Hey all, these threads are really boring, so only take a look if you have a sec. Am ordering (at last) tonight, just nice to know I haven't missed anything obvious. The spec is basically the performance PC listed in Custom PC (for those that read the mag), a list of all the best stuff, constantly replaced if they find anything better, so I'm hoping it should be all good. My only major question is which Radeon 5870 to go for, the Asus or the Sapphire. Sapphire is a bit more money, but has an awesome, silent cooler on it. But the Asus was rated a bit higher for performance in CPC, not sure why, can't be a huge difference as they are essentially the same card. Anyone got experience with either one? Thanks for any tips folks Case Antec Twelve Hundred Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R CPU Intel Core i7-930 CPU Cooler Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ RAM Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800 (3 x 2GB, 6GB total) PSU Antec TruePower New TP-650 GPU Sapphire Vapor-X HD5870 1GB OR GPU Asus Radeon HD 5870 HDD Samsung SpinPoint F3 (2 of these for mirrored RAID) TFT BenQ G2220HD Speakers Logitech Z-5500 Sound Card Asus Xonar DX EDIT: bit more info I missed PC will be mainly gaming, but I also do a ton of video editing and encoding Am re-using DVD writers from old PC Budget is around £1500, which the above is a little over, so happy with that
Acer don't make graphics cards, so I think you got confused about that. Vapor-X is the best 5870 so if your not worried about cost, get it.
ooops, typo, meant Asus! Thanks for that, did look rather good in the reviews, fits in my budget, so all good Cheers
what size RAM is that? Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800 doesn't tell us much. everything looks great, except the storage, for that kind of money, you may want to look at SSD's
ahh yeah, another typo, RAM is 3 x 2GB, 6GB total. Was thinking about SSDs, was avoiding due to massive cost and not being able to RAID then, having a mirror set up is quite important to me. Could always get a smallish SSD for windows and everything else on fast F3 mirror, but most likely not worth it as games would all still be loading from normal HDD. Will take another look at costs etc when I get in from work anyway
5870 vapor x is best you can buy you can clock it to Asus levels SSD is a tough choice at this price point I'd suggest you don't as you willl have to compromise elsewere and the benifits arnt that noticeable if all you have on it is windows 7. 64gb is too small for anything else and a 128gb is beyound your budget so I'd skip the SSD, main advantage is faster loading of programs. Unless you really can't wait 30-40 seconds for os to boot. When using drive mainly as a boot disk performance dif is small I dumped most of the games I play onto mine and it's insanely fast load times but that doesn't effect my fps
thanks rollo Didn't go for the SSD in the end, I have the option to add one at a later date (the MOBO has 6gbps SATA ports), but would have to come down a lot in price to tempt me. Will have to get building this weekend! Thanks all for your posts
