looks solid, but get a cheaper PSU and Case and get a better GPU instead. I would dare say the 5850 would already begin to show it's age around now. It really doesn't sound like you would have any problems building yourself Knarf.
Got to disagree with Wira, that psu is great, yes you pay more but its the one component you really can't afford to cheap out on, if it goes it wont go alone! Maybe grab a non- modular one for cheaper if you want cheaper, but keep it a good make, eg. Antec, Corsair, BeQuiet...etc Will agree at HD res the HD5850 might show its age, if you put things on highest settings it will fail. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-msi-gtx-560-40nm-4000mhz-gddr5-gpu-810mhz-shader-1620mhz-336-cores-2-x-dvi-i-mhdmi This is a pretty good card and only a little more but then again at the £100-£200 range a tenner more will get you alot more all the way up to £200! so up to you, but id deffo shop round. Also hd6950 go for cheap and the difference between them and the hd5850 is about as much difference as a fart in a hurricane! Ignore benchmarks on this one!
Buying all the parts from scan or just the crucial ones gives you the option for using scansure which is there insurance. So anything goes wrong you get a replacement with no questions. Great for experts and beginners. Sh@t happens. Where are you based ? I'm sure someone here is close-by to offer support. I would.
Looking over that PC you built via the website knarF to be blunt it's already outdated and leaves very little scope for future upgrades. I dread to think what brand of components they would use to maximise the bottom line of profit whist delivering on the letter of your specification! This is why it is usually a bad idea to buy these self configured PCs. In no way are they specially optimised to work well with all the components the customer asks for, that's why you will find thread after thread recommending what memory to use in what motherboard and which PSU can handle that GPU!
Since you had mentioned choosing AMD and a budget of £500-£600: CPU - £84 (Scan) AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2GHz C3 (HDZ965FBGMBOX) Graphics - £127 (Scan) ATI MSI 6850 1GB Cyclone Memory - £36 (Scan) Corsair XMS3 1600 MHz 4GB 1.5V (2x2GB) (1.5V used by motherboard) Motherboard - £75 (Ebuyer) Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 880G (note the D) Hard Drive - £35 (Ebuyer) WD Caviar Blue SATA II 1TB Case - £56 (Ebuyer) CM 690 ii lite/basic. PSU - £60 (Ebuyer) XFX 650W Pro Optical Drive - £15 (play.com) LiteOn iHAS324 SATA OS - £90 (Amazon) Windows 7 Home Premium Retail FULL Total - £579 Though adding the following monitor brings this to £678. Monitor - £99 (Amazon) BenQ G2222HDL 21.5" LED-backlit LCD (or you could get its big brother the E2220HD (non-LED) for £120-ish from CCL) Notes: When buying an AMD Phenom II x4 955 or 965, make sure you definitely get the C3 revision. The cpu can always be overclocked in the future if you feel the MHz start holding you back, though I think the graphics card will show its age first and another of these can be added in crossfire when the time comes. The XFX 650W PSU gets a LOT of respect for its quality, (I say this after spending the past 2months researching a build for myself.. spent that long as I was waiting money). It was between an Antec TruePower New 650W and the XFX. Admittedly I went with the 750W XFX as I will need it for some planned additions. Definitely do not cheap out on the PSU. Some cases come bundled with a PSU for cheaper overall, but at the cheaper end of the case spectrum these tend to be awful. Note that the price for Win7 varies OFTEN.. I got it for £85 from Amazon, where it was £95 the day before and £90 the day after. Thinking about it, Amazon does that to a lot of stuff. If you want it, a window can be added to the CM 690 ii later, for about £12. For the hard disk you could go SATA III / 6GB/s, but apparently this makes no difference for hdds, with SSDs only starting to show some improvement. When buying as parts, Google Shopper is your friend
If he's gonna build it himself, I'd think it's gotta be Intel tbh. Actually that said, Bindi was dropping hints that you may wanna wait a couple weeks for this sorta price range.
Wow, tons more help here, thanks a lot guys, just read through everything. I'm liking the sounds of the Intel i5 and nVidia 1280MB MSI GTX 570 setup that Sponge suggested, i can;t believe i can get that all for £650. I live in the midlands of England, the nearest landmark is Alton Towers, i live like <5 miles from there if anyone knows it. I wont be putting this together just yet, still gathering money, but probably in July some time, i should have saved enough by then. So if i build it myself, is there any problems i'm likely to come across? I assume you literally plug everything in, press the on button and install Windows, or is it a little more to it than that? What problems have you had with new builds? Also, with people talking about crossfire graphics cards, how do i know what cards can do this and do you need 2 of the same card? Also, i don't actually know what a dremel is, lol.
Pretty much and as an engineer you should know more than most! You have a couple months to read up on stuff anyway so no rush. Likely the components would be cheaper by then anyway, upgrades time! Besides installing the CPU and heatsink the toughest part is managing cables so you get good case airflow and also knowing where which plug goes. Although it's really not that hard.
I wouldn't bother doing a dual card setup at your price range, generally I'd rarely recommend going for two cards when you can get one card that does the same for the same/similar price. You save on power, heat and keep your options open to do it in the future! That said if you want to do it, just pop the cards you were thinking of on here and im sure anyone would be happy to help. Personally I'd say the hardest part of building a pc is plugging the cables into the mobo, the first time you do this is a bit daunting, but thats where the manual and pics on the internet help! This is the best build suggested, the amd is okay, but this is a far superior beast! the Amd architecture is old and to be honest it shows that age when compared to sandybridge processors! As your waiting on money it might be worth waiting just a little bit until the new amd bulldozer chips come out, cant see them being better than the sandybridge chips but they should be close and generally amd is cheaper! if nothing else it may make intel revise their prices! One note, keep an eye on that ram, if you go sandybridge make sure you get 1.5v ram! higher voltage may cause instability, and certainly wouldn't help!
A Pc components should glide together. Any forcing and your asking for trouble. Also remember the brass stand-offs in-between case and mobo. Some videos on YouTube. Put mobo in first then add powersupply and cables to mobo Then add CPU and thermal paste. Then ram and heatsink. Keep case lying down. Then go for graphics card and sound card Then hard drives. Then any fans and rom drives. Scansure is what I'd advise with CPU, mobo, ram and graphics card(s) And maybe psu
when i said find a cheaper PSU, it doesn't have to be horrible quality, 80£ is a lot for a 650watt on a budget. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w...ilder-series-80-eff-120mm-fan-single-rail-atx just an example, half the price and at 500w it will probably run an intel 2xxx processor and a mid range card just fine.
I would add that the most difficult bit is knowing where all the case wires go from the front panel to the headers on the motherboard. A lot of them are alike but they are clearly labelled. "Power" and "Ground" connections aren't labelled on motherboard headers as a rule, and not always in the manual, but Googling through "images" will help a lot.
So how will i know which is the earth cable? Do they not use the standard red, blue and green system? Also, this thermal paste, is that likely to come with the CPU or is it something i'll have to buy? What do you actually do with it? What's it even for?
It will come with the CPU cooler. You can buy seperate stuff, like MX2, to shave off a few degrees but most dont bother.
Thermal Interface Material is the proper name, which hints at what it does. It's a thermally conductive material that helps fill in the tiny imperfections on the CPU and cooler's plate to make the cooler more efficient.
Here is a good example of the front panel connectors. You'll find the diagram in the motherboard manual. http://www.celtnet.org.uk/images/front_panel.gif
Small pea size dob of it on the chip and push cooler down on it, search youtube loads of video guides to be found. Anyway if you stick with the stock cooler it has pre-applied thermal paste so you just put the cooler in place no fuss no hassle!
Let us take a step back here guys before we confuse KnarF to death! When I was unsure about my first major build I picked up a book by the same publishers as Custom PC Magazine called 'The Complete PC Upgrades Handbook'. It looks like they have a new edition out for 2011 and it can be picked up from amazon for £6.08. If it's anything like the book I originally had then it would give you all the essential information you need before embarking on a build! Here's the link if you fancy spending a little money on some good know how... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Upgrades-Handbook-2011-MagBook/dp/1907232427
don't be put off by front panel connectors! it's about as difficult as plugging the wire that is clearly labeled 'power' into the socket which is clearly labeled 'power' in the mobo maunal, at least it's been like this for me every time. When I first built a pc I had something similar to that, mine was a magbook called 'how to build your own pc' which I bought in WHSMith.
