Build Advice £1700-1900ish Build advice

Hi all, this is my first post, but I have been stalking bit-tech for a while and have always thought the articles are good and people in the forums seem to know what they are talking about

I'm currently planning my second PC build to replace my slightly ageing machine as I'm off to uni.
Waiting for a final pay cheque from work in about two weeks then going to be buying everything.

The spec I'm going with is loosely based around the Bit-tech monthly buying guide, anyway here is what I have got so far:

Motherboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-334-AS


CPU: i7 920 (d0)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-280-IN

Heat-sink:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-026-CM&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395
(I know it may not be the best, but I like how it looks, and i should still be able to get a reasonable overclock on it!)

RAM: Corsair Dominator 6GB (3x2GB) 1,600Mhz (8-8-8-24)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152641

or

OCZ Blade Series 6GB (3x2GB) 2,000Mhz (9-9-9-30)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-159-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1392

Probably going with the Blade series, but they are not in stock so the corsair is the backup, unless I'm missing something here?

Graphics: 2 x XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-124-XF

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-060-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=
I'm fairly sure this will fit into the spare slot above the top PCIe x16 slot, but clarification would be nice

Primary Drive: Raid 0: 2 x OCZ Vertex 60GB
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160731#
It works out at roughly 50ish more then a single 120gb, so i think the performance gains from Raid 0 should be good enough to justify that. I haven't been able to find any good reviews on how the raid controller performs in the v2 deluxe, so if anyone knows please share

Storage Drive: Samsung Eco Green F1 1TB
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168123

PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 850W
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-023-BQ
I'm fairly sure this should be more then enough to power my system, and I prefer modular PSUs!

Case: Almost definitely going with the Cooler-master ATCS 840 Case, but with the additional side window.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-159-CM
http://www.coolermaster.nl/shop/product_info.php?cPath=89&products_id=497

I'm planning on, assuming I get the ATCS 840, paint the inside a matt black. Cable Braid everything in white and black, and then add a little colour with some red lighting

Anyway I think that's everything, if I have managed to completely forget something please tell me or if anyone thinks I'm making a big mistake with any of the components let me know

Thanks

 

- Don't buy from Overclockers, I've heard really bad things about their customer service. I'm sure somebody can elaborate a bit.
- Get the 1600MHz RAM, no need for any higher.
- Think twice about getting a Creative sound card. They had abysmal drivers not so long ago (and I still think they have some problems, such as incompatibilities and making Windows start up slowly). A good choice is the Asus Xonar DX.
- Do you REALLY need two SSD's in RAID? One would be really fast already!
- What OS are you going to use? Are you getting Windows 7 when it's released in October?

Other than those, it looks good to me!

 

Hey, thanks for reply
I have heard mixed things about OCuk, some say great some say bad, reason why most of my links go there is because its cheaper but I will do some searching on the forums later see what I can find out about them!

The 2,000Mhz ram is like 10p more expensive then the 1,600MHz given that do you still just think go with the 1600? I was planning on undervolting it slightly anyway to see if I could get better timings.

As far as the creative sound card goes, I was looking into getting an ASUS xonar, really liked their design, and they are technically very good, my problem with it was only went up to EAX 2.0, not 5.0, and that there is no front bay for easy inputs for things like my guitar, or other recording equipment. Or is there a front bay available for the Xonar??
In my current rig i have the old Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. The drivers were great for XP, never tried it on Vista, and did not work AT ALL with the windows 7 RC. Hadn't realised there was a general problem with their drivers though! Gona have to do some more researching into this I think haha!
I have logitech z-5500 speakers, and use sennheiser HD555 headphones quite a lot, so I do think spending the money on decent sound is worth it!

With the RAID SSDs, the idea of getting close to 0.5GBs times is just very appealing lol! But I have been unable to find reviews of RAID on the P6T, so I may still just go for a 120GB vertex (are the Turbo ones much better then standard vertex?)

OS wise yeah I will be getting 7 at release, although I'm planning to do it by buying windows vista ultimate with the free upgrade to 7 ultimate. again from overclockers but its like 150 or something, instead of the 200 for pre ordering windows 7 ult.

 

+1
If you can source the components anywhere other than Overclockers, DO IT! Even if you have to spend the extra couple of quid on each item. I would rather stick pins in my eyes than order anything from that shower of sh*te again.

Wrong componets sent, initially refused to RMA, shockingly arrogant customer services, the list goes on and on. Took 14 weeks to RMA a GFX card that I didn't order and get a refund.

Rant over

 

i'd thorughly recommend ebuyer and scan, have used them for years, both have excellent customer service. I find that OcUK tend to be on the expensive side, plus u get free delivery with ebuyer over £50 and scan over £20 with free ecarriage, if ure member of bit-tech or couple of other forums.

 

Haha right looks like I'm going to be going through and re-sourcing all the components tonight >.<
I like ebuyer have used them loads before, haven't tried scan so will check them out!

Thanks for the feedback on OCuk lol!

 

You'll probably not be suprised by this "read my title" but I really suggest you go with an AMD Phenom II X4 and get an AMD Chipset, you will actually gain frames at higher resolutions over the i7, the Phenom line has always been for gaming, and they can do everything else pretty ok, the i7 you should get if you plan to do other work but for gaming... go for the AMD Phenom II

This isn't just the ravings of a fan boy, I'll find you some benchmarks, it's all down to the chipsets!!!

 

The only reason I like OcUK is their website its the most simplest one.

 

Here's one
http://www.techspot.com/review/162-amd-phenom2-x4-955/page11.html

At low quality gaming the i7 wins out but the fps are up to 250+ so 50 extra fps don't matter at all, then high res gaming , everywhere else, it's pretty one sided but then some of those tests are kinda pointless (Microsoft Excel? :O)

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenom2_955/9.htm
More gaming sinkin of the intel ship

http://techgage.com/article/amd_phenom_ii_x4_955_black_edition/10
-beaten out by those massively overpriced Core 2 Duos... but only just

 

My my, the above poster does love AMD, even though his rig has an Intel Pentium in it

Your doing a similar build to the one I did 2 months ago, but personally what I would do is

* Drop the second SSD, your new amazing boot times will drop by 5 seconds, who cares when they've already dropped by 35

* Get a better HSF, it's one thing to say "its not the best" but then to pay more than the best for, it's crazy. For that money I would get http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Tita...17dBAplus-HDT-CPU-Cooler-(775-1366-K8-AM2-AM3) or http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Ther...m-heat-sink-for-Intel1366-CPU-inc-1600RPM-fan both of those perform better and will cost you less cash

* And I can confirm you X-Fi will fit, doing the same right here. As for the nay-sayers on the drivers, I could be called a creative fan boy, I've used one since the original sound blaster with my Pent 2. But for me it works perfect. Don't install all the crap, just install the core driver, and OpenAL, gives you 100% of the functionality and none of the bloat So the control panel is a bit plain without all the posh front ends, but the options are all still there! Another point for creative is that they already have Windows 7 drivers, so you don't have to use horrible generic one's until Win7 is launched

* Buying faster ram is all well and good, but at the standard i7 4Ghz O/C, because of all the multipliers it wants to be at 1600 (or well over 2000, or 1000~) anyway, something to bear in mind. I mean you can change your multiplers to get your ram running at top speed, like I did, but I only had to do it by 1, meaning I didn't have to change the BCLK much.
What I'm trying to say in a very roundabout way is at a 3.6-4 O/C you wont see the full speed from your RAM, unless you lower the multiplier, and up the BCLK, but the BCLK only goes so far

* Finally have you considered the GTX275? The only reason I say is you could go for a nice Tri Sli board and get 3 of the bad boys I was looking for a Tri-Fire board for you but they all seem to be AMD (that'll please Moyo2k)

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/EVGA...-Triple-DDR3-1600MHz-SATA-3Gb-s-SATA-RAID-ATX and 3 275's from the money you would save dropping your seconds SSD, and the mobo is a bit cheaper.

But now I'm going to far from your spec list

Just my 2 pence.

 

I used to use Overclockers too but there has been that many bad reviews in the last year i stayed away on my last order.

I tried CCL for the first time, mainly because of their association with Bit-Tech and it was as smooth a deal as you could hope for. Ordered Sunday eve, Arrived Tues morning with standard delivery!

 

i know its going on about overcockers again, but DONT BUY FROM THEM

just read the first page http://www.ciao.co.uk/Reviews/overclockers_co_uk__5097152

scan.co.uk are usually good on price, can be pretty good in their today only section. and if you happen to google "scan free delivery" you can use hexus.net or avforums (but i didn't tell you that)

 

Thanks for the advice, I'm actually on AMD now but this isn't just going to be a gaming rig so I'm sticking with i7 change is good

I will think about dropping the second SSD (probs will have to as I'm finding new retailers for all the components and price is going up )

I know its madness but I just love the look of the V8 I was looking at the v10 but i really can't justify the price tag!! The first of your two links wasn't found btw :S so not sure what that was going to, but again I will keep an open mind and do some more research for the heat-sink and see if I find something that is better and still nice looking

I am going to go with the Creative then now i know drivers are fine thanks, and cheers for letting me know it fits at least that is one definite component now

I'm going to go with 1,600MHz as quite a few people have said that to me know, that's for the info for OCing it as well! (going to be back on these forums once its up an running trying to work out the best way to clock it probs not done any serious clocking before)

And thansk for the idea of the Tri-Sli.... but nah lol! I'm going to stick with the P6T and two 4890s thats a good combo for like £240 for the two cards

And thanks all, i have pretty much resourced everything now, few more things I'll need to find after work today, but OCuk is now OUT! lol


For my power supply, when i was resourcing on ebuyer, the 1,000W is cheaper then the 850W, are there any downsides to getting the larger one? (be quiet! Dark Power Pro)
links: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150432#
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150431

Thanks to all of you for the advice

 

Apologies about the broken links.

I was trying to give you "Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ 120mm PWM 17dBA+ "HDT" CPU Cooler (775/1366/K8/AM2/AM3)" (£34.44) and "Ultra-120-1366RT eXtreme - Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366RT 120mm heat sink KIT for Intel 1366 CPU inc 1600RPM fan" (£51.62)

Type those into scan and they'll come up.

Pass on the power supply, as far as I can tell they look the same, but best check be quiet!'s website and bring up the extended spec of both to see if the 1000 is lacking anything.

 

Right bit of a delayed reply, but I have managed to catch swine flu (just my F'ing luck! ) So unfortunately this probably means I'm going to end up missing a week or so's pay and as this is my last month at work I might have to lower my budget >.< (although given they sent me home on sunday I figure that's their fault not mine )

On the upside, not being able to get out of bed for a few days has meant I have been able to do some researching and finding best prices etc.

Oh and i have now had delivery on:
Windows vista ultimate 64bit, with a coupon for free upgrade to windows 7 ultimate 64bit on release
2 Red cold cathodes, which didn't arrive broken , some cable braid and arctic silver 5

Ok so here is final spec: (well before any culling of components begins, really hope work don't screw me over for a week off >.<)

CPU Intel Core i7 920 D0 £209.36
Motherboard ASUS P6T Delux V.2 £203.77
RAM Corsair Dominator 6GB DDR3 1600MHz £103.98
Heatsink Coolermaster V8 £54.99
GPU 1 XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX Edition £147.54
GPU 2 XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX Edition £147.54
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium - Fatal1ty Series £122.99
Primary HD OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD £273.79
Secondary HD Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB £63.70
PSU Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 1000W £167.64
Case Coolermaster ATCS 840 Black £164.99
Fan Controller Scythe Kaze Master Ace Black 5.24 £32.79
Optical Drive Sony DRU-870S 24x DVDRW £19.77
Total £1,712.85

plus £140 i paid for vista ult + windows 7 (don't tell me if there are better deals available now as it will just depress me) the pre order costs went up massively already which was bad enough >.< could have had 7 pro for 90quid

I have dropped the RAID 0 idea for the SSDs for two reasons, one I'm now saving roughly 40 quid, and secondly you can't update the firmware while it is in RAID. Plus real world gains are minimal for boot times etc, ok so 3 reasons

I have also switched from the samsung f1 to the seagate barracuda, its more reliable and faster, and cheaper by like 10p

I have also opted for the XXX editions of the 4890s as i wasnt going to overclocking them myself, and these ones come with a slightly faster speed, and at like a 5ver more

have nearly completly removed OCuk from my list, however i'm going to have to try them for 3 of the components >.<

The heatsink is 7pounds cheaper on there then anywhere else i can find,
the coolermaster case is 40pounds cheaper then anywhere else
and the sound card is like 30-40cheaper
and i figure they are mostly fullproof components....right?

the rest is coming from ebuyer (have used them for a long time/trust them and have had good RMA with them) and CCL who i haven't used before, but I trust bittech, and hopefully they cant be too far off the mark with them.....