What can you build for £999

Current article got me interested in building a PC for sub £1000

What would you choose, I'm mixing and matching components which I'd be think would be good. Makes a good challenge to try and build one better for less than 1000

I've almost got the i2600k in this build with one of the OCZ Agility HDD. Just playing around atm.

Having trouble deciding on the motherboard and cooling atm. Would prefer a H70 for O/C, or would the Frio stand up to i2600k on air ?

Current price around 950

BTW - It's going to by my new gaming / folding PC

 

Think your in wrong forum? Unless your looking at a folding rig for £1000.

 

Yes, it's going to be my new folding PC lol

 

Oh cool £1000 will buy you some major folding prowess. 2600k is an absolute necessity at that budget, it will allow you to fold BigADV. You can get 50K+ PPD alone.

 

Yep, I was more interested in the challenge from the mag since all of them went for an overclocked 2500k, I decided to try something different. Since it was going to be a new folding PC that I'd use for gaming too I knew it needed a good spec. It's proving a fairly good challenge

 

I'd recommend a 2600K and 560Ti in SLi. That way you would get a 5GHz CPU folding BigADV with 2 560s doing GPU 3.

 

I'm staying away from graphics cards, I don't see the point in the waste in power consumption for only a few more points. It would be cheaper to buy 2 i2600k machines for around 100k PPD than a similar priced PC which does ~ 80k PPD?

 

Depends if you want to go with just SMP folding or also include some GPU goodness.

Personally, I would go SMP only and leave ou the GPU for some high PPD low power folding witht his:

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £244.99
Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £109.99
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £79.99
Corsair Hydro H70 High-Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £72.98
Antec High Current Gamer 400W Power Supply £49.99
Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £43.99
Western Digital Scorpio Black 160GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD1600BEKT) £35.59
Corsair 120mm Fan - Black £5.99

Total £664 inc shipping, could get a lot cheaper as this is from overclockers.co.uk

Or could drop the Z68, pop in a P67 and use a pair of 560Ti in SLi and should stay in budget, maybe good for an air cooler rather than a wet one to drop the cash down more.

 

Its just you mentioned gaming too, rather than pure folding?

 

Or depending how good you are with tools, and if you wanted this just for folding, I have always wanted to have a normal case with two mobos inside it, one on each side both running off the same PSU.

Looking at around £1200 to do that tho, plus a fair amount of modding the case

 

Nice choice, wouldn't be a folding only machine, just one I run folding on when not at home. As it would be for gaming the one I designed was based around SSD hard drives and lots of storage although I'm playing around with the seagate momentus atm. Two of them in raid maybe around 180mb/s read and 150mb/s write. Not uber fast but quick(ish)

Ah, I see your point. I never fold when gaming, lags me out and I hate it lol. I'm happy crunching in around 50k with a 2600k since it's a hefty donation.

Yeah I thought about that. two 2600k in 1 case, 100k ppd around 400w power consumption.

However me, power tools don't exist peacefully

 

folding for a grand eh?

it's a little over but here's what i'd probably do, rough prices in brackets:

2600K [£225]
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 [£104]
2x4GB Corsair 1600MHz DDR3 [£70]
Stock Cooler [may need something more substantial in the long term]
Silverstone Sugo SG02 [£56] [could swap for an antec 300/100 to save money rather than space]
430W Corsair CX PSU [£35]
250GB Spinpoint M7 [£30] [or any similarly priced 3.5" drive]

add in your favourite flavour of linux...

...rough total £520, multiply by 2

 

Defo worth spending an extra 20-30 top get a decent air cooler as a min so he can overclock to 4.5+ safely for folding

 

Stock cooling performance resulted in 97C load temps at stock, changing to H50 got me load temps of 60C. Go figure.

 

Folding AND gaming.

Folding will be the secondary thing, although I will be running it fairly often (maybe 18 hrs per day)

 

If folding is secondary then save yourself some money and get the 2500K. You can run the smp bigadv client in a linux VM. However, it probably won't complete bigadv in 18 hours though I'd like someone to clarify this.

Will a 2600K complete bigadv units in 18 hours?

 

I doubt a 2600K woulod get the units done if only on 18 hours per day.

For what its worth, I built my PC with the same idea in mind but now really regret not spending the extra £50-70 to get an i7 as I have started folding quite a bit, whilst running a VM at the same time.

Bad move on my part

IMHO, if you can afford the extra £50-70 just do it, will get a bit longer out of it

 

I can afford it, just wanted to see what I could build for 999 as the challenge.

Spec I want to build comes out at 1333 lol. Almost 1337

 

Spec?

Interested in seeing how you managed to add a third to your initial 'budget'

 

Secondary Graphics Card, Further 16gb RAM, better case.

Just playing around. I can get to around 1080 using an OCZ Agility HDD, GTX560 Super TI and 2600K but it cuts close.

I could get a cheap and cheerful case but if it's something I'm building I'd want it to look nice. I currently have a coolermaster 335 case and it looks nice enough, although the HAF912 / 932 are more functional