I want to replace my PS3. I never game on it because I own a PC, and it only ever gets turned on to watch stuff on Lovefilm or off the NAS box. So I want to build a PC to sit in it's spot. Mostly because I haven't done a build in ages, and I have that itch. Also because the PC is in the bedroom and the missus doesn't like the tapping of the keyboard when she's trying to sleep. A plan was hit upon. Build a HTPC with a bit of grunt for gaming. Perfect. Except now I'm stuck I initially looked at an A8-3870 based setup with the 6670. I considered the I5 route, but that's £100 more expensive (before adding a GPU). On top of that Trinity is due (this month??) which put yet another spanner in the works. Mostly, I'll be playing GW2 I imagine, maybe some older stuff out of my Steam library. Happy to turn down graphics detail, but would be nice to play at my TV's native resolution (1080P, but it does support lower too). It also needs to be quiet. Not so relevant when I'm gaming, but virtual silence would be nice when all it's doing is streaming. No overclocking planned here either. So Bit-Tech. Do I... A ) Wait for Trinity and go for an A10 (plus the relevant gpu) B ) Go for the A8 (mentally add a 6670 ) C ) Bite the bullet, and just get an I5 (in which case, what GPU could I lump with it) D ) Other suggestions. Critique and suggestions on the builds are also very welcome. It's been a few years since I built my main PC and I'm a little rusty on the newer stuff. Target spend is around £600-£700, but it's fairly flexible (up and down ) Cheers folks.
If you get an A8 (or an A6 tbh), you don't need to add another GPU. It's well quick enough. For HTPC use, so is an i3 without any addons.
Well with up to £700 available I don't personally see any reason not to go with an i5 build, in fact you could conceivably just build a mATX version of the rig in your sig but swapping a mammoth hard drive or two for the SSD.
6670 is a waste of space for gaming purposes your better with a 560 ti or a 7850 build below would suit your needs i5 2500k ( £177) 8gb ram (Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) £59.99 H77 matx board ( Gigabyte H77M-D3H Intel H77 £76 7850 or 560 ti (Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti OC WindForce 2X £160 ) and a small ish case ( Lian Li PC-A04B Aluminium Midi-Tower Case £82 ) Corsair Builder Series CX 500W ( £50 ) Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB (£94 ) Comes to £701 delivered on overclockers.co.uk you could simply buy the case and stick your current pc in it also only thing that build lacks is a decent cpu cooler but if your not overclocking the intel one is pretty quite and is ok for its purpose. Also lacks storage space for storing large files but if your streaming the lack of storage space is irelivent. available cheaper on scan i just dont like there website for setting up builds much should come well under your £700 budget
Started trimming corners to pull the price down since the missus nearly had a heart attack when I told her I was spending £750 Dropping in at £670... I5-2500 Asus P8H77 m-ATX 8GB of Corsair XMS 560Ti GD05B (it fits on my TV stand and looks nice enough) 120GB Agility 3 Coolermaster 500W PSU. BD drive Cheers for the words of advice guys, got myself wrapped up in too many options Looking forward to it all turning up on Monday
Tis here Spent some time refusing to boot though. The 2 rails for the gpu didn't appear to be throwing enough juice. Spliced 2 molex 4 pins into it and she installed windows in about 5 minutes to a clean desktop. So far, so winning
