groupid=2362&catid=2277&subcat=
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-002-XG&groupid=2362&catid=2277&subcat=
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-057-XG&groupid=2362&catid=2277&subcat=
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-024-XG&groupid=2362&catid=2277&subcat=

to name but a few. Or any decent branded case from here that takes your fancy.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=2362&catid=2277

I would personally avoid OCUK Value and OCUK Extreme cases though.
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7870 OC Windforce 3X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £203.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.98
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.19
Total : £559.14 (includes shipping : £0).


Other options are to get a 7850 and a new case/SSD or a 7950 without any extra RAM. You can use this to compare different graphics cards. 4GB is probably enough for most games, however some may use more (BF3 I hear). I still use 4GB and haven't experienced any problems. That said RAM is pretty cheap atm. You also might want to get a heatsink now instead of using the retail one. You can do a mild overclock without it. I think the graphics card is the current bottleneck even without overclocking. When you have some more money and need a boost in processor speed then you can buy one.
 
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tjlld said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7870 OC Windforce 3X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £203.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.98
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.19
Total : £569.14 (includes shipping : £10.00).


Other options are to get a 7850 and a new You can use this to compare different graphics cardscase/SSD or a 7950 without any extra RAM. 4GB is probably enough for most games, however some may use more (BF3 I hear). I still use 4GB and haven't experienced any problems. That said RAM is pretty cheap atm.
Click to expand...

I would not recommend spending so much on a GPU if you want to spend £550 overall, and that 7870 is hardly worth £42 more.

This also does not include an aftermarket CPU cooler, so no overclocking headroom.

The Frozr III design is effective at cooling while being more attractive than the gigabyte design.

You may as well spend £8 more and get the 2133MHz RAM as it is a small price to pay for 733MHz extra.

I can't see how the Gigabyte motherboard is any better, but in my personal opinion it is not as visually appealing, and people here tend to favour MSI over Gigabyte when it comes to budget motherboards.

The modular PSU is a good idea, i personally left it out to save money and allow for the purchase of an SSD and an aftermarket cooler.

Also I may be mistaken, but I do not believe that the OP qualifies for free shipping, so I have added the £10 for that.
 
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I forgot to mention that I've already got that Arctic cooling fan. And an SSD at the moment is out of the question, I don't mind re-installing the operating at a later date.
 
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acme15 said:
I would not recommend spending so much on a GPU if you want to spend £550 overall.

This also does not include an aftermarket CPU cooler, so no overclocking headroom.

The Frozr III design is effective at cooling while being more attractive than the gigabyte design.

You may as well spend £8 more and get the 2133MHz RAM as it is a small price to pay for 733MHz extra.

I can't see how the Gigabyte motherboard is any better, but in my personal opinion it is not as visually appealing, and people here tend to favour MSI over Gigabyte when it comes to budget motherboards.

The modular PSU is a good idea, i personally left it out to save money and allow for the purchase of an SSD and an aftermarket cooler.

Also I may be mistaken, but I do not believe that the OP qualifies for free shipping, so I have added the £10 for that.
Click to expand...
I can see where you are coming from but some of this I don't agree with.
Ivy bridge cannot use more than 1600MHz RAM so buying faster stuff is pointless.
G43 is not a good overclocker. Look at this review The gigabyte board I suggested is commonly accepted as the best non SLI/Xfire board. I guess for free shipping I did assume that the OP registered at the beginning of September last year and may well be wrong.
I agree that going for a case instead of a 7870 might well be the right choice, I was just trying to give the OP some options.
 
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge)
Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz
MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB
OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus'
Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller

Total for the complete system (minus the SSD, HDD which you have, and Optical drive which you have) is £559.98 inc postage.

I have recommended the Zalman Z9 as it is a favourite on this forum due to its striking design, supreme value for money, cable management properties, and the fact that it is very easy to work with.

The only thing I will say about the above spec, is that though it is perfectly fine, you may want to consider putting an extra £20 down and get the modular power supply recommended by tjlld as it will help with cable management.
 
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AMD 486DX4 @ 100mhz CPU
2 x 16mb FPM 72-pin SIMM's RAM
Socket 3 JK-042A Motherboard
1mb Cirrus Logic SVGA GPU
3.2gb Fujitsu IDE HDD.
Sony 8x speed IDE drive.
1.44" IDE FDD
Windows 95
 
tjlld said:
I can see where you are coming from but some of this I don't agree with.
Ivy bridge cannot use more than 1600MHz RAM so buying faster stuff is pointless.
G43 is not a good overclocker. Look at this review The gigabyte board I suggested is commonly accepted as the best non SLI/Xfire board. I guess for free shipping I did assume that the OP registered at the beginning of September last year and may well be wrong.
I agree that going for a case instead of a 7870 might well be the right choice, I was just trying to give the OP some options.
Click to expand...

Who says that Ivy cant use more than 1600MHz RAM? It can support up to 2800MHz RAM, and the board can support up to 2677MHz RAM. Intel would not release a chip that can only handle 1600MHz RAM in this day and age :p

OK on the board, there isnt much between the Gigabyte and the MSI anyway, either would be a good choice :)
 
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Also if your optical drive is IDE rather than SATA you may need to purchase a new one (approx £14.99) as i don't believe that either of the motherboards have IDE support.
 
I would get this:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £161.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.98
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £48.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.19
Total : £579.12 (includes shipping : £12.50).


Well never seen anyone else recommend more than 1600Mhz RAM even in £1000+ builds.
That OCZ PSU is not very good, I would recommend you spend more on a decent modular PSU. I would not recommend having a non modular PSU in the Z9. It would increase temps and completely negate the front fan.
 
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tjlld said:
I would get this:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £161.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.98
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £48.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.19
Total : £579.12 (includes shipping : £12.50).


Well never seen anyone else recommend more than 1600Mhz RAM even in £1000+ builds.
That PSU is probably not very good, I would recommend you spend more on a decent modular PSU.
Click to expand...

Good call on the PSU, having a modular design would be preferred. But the OCZ is not a bad unit for the price. Probably the best available for under £45.

Either RAM will be fine of course. I just thought the extra frequency would be nice to have for such a small premium.

For £579 Including shipping (£12.50) which you may get for free, so it might well be £566.50, this looks to be a cracking spec, and I think it would be very hard if not impossible to beat for the price. Be sure to link your forum account to your overclockers.co.uk account to claim your free shipping (if you are not eligible yet, you will be by the end of the month) :)

And with the SSD added in the future, this baby will fly.
 
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