Upgradeing my PC need help from the experts

umboma

umboma

umboma

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Hello all,

I'm going to upgrade my Pc I was thinking of buying the below, have I picked good parts or could I do better for around £400 - £500 it's going to be a gaming machine nothing else..


Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail

Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard

Corsair Hydro H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler

OcUK Battle 650W Dual Rail High Efficiency Modular Power Supply

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit



Also is it possible to get Seagate Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid SATA-II 2.5" 7200RPM 32MB working in a desktop as I know it's a laptop HDD



Many Thanks all
 
Nice card :)

How does this look?

sb418.png


The CPU is more powerful and overclocks great - plus the PSU is much higher quality and efficiency.

As for the hybrid hard drive, it will work fine with a desktop PC - it has the same data and power connections as a full-size drive. However, considering the random read/write performance I would consider getting a small proper SSD like this and a cheap HDD instead, it doesn't cost a lot more and you get more total storage and much better performance.
 
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Looks good better than mine, would I need more than 4GB ram for gaming, Also does that motherboard have a build in overclocker? as this is something I've never done in fear of ruining the PC?

Touching on the Hybrid drive again as it's a laptop HDD how would I fit it in to my case? my plan is to get two of the hybrid HDD and raid them.
 
You won't need more than 4GB if you are mainly gaming. Current games simply can't make use of more than 4GB (have a look at this page, first graph).

As for built in overclocking - I hear the one on the MSI boards is pretty good. But to be honest I would strongly suggest you overclock manually - you really don't want it to give the CPU too much voltage and kill it.

If you do go for an MSI board - then I would go for this one. It is currently in a deal where you get 20% cashback. This board can also do proper SLI, which the first board I posted can't.

I would not suggest buying two hybrid drives and raiding them - for the same money you can get a nice proper SSD and a large storage HDD, which will give you more storage and much more performance.
 
That does look like a nice motherboard but will push the price up, I'm not to worried about SLI yet as I dont think it's really worth the extra money just,

Or I was thinking about x2 Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB in RAID. I've never done a RAID config is it worth it??

getting a SSD and say 2TB HDD also sounds good, tho I'd install windows on the SSD but then games would be slower loading on the HDD,

Is it easy to manually overclock?

So much choice it's tryin to get the best setup for the right price.
 
If you did go for two F4 drives - then I would strongly suggest you run them in RAID 1 (so you don't lose all your data if one fails). Also, I would not run this setup as a primary drive (with the OS) as the F4 drives are relatively slow and have slow response times.

As for SSD + 2TB - that would be a very good option. Games would load slower than they would if they were on an SSD - but modern hard disk drives are actually pretty fast (even the "green" ones) due to their high density platters - so game loading will not be hurt too much.

Manually overclocking is actually relatively easy with these new sandy bridge CPUs. This guide shows you how to overclock on a variety of boards.
 
cmndr_andi said:
If you did go for two F4 drives - then I would strongly suggest you run them in RAID 1 (so you don't lose all your data if one fails). Also, I would not run this setup as a primary drive (with the OS) as the F4 drives are relatively slow and have slow response times.

As for SSD + 2TB - that would be a very good option. Games would load slower than they would if they were on an SSD - but modern hard disk drives are actually pretty fast (even the "green" ones) due to their high density platters - so game loading will not be hurt too much.

Manually overclocking is actually relatively easy with these new sandy bridge CPUs. This guide shows you how to overclock on a variety of boards.
Click to expand...

Thats fantastic thanx for youre help, I'll get a SDD for windows, could you recomend a good SDD i've been reading some reviews and a lot seem to have firmware problems, also I think I may need to buy a caddy to make it fit in the PC as most SDD seem to be 2.5", the two SDD i've been looking at are

OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive
AND
Intel X25-V Value 40GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive

As I'm only really going to have Windows 7 on there what size is best?

Sorry for all the questions
 
I would go with the OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB, really nice drive. It's not only bigger than the intel, but also faster. 60GB will be plenty of room to put windows 7, your key applications and maybe a game or two on.

The OCZ also comes with a mounting kit - to attach it to standard 3.5in mounts.
 
billysielu said:
The power supply is the most important thing - don't get a ghetto one!

Antec TruePower New 650W = win
Click to expand...

I kinda need a big power supply all this is going in my alienware case, and normal supplys dont cover the whole bay so I end up with only 2screws holding it in lol..
 
cmndr_andi said:
I would go with the OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB, really nice drive. It's not only bigger than the intel, but also faster. 60GB will be plenty of room to put windows 7, your key applications and maybe a game or two on.

The OCZ also comes with a mounting kit - to attach it to standard 3.5in mounts.
Click to expand...

one more thing on the SDD and a big thankyou by the way for all youre help.

With the SDD is it just plug and play like a SATA drive or do I need to tell the BIOS that it's a SDD..
 
May I ask what Alienware case you are using?

Does it not use a standard ATX backplate for mounting?

With the SDD is it just plug and play like a SATA drive or do I need to tell the BIOS that it's a SDD..
Click to expand...

You will want to make sure that it is set to AHCI mode and is the primary hard disk (obviously).
 
Just plug in the SSD and set to AHCI mode and continue to load windows as you would a normal drive, I am using the OCZ drive in main pc a boot drive and common programes.

Does the Alienware case not use the STD form factor for the PSU.
 
cmndr_andi said:
May I ask what Alienware case you are using?

Does it not use a standard ATX backplate for mounting?



You will want to make sure that it is set to AHCI mode and is the primary hard disk (obviously).
Click to expand...

It does have a backplate but it's about 2CM wider then my current power supply, I cant remember the name of the case it's the one they used just before the current one, predator 2 comes into mind for some reason????

With Windows 7 I'm gong to have to buy that as I have Vista at the moment, why would I buy the Retail windows 7 over the OEM?
 
RJC said:
Just plug in the SSD and set to AHCI mode and continue to load windows as you would a normal drive, I am using the OCZ drive in main pc a boot drive and common programes.

Does the Alienware case not use the STD form factor for the PSU.
Click to expand...

To set to AHCI I do that inthe BIOS correct?
 
So this is hows it's looking,

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Lost Planet 2 PC Game - Retail £191.99
(£159.99) £191.99
(£159.99)
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Asrock P67 Pro 3 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply £73.99
(£61.66) £73.99
(£61.66)
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP34GB1600C9DC) £38.99
(£32.49) £38.99
(£32.49)
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.73
(£5.61) £6.73
(£5.61)
Sub Total : £426.39
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £87.28
Total : £523.67

not a bad price so far really, just windows ontop of that brings it to around £600 just about on budget i'd say
 
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