My budget is £800ish. I want a good gaming system and I am starting from scratch. I have spent more than I had to on the case and the monitor since I feel these will last me through a few upgrades so its worth sepnding a bit extra now. However this little lot will probably cost nearer £950 with P&P. I would be grateful for any advice on how to cut some costs without compromising too much, and whether I have made any beginners mistakes! CPU: Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz £147 http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...sor+-+Retail+?productId=37674&source=googleps CPU Cooler: AC-FREEZER7-PRO-REV2 - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 £18 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1066473&source=froogle Motherboard: ASUS P7H55-M Pro £82 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1121534&source=froogle RAM: Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz £90 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240 HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB £40 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500G...HD502HJ-SATA-3Gb-s-7200rpm-16Mb-Cache-8ms-OEM GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024MB £103 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-217-SP&utm_source=froogle PSU: Dont know yet...dont want to spend more than £60 Optical Drive: LG GH22LS50 22x DVD±R £16 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1056172&source=froogle Chassis: Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two £90 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=963034&source=froogle Monitor: LG W2353V 23 inch LCD 300cdm/2 1920 x 1080 2ms HDMI £164 http://www.morecomputers.com/extra.asp?pn=W2353V&referer=pricegrabber Network card: Edimax EW-7728In 802.11n v2.0 300Mbps wireless PCI card £26 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Edimax-EW-7728In-80211n-Draftn-v20-300Mbps-wireless-PCI-card OS: Microsoft Windows 7 x64 £78
For gaming I think you'll want a better card than the 5750 I'm afraid. The 5770 perhaps? Do you really need the fast wifi card? If not the Abit Airspace is a perfectly decent card that'd save you some money.
Your not being extravagant in any places so getting the price down by £150 would be very difficult. You could shave a few pounds here and there. Go for the PSU from the budget build in bit-tech's monthly build feature at £40 and save £20 - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/psus/2009/04/27/corsair-cx-400w-psu-review/1. However it's not modular and the £60 you have budgeted for the psu is not extreme. That would get you the OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W PSU from this months Extreme Overclocker build. A good PSU is likely to last you through a few system upgrades. If you have a copy of Windows XP/Vista, you could save £14 getting the upgrade version from Amazon. Do you really need the Antec 902? An Antec 300, which just in my opinion is a nice case, is £40.98 today on ebuyer, and they have the 902 for £78.61. Other than that I think it just going to be a case of hunting around to get the best prices of those components whilst keeping the p&p down to a minimum. I think you have found the real price of building a Core i750 machine including a monitor and Windows 7. Should make you smile once you have it all together though. Enjoy shopping, building and using.
dont forget to take postage into account, the i5 750 may be more expensive from ebuyer £150.69 but with free postage it makes it £5 cheaper than aria. From experience i would say always check postage costs just because a products listed cheaper doesnt mean its the best buy.
The best PSU option for the system you are putting together would be the Corsair CX400. They sell for around £40. The OCZ PSUs are ok but they do tend to have high ripple.
Well, my sig is pretty much what you are after, plus th emonitor. Think mine came to £850, I bought the ram from novatech and my psu from pixmania. You can do without the CPU cooler for now, I'd save for it after. Antec300 = £40 saves you £50 more.
This is what i got for £928 but can obviously be trimmed CPU - Core i5 750 - £152.46 MOBO - MSI P55 GD65 - £125.20 RAM - Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz - £78.69 GPU - Scan FX HD4890 - £128.64 HDD - WD Caviar Green 500GB 32MB cache - £38.07 PSU - Lian Li Silent force 650W modular - £75.52 Chassis - Lancool K58 - £57.56 WiFi Card - Abit Airpace - £8.19 OD - LG GH22NS50 - £16.67 OS - Windows 7 HP 64 bit OEM - £81.16 22" Liyama 1920x1080 - £131.58 CPU cooler - AC freezer 7 pro - £17.50 that is still over budget, but is alot better than your original spec and im sure someone here can trim it down.
Geo: Oh god not a green hard drive as a boot drive! Talk about cripple your PC. Same with the PSU, terrible terrible terrible! Dont buy Lian PSUs :S Drop the i5 750 and get an i3 530. The GD65 is too expensive for him really: if you're going with the i3-530 you'll need a H55 otherwise it won't overclock at all, so get a Gigabyte H55M-UD2 for about £85. We've got an OC guide coming out next week for it. The 750 is better, but you can always upgrade at a later date. The 4890 will be always be quite a noisy card, unless it's got some serious aftermaket cooling, but it's still a capable card. HD 5770 is quieter and cooler, but perhaps a touch slower. As for PSU, £60 will get you a 500W of something. OCZ ModXStream Pro maybe, but tbh, the Antec TruePower New is worth the monies. Personally I'd get the Fractal or Lancool as suggested over the Antec. Never really did like our 902s we use in house for the graphics testing rigs that much.
i own a green HDD in my primary system and its not bad, the 32MB cache should provide enough umph for it and he is trying to save some pennies so that's what i would recommend. As for the PSU I wanted to take his budget into account so thought that would be OK, not really a PSU boffin so sorry for any bad choice. If not a Green hard drive what would you recommend. Given your techno knowledge you've gotten me worried that i might be "crippling" my PC. i wouldn't want to spend more than £38 but doesn't have to be large capacity, 250GB would do but would prefer 320GB. Sorry if this appears to be stealing the thread, just wanted a suggestion for mine and Yamins design.
The same 500GB F3 that the OP specced for only £1.22 more is a much better choice, since the savings in this case are minuscule. Read the reviews if you don't believe me. Although I hear WD's new advanced format 'Green' drives are almost as fast as their performance drives.
If the OP drops down from a quad to a dual core I would suggest a Phenom II X2 550. The Core i3 530 is still overpriced for what it is.
Not really. The i3-530's hyperthreading works pretty well. At 4GHz it's faster than a Q6600 and E8400 in almost all situations, apart from very highly threaded apps. We've got an OC article next week with the numbers. It certainly keeps up with a Phenom II 965. Geo: The cache size does nothing much, it's all about rotational speed and density for data access. The hard drive is the biggest limitation of any system. From what I've read, even the 4k drives do not make a huge difference. Green drives are great for servers and HTPCs where data access speeds are not the biggest concern, noise, cost and heat is.
I have only seen comparisons at stock speed which put the i3 and Phenom on about equal footing for single threaded applications with the i3 pulling away a bit on multi-threaded applications. I will look forward to seeing your OC article. Maybe you will convince me that i3 is worth the premium.
Thank you Wow, Thanks all for the posts. I will take your advice in hand, relook at my spec, and repost with what I think may be a reflection of some of your thoughts. Watch this space!! J
This looks more manageable.... OK, so I have taken all your advice and made some changes. It now comes in somewhere around £800 whcih is great. I would be really grateful if you could take some time to have another look and let me know what you think... CPU: Intel Core i3 530 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...B-Cache-73W-Integrated-Graphics-733MHz-Retail Motherboard: Gigabyte H55M-UD2H http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...(x16)-DDR3-1600-1800-2133-SATA-3Gb-s-VGA-uATX RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-...0)240-Pin-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-9-9-9-24-DHX HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB £40 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500Gb...-Cache-8ms-OEM GPU: 1GB ScanFX HD 4890 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...MHz-800-Cores-2x-DVI-HDTV-HDCP-plus-Stormrise PSU: 550W Antec Truepower http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/550W-Antec-Truepower-New-PSU-Modular-120mm-PWM-Fan-80plus-Bronze Optical Drive: LG GH22LS50 22x DVD±R £20 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...source=froogle Chassis: Lancool K58 Black Advanced Tower http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Lanc...0-1x120mm-fan-and-2xUSB-and-HD-97-Audio-ports Monitor: 22" Iiyama PLE2208HDS-B2 Widescreen LCD, 1920x1080 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/22-Iiyama-PLE2208HDS-B1-Widescreen-LCD-1920x1080-5ms Network card: Abit AirPace PCI-E http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Abit...rd-with-Antenna-and-Software-AP-A-World-First OS: Microsoft Windows 7 x64 £78 Oh by the way wat does OP stand for?
great advice on psu and hard drive always worth spending good money on a psu (will last as littlexanth said ) and the spinpoint f3 is one of the best 7200 hdds going looks like a good sensible build
That case doesn't look to be anywhere near as good as the Antec 300 for cooling. The Antec for the money is a steal and I couldn't think of anything better for the sub £60 range. You will need to buy 2 120mm fans for the front and install them, but you'll want that cooling ability when you start overclocking or doing heavy gaming. As for the HD4890, when I used that for a build a couple of weeks ago, it worked a treat both in the case and gaming but the fan does get quite noisy if you give it too much punishment. Overall though, the build seems solid as the money is being spent on the most important part for you, the graphics card.
Regarding the PSU, it's now more than ever grotesquely overpowered for your build. Even when you upgrade at a later date to the 750, you still won't need more than an HX450W, which I highly recommend. The Antec, though not a bad PSU for £70, suffers quite nasty voltage ripple. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W...Sli-ATX-EPS12V-PS-2-20-24-pin-5-year-Warranty Also Sh0cKeR's right; the Antec Three Hundred is almost identical in appearance to your case, but £17 cheaper and is famously excellent. Pick up another pair of 120mm fans while you're at it. [EDIT]Oh, and OP stands for 'original poster'.[/EDIT]
Fan's are cheap you can get fairly silent ones for about £7 - the K58 is vastly superior to the 300 in features if not cooling and if you add some fans it should be able the same... If you truly wan't to save on the case go for the Sub £30 CM 335 or 334 (both typical Coolermaster solid build quality and both have brilliant features for the price) and I personally like the styling of the 334 +1 for above PSU or the strider, it won't live up to the Corsair reliability, but I also doubt it will blow up in your face any time in the next 2 years In regards to the graphics card, I dunno why your still going for the 4890... it may hold the speed advantage over the 5770 now but when DX11 hits mainstream it's extra features will be worth 2 or 3 fps... AND it's cheaper... http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...z-GDDR5-GPU-850MHz-Cores-800-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDMI
But how will the 5770 fair with DX11 i doubt its going to be able to push a decent res, with all the new DX11 candy at playable fps. Id rather have the 4890 and have better speed now, than buy a card hoping its going to be worth it. Personally i only see the 5850/5870 as worth buying, but well out of the OP's budget
