Hey guys, been looking now for a while for a pre built Gaming PC from PCspecialist . Really like the look of this one but am a bit nervous that a) is it future proof ie. can I put another graphics card in it, and b) general feedback, can I play the latest games at top speed etc. ? Would you reccommend any changes, I really want a pre built machine from PC Specialist as they offer a good warranty and will collect and return it if it all goes wrong basically as Im a useless person with all these new fangled specifications. Whatever happened to my 486. Anyway, here are the specs, my budget is £1000-£1300 for the tower, any feedback is much appreciated, you have a great day, Thanks, Dave Case COOLERMASTER CM690 MKII ADVANCED CASE Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics Motherboard ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) Graphics Card 1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready Free Item FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above! Memory - 1st Hard Disk 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) 1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT Power Supply CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72) Processor Cooling INTEL SOCKET LGA1155/1156 STANDARD CPU COOLER Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD) Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79) Office Software FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel) Anti-Virus BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5) Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI) Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days Quantity 1 Price: £1,150.00 including VAT and delivery.
That's a good setup (very similar to the one i'm about to build) and you should be fine playing any games that come out in the next 1-2 years at pretty high specs. The only thing I don't see in the list is a CPU cooler and you might want to invest in one since the stock ones are pretty terrible. For that same price I am building an almost identical PC, with just a different case, a slightly more powerfull PSU, and nicer CPU (i7 2600k). But then I dont need to buy any storage drives or Windows 7, so I guess that's what makes up some of the difference.
Wrong side of £1000 in my opinion and no it is not at all future proof! For starters it has an i5-2500 processor which is stuck at default clocks (excluding turbo mode!). If we're talking future proofing then you need an i5-2500K and an aftermarket (non-intel) cooler such as the Be Quiet Dark Rock Advanced as one example. The build features trivial extras such as a second optical drive and also a card reader. In all honesty one quality Blu-ray drive is all you'll need simply get a quality external card reader as and when it's needed! In my opinion if we're talking standard HD resolutions through your PC monitor a GTX 580 is overkill and expensive. In most cases a single GTX 570 is fine! Problem is this is a PC enthusiast forum and we chomp at the bit and find it frustrating when people don't hand select their own components! Whilst the build you listed isn't bad a few odd choices as I've indicated above raises some suspicion about the balance of this build.
a bit weedy ? So, what would you guys reccommend - More powerful PSU ? Any suggestions, the i5-2500k processor ? or up to the i7 ? and the be quiet Dark rock cooler ? Always welcoming more suggestions, Thanks a lot for the feedback thus far, Dave
I had no PC building experience but decide to build my own system. I seriously suggest you do the same as it will save you £££ and is not as tough as you may think. The great thing is the help and support that Bit-tech forum users will provide if you have a question or a doubt. I also picked up a Custom PC mag issue with a PC building guide and followed it step by step. When I switched on and everything worked it was massively rewarding. Seriously, have a go building yourself. You can even get insurance from some suppliers (e.g Scan) that will cover you if you damage anything during your build. You also wont have to wait 2 weeks for it to be built. Just take a day off work, turn your phone off, unplug the TV and it will only take you a day to build it even as a beginner.
ahh see, I know what you mean, but the saving hasn't seemed too great on the sites I've seen. So, I reckon I'll buy it pre built, and then upgrade it myself when the time comes.
Thats a Pc Specialist build right? I looked at those builds and to be honest I got a better deal from where I went, was build in two days at only £43 ecl vat, I did collect it from the store though xD Free Fuel. Only thing I didnt get in my build was the chosen CPU Cooler as they didnt have them in stock. But this baby is running at 31c using an Artic Cooling Pro 7. Shot up to about 34c whilst running Crysis on Ultra xD Overall dump the bloatware, swap out the cpu cooler for none stock and save money on the GPU go woth the GTX 570 works like a dream xD
ok guys, well listening to your suggestions, I've revised it a bit and wondered what your thoughts were on this bad boy coming in at £1352 - Case COOLERMASTER CM STORM SNIPER - NEXT GEN GAMING CASE Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Motherboard ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX Memory (RAM) 8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB) Graphics Card 1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready Free Item FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above! Memory - 1st Hard Disk 750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) 1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM Power Supply CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™ HX1050-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£162) Processor Cooling SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19) Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD) Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79) Office Software FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel) Anti-Virus BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5) Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI) Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days Quantity 1 Price: £1,352.00 including VAT and delivery.
+1 for building yourself. That's where all the fun is! 10-12 working days to build!? Should take you one day max. It'll help you diagnose faults etc. if something goes wrong in future, and as someone else said, take Scansure to cover yourself against any mishaps.
It's stupid 10-12 days to build and test. My computer was built in a morning, OS installed and system tested and ready for collection by 4pm. I did place the order a few days before that and they had to wait for two items to come into stock. But a day max to build and install everything yourself. Only reason i went with someone else to build mine was the fact i was dropping over £1k on the system.
Though you clearly want to build with PC Specialist it would be worth checking out Scan and Dino PC as both offer great service and prices. Might be worth trying your build with one of them to see what it comes too. With Scan you can even call them up and ask for different parts than displayed for your system. Basically allowing a infinite amount of customization. Want a rocker launcher on your PC, just ask! want a tank on your mouse? Just ask!. OK well maybe not infinite. Anyway you can never really future proof a system. Your specs seem good but a 580 might be a bit of a waste atm as in a few months we will have a new range of AMD and Nvidia cards and those are likely to top the 580, if not at least knock its price down. Its easy to upgrade a graphics card at a latter and most on-line retailers will honour your warranty if you upgrade devices in your PCI slots as there standard upgrades. You could settle with something like the 570 or 560 Ti, save yourself some cash and in the best part of a year when the full range of AMD and Nvidia cards are out and reviewed, sell your 570 or Ti and pick up a new card. If your going to be mainly gaming, the i7 is not much of a upgrade over the i5-2500k but adds a lot to the cost of your build. Suppose if you have the cash to spare why not? You've opted to use 8 Gb's of Samsung 1333Mhz RAM. Why not upgrade to 1600Mhz? the price difference is usually very small if there is one at all. The cooler you have chosen isn't bad. However if you can afford to get a stronger cooler id say go for it, they have the Titan Fendri EVO for £39 which is a good CPU cooler, would be a cheap and worthwhile upgrade. Itl allow for more overclocking headroom which when your CPU starts to age, can be very useful.
wow dino pc looks awesome, never heard of them but thanks for the recommendation, What are your thoughts on the Arkham i7 GTX 580 ? Would I be able to add another GTX580 to that in the future if I wanted ? Thanks, Dave
Not sure if the default PSU would be able to run two GTX 580's, might be worth upgrading to the next one up. Only £28 more but you'd defo be fine for two GTX 580's. The Motherboard supports does support full SLI but if the GTX 580 model your getting requires two slots you will loose on one standard PCI slot and if you SLI them you will also loose an additional x1 PCI Slot. Not sure if that is much of a deal breaker, for me I never need all the PCI Slots anyway. Here is a review http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Gigabyte-Z68X-UD5-B3-Motherboard/1274/2 If you want a different motherboard you could try calling/emailing them to see if you could use a different mobo, so long as they have it in-stock and it supports everything you want I cant see it being a issue. A word of warning with Dino PC's website. They have a odd pricing method. You can create several identical systems and yet get varying prices. I cannot figure out why they would do this, if it is intentional at all. Just double check your system as you may find your paying more than you could have if you checked out the other models.
I see, ok, well Ill probably upgrade the PSU, that extra cost is fine as Ill be removing the BLU ray drive anyway. If they cant Ill see, Ill also ask about getting two 580s on the current motherboard. Thanks for bringing Dino PC up, that Arkham i7 looks awesome, what are your thoughts ? Decent machine ? Thanks again, Dave
