Hello bit-tech! I’m planning on building a new system in a couple of weeks’ time, so I thought I’d run my plans past you and see what you thought. Budget: As near as possible to £1000, with an upper limit of £1050. Buying online from wherever is cheapest (and reputable). Main uses of intended build: Gaming, Photo editing in Adobe Lightroom, and general computer use. Parts required: Nearly everything. I have a 1TB HDD, and all the peripherals I need. I’ll also need an OEM copy of Windows. Previous build information (list details of parts): (I’ll hasten to add that I bought rather than built that in August 2007, and the only upgrades that it’s had are the HDD and the (second hand, donated by a friend) GPU. And Windows 7.) Monitor resolution: Primary monitor 1920x1200. Secondary 1280x1024. Storage requirements: As above, I have a 1TB HDD. I’d like a 256GB SDD. Will you be overclocking: I have never overclocked before, so I view it with a little nervousness. However, I understand that these days it’s not too complicated, so I expect to perform a mild overclock on my CPU; maybe to 4.2Ghz or so. I’m unlikely to tackle my RAM or GPU. Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): Not that I’m aware of. Extra information about desired system: Keeping the system quiet is quite important to me. I’m relatively decided on the following components: The above currently comes to £875 on Amazon, which appears to be the cheapest source at the moment. That leaves me with a maximum of £175 to buy the remaining components, which are listed below with my current thoughts. So, with all my rounded prices above, I’m looking at about £1020, which is spot on. Now comes the scary part: what would you change? I look forward to your comments
According to Bit-techs last PSU test: 500W BeQuiet Pure Power L8 should handle an OC'd i7 3770K and HD 7970 with headroom. 80 Plus Bronze and fairly quiet and semi modular. 600W Seasonic X-series, expensive but efficient (80 plus gold) and very quiet XFX Pro 850W xxx edition Is cheaper. 80plus silver certified but has some coil whine. XFX pro 650W Cheap, stable, unremarkable. Not very quiet or efficient (80plus bronze) All above are stable so it comes down to what your willing to pay for between efficient, quiet or value. The 850W is overkill but an excellent price but BeQuiet seem to make some excellent PSU's. Their pro 10 550W was very very good too but expensive, As was their straight Power E9. Sorry I can't help much with coolers tho
For cooling what about a cooler-master seidon 120m, it only costs £40 from scan and the water cooling will allow a bit of an overclock with 1 fan and easily get 4.2 GHz in push pull configuration.
Thanks for your thoughts guys. The Seasonic X-series are my 'dream' pick for a PSU, but unfortunately budgetary concerns count them out for me. Likewise with the BeQuiet Pro series. I'll have a close look at their Straight ones though. I'm under the impression that 850w would be overkill for a single GPU set up? I like the idea of closed loop water cooling, but most of the reviews I have found seem to suggest that at the kind of budget I'm looking at a decent air cooler will do the job and be quieter. Happy to reconsider if I'm incorrect though.
850W would but at the price XFX where selling for at the the time of print, why not go for it really? Plus I remember seeing (years and years ago) that PSU's are more efficient at lower loads. Maybe not by much but that plus extra capacity should keep you going for a while?
Looks good to me. The Seasonic G series is excellent, but not modular as you've noted. Avoid XFX as they apparently have terrible customer support. Make sure to get 1.5V memory (and not 1.65V). Also consider the timings. Sets of Corsair Vengeance LP are usually pretty competitively priced.
Thanks for the information regarding memory voltage! That's something that might have passed me by. I was under the impression that the Seasonic G series were semi-modular - the image and text at the bottom of this page would suggest as such? I've found the G550 for £73 shipped, so will get that if nobody gainsays me. On another note, someone in a different forum suggested a 7950 3GB instead of the GTX670 2GB. Does anyone have any thoughts? I'm not entirely clear about what I'd be gaining/losing. Thank you for the advice!
The 7950, once overclocked, beats the 670 by miles, and nearly matches the 7970... So basically, it's great value, get one.
