Hi All, I am new to this forum, and may as well be new to computer builds (I dabbled a fair bit back in 2007 but of course everything has completely changed!) I am looking to build a system for £500 max NOT including OS, Monitor, Keyboard/mouse but I WILL need a wireless card! Its intended use will be mainly photo editing (photoshop) and casual gaming (Total War series, Sims3, COD). I like to play with medium settings but 1080p where possible. I've been researching and have heard contrasting views on the best CPU for my budget, I was hoping for Sandybridge but that may be out of my range? Some think AMD is better in my range? Also heard contrasting views on what GFX card too! I also have no idea what PSU would be required and overclocking is something I doubt I will do. So any help would be very much appreciated I can provide any more info that's needed. Thanks!
I’ve had an initial bash at pricing up a system, but as expected I’ve hit a dilemma on my choice... This is the stuff pretty much decided upon: 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM - £39.58 530W Be Quiet BN106 Pure Power L7, 80 PLUS, SLI/CrossFire, 120mm Fan, Dual Rail, ATX12V v2.3 - £42.92 Coolermaster Elite 430, Black, Mid Tower Case with side Window 120mm Front LED Blue Fan, w/o PSU - £33.58 Edimax EW-7711In 150Mbps wireless 802.11b/g/n 32 bit PCI adapter -£13.18 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.5V - £39.74 Then Graphics card, Nvidia or ATI? 1GB Gigabyte GTX 460 OC, 3600MHz GDDR5, GPU 715MHz, Shader Clock 1430MHz, 336 Cores, DL DVI/ mHDMI - £149.35 Or 1GB XFX HD 6850 Dual Fan, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 775MHz, 960 Stream Processors, 2x DVI-I/ HDMI/ DP - £145.16 And as for CPU/Mobo... Completely stuck between new i3 2120 and Phenom 955. So either.... Asus M4A79XTD EVO, AMD 790X, AM3, PCI-E 2.0(x16), DDR3 1333/1600/1800, SATA 3Gb/s, ATX - £77.75 w/ AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black, Deneb Core, S AM3, 3.2GHz, 8MB Cache, HT 3600MHz, 125W, Retail - £101.46 Or... Intel BOXDP67DE P67 Express Socket 1155 Sandy Bridge Motherboard - £82.40 w/ Intel Core i3 2120, S 1155, Sandy Bridge, 3.3GHz, DMI 5 GT/s, 3MB Cache, Core Ratio 33, 65W, Retail - £110.56 AMD system - £514 Intel System - £528 Is this system balanced enough? Or is it too GPU heavy? Thanks!
I would go for the phenom processor. The motherboard you listed has an old chipset though so instead of that I would go with MSI 870A-G54 or Asus M4A87TD EVO unless you can afford an 890FX chipset. With an AMD board that supports crossfire, I would then go for the 6850 so you have the option of just getting another 6850 for crossfire in the future. Now I have a couple questions for you: Are you going to overclock? Where's the CD/DVD burner and case?
If you're looking to upgrade in the future it's best to get a top knocking motherboard. Have a think about the speedy Sata 6GB and Crossfire/SLI for the graphics. Also a good Power Supply Unit. Years ago I went with an EVGA 680i and Enermax 850W PSU and to date they are the only components that have remained the same in my system!
Thanks for the help. Changing the motherboard seems logical at no real change in price, the option of crossfire is tempting and something to think about! I won't be overclocking, and thanks for noticing the missing DVD drive... factored that in at £13. I've noticed the Phenom 965 is only £15 extra, would that be well spent?
http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/5cf13ff3a57d4dc2aad8ea39944731f4 Leaves you with £60 spare for more ram for photoshop or a bigger graphic card or to just save some money. You can overclock the CPU to 4.5-5ghz easily.
You can't overclock sandybridge unless you have an unlocked processor and a P67 chipset motherboard. Unless the i3 series is different I don't see one which has an unlocked multiplier (K series).
Wouldnt bother with crossfire if you are just going to be casually gaming. Would be better with single card imo. Sometimes get driver issues..its just easier with one card.
Tokoa I hope you don't mind but seeing as you have asked almost the identical question to the one I was going to ask I thought I'd just post this in here. As my birthday is in 3 weeks I'm planning to build a new PC. I currently have an adaquate HDD and GFX card for my needs so that frees up quite a few pennies to spend elsewhere. Currently the setup I'm considering is: CPU: Intel i5 2500k – £164.58 RAM: Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 – £40.67 PSU: Antec True Power New 650W Modular – £69.56 Motherboard: Asus P8P67 - £128.00 CPU Cooler: Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler - £25.16 Case: Antec 100 One Hundred - £41.48 Total: £459.87 All from Scan.co.uk. Does the above seem reasonable value? To me it seems reasonable but I do have 1 question. As I'm using a GTX460 1GB version with a single HDD is the PSU a bit OTT? I'd be delighted if anyone has any feedback.
I wanna apologize for my post up there as it seems to be very off topic >.<'''. I must've been really out of it last night when I posted that b/c reading it again this morning I totally missed what was said. That build looks fine to me. The PSU you have is a nice modular one that's at a pretty low price so I'd just stick with it. Not really, all that gives you is a slightly higher clock rate. Since you're not overclocking, you can save some money and get an Athlon II X4 instead of a Phenom II. Also for the Intel build you can switch the motherboard with an H67 one and save money there too if you're still considering it.
I got that PSU a few weeks ago and its awesome . It comes with a butt load of extra cables that you can add/remove as needed. I would suggest sticking with it unless you really want to save some cash. Im running a OC'ed gtx 560 and 2hdd's from it no problem so you could maybe save a bit there. Just make sure you get a good brand.
I've had a little 'cash injection' so to speak and can stretch my budget to £550 Based on this I've pretty much decided to go i5. This is my new proposal... 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM £39.58 530W Be Quiet BN106 Pure Power L7, 80 PLUS, SLI/CrossFire, 120mm Fan, Dual Rail, ATX12V v2.3 £42.92 Asus TA-8J1, Black Mid Tower Case w/o psu £21.56 Sony AD-5260S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 SATA, Black, OEM £12.83 Edimax EW-7711In 150Mbps wireless 802.11b/g/n 32 bit PCI adapter £13.18 1GB XFX HD 6850 Dual Fan, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 775MHz, 960 Stream Processors, 2x DVI-I/ HDMI/ DP £145.16 Intel Core i5 2400, Socket 1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.1GHz, 6MB Cache, 95W, Retail £146.58 MSI P67A-C45, Intel P67 Express, S 1155, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 1333/1600/2133, SATA 3Gb/s RAID, ATX £88.40 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.5V £39.74 TOTAL: £549.95 ... bang on! I've gone with p67 as h67 doesn't offer 1600 RAM? And the board I've gone for offers 2133 speed RAM for possible future upgrade? Also I've slightly compromised on the case... I'm not bothered aesthetically but is this a wise move? Any recommended upgrades on this would require compromises elsewhere! Thanks again
Agree i just upgraded from a 300 its a total workhorse i had mine for around 3 and bit years and it didnt put a foot wrong. If i had to gripe tho its slightly noisey but it keeps everything super cool. EDIT : Talking nonsense sorry totally misread it i had 900. But it still stands its a good case.
1333MHz memory wouldn't hurt you. High frequency memory is usually used to eliminate a cap when overclocking via the FSB (and since SB doesn't overclock except through the multiplier it matters even less). 1600Mhz memory may make your system feel just a bit more snappy, but it won't make a huge difference from using 1333Mhz memory. The reason that we recommend 1600Mhz memory for people is because 1600Mhz and 1333Mhz memory are almost the same price. You can still get 1600Mhz memory on a board that only supports 1333Mhz memory and it'll just underclock itself to 1333Mhz so if you got a new board with 1600Mhz support you could run it at a higher frequency later. In the future, upgrading your memory frequency won't be that big of an upgrade as opposed to getting more memory. Since you plan to have 4 GB now, the next best thing to do with your memory would be to get 8 GB. As for H67 vs P67, you're free to choose whichever offers the best features for you. I honestly think P67 is fine for your build, but don't let it just be the memory frequency that's keeping you from saving some money. It's really hard to find a very bad case. I've never heard of that Asus case before, but if the reviews say it's sturdy and it looks like it'll do what you need then go for it. This one is a budget case that I like, but it's a bit more expensive. You will probably be fine with the Asus case.
A suggestion on the wireless adapter. Go USB. I went through 2 different PCI and one PCI-e wireless adapter trying to get it to work with Win7 64-bit and none of them would work. The initial card would connect, but then it would periodically freeze windows. Reading up on it, for whatever demented reason there are a lot of people that have wireless PCI and PCI-e issues with Win 7. Seems to be an issue with most of the older chipsets that have been used for awhile now. Some chipsets seem to have common issues, some seem to be mostly fine (with rare issues). Honestly I'd just avoid it and use a USB adapter (which is what I finally got to work). They are cheap and fast. Sure, you won't get any 600Mbit/sec multi-antenna goodness, but USB2.0 is more than fast enough not to hit any caps with a 150 or even 300Mbit/sec single or dual antenna 802.11b/g/n adapter. They are pretty cheap too.
