Spec me Mobo / RAM / CPU / SSD Please

PESolution

PESolution

PESolution

Soldato
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Don't have a budget but wanna get good value for money.

Obviously i5 2500k, but not sure which mobo and ram, or which SSD to go with.

Also not sure for graphics, PC use is going to be 95% gaming so best possible without going out of the value for money range whatever that's sitting at now.

Thanks in advance,

x
 
KD:

Can you please explain why no triple channel RAM? I'm not sure exactly sure on the prerequisites for it?

Also seems like a very expensive mobo, what are the advantages of those "new gen" ones?

Edit - so these next gen mobo's support the next gen VGA cards which are PCI 3.0 - have any of these been released date date, and if so which are?
 
Sandy Bridge chipsets don't support tri-channel RAM. (Thats the X58 chipset)

The new Gen3 board can support PCI-E 3.0 but only when an IvyBridge CPU is been used.
Apparently Intel have slowed production on these and they won't be around until around April next year. As for the cards we still have no idea if the HD7000 series will support the new spec, and nothing has been said about the GTX600 series other than the transition to 28nm has been "difficult".

No arguments its a good board though - and looks great!
 
So given that I'm not using an Ivybridge CPU, and the graphics card I use wont be PCI-E 3.0 - the only reason to get this new gen3 board is future proofing?
 
current graphics cards don't even saturate pci-e 8x. it'll be a couple of years before you see any speed benefit from pci-e 3.0

also if you get a 2500k now you don't need to consider ivy bridge. the 2500k will last years. although i suppose it might be nice to be able to swap in a high end ivy chip in a few years when they are succeeded by another generation or two - that'd be a cheap way to wring some more life from the system you build now.

my advice is not to bother with an SSD for now. unless you spend ridicu-money, you can't fit more than one or two games on them, hence the only benefit they give is faster boot times and more responsive windows. don't know about you, but i'm not bothered about waiting 40secs instead of 20 if it saves me £80-£100. if you're looking for value for money, use an HDD for now and upgrade to a SSD when they are more reasonably priced. it's still new tech as well, and several companies have big issues with firmware and reliability.

not trying to put you off - an SSD is a great upgrade if money is no object, i'm just not sure they're quite worth the money at the moment if that's not the case.
 
:D thanks, i'm still a bit new around here but i like helping people out, and sating my appetite for pc-related talk

for specs:

Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £145
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £174
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit £54

the motherboard is really popular and is a very solid buy. good compatibility and great overclocking. you can get it aroun ~£20 cheaper on other site though. i'm not allowed to name any but you can use google shopping to find them ;)

the RAM is on offer, so it's a good buy. if you don't order til next week, just go with whatever 8GB 1600MHz, dual channel kit is cheapest. all the ones that ocuk stock are fine.

if you're not going with an SSD then:

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM £42

is a great buy. i'm using one and i'm gonna buy another for backup. if you decide on an SSD after all then i'd recommend this one:

Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £78

it's a good price and a nice reliable drive. the HDD vs SSD decision is a tough one, i'm conflicted about it myself (planning a new build too :D) but i think i'll just stick with HDDs for now and get an SSD later, it's an easy upgrade after all.
 
 
As above, I've just bought the i5, Asrock Extreme 4 Gen 3 and the Kingston 8GB RAM.

Although personally I'm Nvidia only. Always had bad luck with ATi cards for some reason.
 
Thanks Sheep.

Thanks also for the build Dave - over 70£ for an air cooler seems excessive. Does this out perform the corsair h80 for the same price? Im currently using the Tuniq tower which was nowhere near that and at the time I understood to be a very good cooler.

Eddscott - are you happy with your build?
 
if you go with the asrock extreme mb you can reuse the tuniq tower from what I understand reading around(using the sk775 fitting unless it has 1156 fitting as well), not sure how well it'll compare to the current crop of cpu coolers tho.
 
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