As you may be aware I left the UK to travel the world for a year and in the run up to travelling I was working stupid overtime, sold my car, jetski and computer to fund the trip (well worth it but now I'm back with just a Athlon XP - which has just gone bang). As a result I'm a bit out of sync with current hardware so any advice would be appreciated for my new build. Although gaming is one hobby, I have 25,000 photos and 400 HD videos to edit so high spec it is. Budget is £1000 (though less is better!). Intel CPU Core i7 2600K Unlocked Sandy Bridge £239 - Bulldozer doesn't impress me, even if it's cheaper Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P Z68 £124.42 OR Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 £149.62 - not sure if its worth the extra £25 over the standard for an extra 2 SATAIII ports plus better OC Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti OC 1GB £186.67 - One for now, may go SLI eventually Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600MHz £43.67 - Wow, DDR3 is cheap! Zalman CNPS9900-MAX Blue £42.54 Western Digital RE4 Enterprise 250GB £51.13 - Recommended by a friend but I've also been debating about whether to get SSD as the boot drive. If so I'd be using one of my spare drives as the page file and for the users folder. Hopefully winsxs won't blow it up. Adaptec 1430SA x4 Port SATA II raid card £76.78 - for my two newly bought 2TB drives. Windows 7 Professional upgrade (£40 since I work in a school). Already have PSU and case.
Cheaper... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...pc3-12800-(1600)-non-ecc-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-15v Better... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/be-q...lga775-1155-1156-1366-am2-am2plus-am3-754-940 Why this... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/250g...-wd2503abyx-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-cache-ncq When this is available... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-...int-f3-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89ms-ncq
Oops, selected the wrong product, this is the one I was suppose to list. Cheers for that, will look at that. Because I have always had WD as my OS drive and plan to keep it at that - Unless I go SSD.
Definitely grab an SSD if the budget allows - they provide a significant performance boost in day to day use and is probably one of the most noticeable upgrades you can make. Keep the SSD as a boot drive and your 2TB HDDs you mentioned shoudl give you ample storage space. Other than that the rest of the build looks pretty solid. As Blogins said, the standard Corsair stuff is just as good as far as memory goes and better coolers can be had for the money. Also, if you make sure you grab the OEM version of the 2600k it will be cheaper. Only difference is it doesn't come with a cooler but you won't need that if you're buying a new one anyway. Hope this helps!
Drop the 2600k for the 2500k unless you really need that hyperthreading, save the money and go for the gigabyte, so since youve saved money on those two things and also the ram and other stuff other guy said you should have enough to spare for an ssd
i dont like that cooler. zalmans were good years ago there is much better competition now. try noctua nh-d14 or thermaltake frio perhaps? also as another guy said throw an ssd in there even if it is just as a boot drive.
really annoys me when people say this, as 80% of the people selected 2600k for a reason, even if it is purely 'they want the superior product'. really not many people 'accidentally select the 2600k instead of the 2500k'. sometimes i actually conclude people are just annoyed others can afford the better product. either way, op clearly stated he edits pics and hd video. thus the 2600k would be more practical
Agreed xD I selected the 2600k at one point but then seeing as it was a bit overkill changed, mainly down to views of Bittechers xD
The closest I've been to SSD was booting Linux off a pen drive and I think I'm going to give SSD a try and I suppose with the savings I'll make it won't hit the bank too hard. As for the OEM version, it's only a few quid cheaper and in the past I've gone and sold the stock HSF, making it cheaper than the retail! It doesn't make a whole lot of difference anyway. The hyperthreading will be useful. Although 4 cores in itself is good, many applications now use multiple cores and with Photoshop and Vegas running I'm already using all cores, hyperthreading will help this and it can be turned off if I want to concentrate the whole core to an application. In addition I think I will be going for the Gigabyte, was thinking I didn't need the extra features over the Asus. I've always been a Zalman fan (no pun intended!) but it's been a while since I last bought one but I did suspect they aren't market leaders anymore. Cheers for the advice, some useful stuff. Now for which SSD to go for, 60GB should be sufficient. EDIT: I might even go for the GA-Z68XP-UD3 over the GA-Z68XP-UD3P to save £20 as I don't need the onboard video and audio. Black looks better but I don't have a window so no worries there. EDIT 2: Crucial M4 64GB SSD seems widely recommended.
