Hey all. I'm sure you're probably sick of people who don't contribute to your community in any way popping in and asking for your sage advice but here I am nonetheless. Essentially my PC is getting pretty senile, and with Armed Assault 2 on the horizon I feel its about time to upgrade. My old PC is pretty knacked so I don't really feel the need to save anything other than the case. So essentially I'm looking for a totally new build for gaming, motherboard, RAM, Power, Processor, GFX Card, the lot, hopefully for up to or around 800 pounds. I built my last PC, and whilst I'm competant enough to put things together I really don't keep abreast of this scene so if you could try to avoid overtechical terms I'd apprechiate it. Thanks a lot.
Hey bud, I jus posted my build over here. I specc'd myself out a decent gaming orientated rig for like £800 posted with shopping around. I hope this helps a bit! EDIT: That includes the monitor as well, which it looks like you don't need so it's more like £670
Quick idea. ASUS P5Q Pro Intel E8400 4Gb RAM ATi 4870X2 Samsung Spinpoint F1 Is what I would choose for £800 and gaming. My rig cost just under £650, so I bumped the CPU and GPU, with around £50 to spend on a better case and HDD etc
You can probably get quite a lot for that much, but your budget wont stretch to a Core i7 system methinks. Do you have a monitor? What size is it => what resolution do you game at? This will have a big bearing on your choice of graphics card - where yo could save a fair bit of cash as there are some good deals to be had at the mo
Mate you should look into upgrading that, it's really a world of difference, going to a larger screen with more real estate - I'm not talking anything extravagant, just a handy 22inch monitor and you will be loving it. I picked my Samsung SyncMaster 2032Bw (20 inch monitor) up in January for about £117 - still loving it. About your spec - Here is a great link for proposed builds, it's a good forum too and should give you some ideas.
How exactly do you mean future proof? My current monitor is actually a SyncMaster913n, however if I do feel I need a bigger monitor its something I can very easily retrofit. For the moment I've never really felt I need more screen space than I currently have. What advantages specifically do i7 systems have? Would it be a better idea to wait a few months until I upgrade and try to get a quad core system? How exactly would I calculate the power I need and the cooling system? Thanks.
£800? Easy. With up to £800, you can certainly get an i7 system if you shop around. The D0 version of the i7 920 is a great overclocker, as is the above board and you should be able to get 3.8Ghz out of it if you wanted to. Having said that, even at stock that's a very fast system indeed. One thing to note is that you have quite a small monitor, as a result some graphics cards are a waste - i.e. the 4870X2. Even the GTX285 that I specced above is probably overkill - you could save a bundle (£60 or so) by using a GTX275 or HD4890 instead. The power supply should be a solid unit, Silverstone units are (most of the Corsair units are made by Silverstone). 560W is more than enough for that setup - although if you start adding more graphics cards it might not be. EDIT: Pic above taken from http://www.scan.co.uk
Considering that I'm replacing everything else it seems silly to rip all the stuff out of my olds PC's case when I could just sell the whole thing or use it for a backup. Any suggestions on that front? Thanks for everyone's help btw.
I'm afraid your choice of power supply will not be up to spec. The graphics card you selected requires a minimum of 550W with 46A on the 12V rail (source: XFX's own site). The silverstone has only 38A on its 12V rail. As for the manufacturer, I'm pretty certain Corsair's power supplies are made by Channel Well Technology Co and Seasonic. A more substantial power supply would be recommended for an otherwise good choice of kit. Most PSU manufacturers have a calculator on there web sites to give you a rough idea of what you'll need. Corsair and Be Quiet! recommended a 750W PSU for your selected spec.
By future proof i mean you get a mother board that allows for future upgrades of processor chips and ram. Amd is the easy path. You just get a good mother board that supports DDR3 ram, and AM3 socket and u're done basically. THat's cuz we know in teh future, AMD wil just bring better quad cores, and DDR3 wil become mainstream. With Intel now, things get difficult. THey're discontinuing i7 it seems, introducing i5, and i'm not really sure what sockets or chipsets is going to be ideally mainstream. The DDR3 boards are quite expensive too. SOo....it's up to you. If u want blazing performance for right now, then yeah go i7, but once u go there, there's no turning back or going foward really. You wil need to replace almost everything next upgrade...or so it seems to me.
i5 isn't out until September and when it comes out the prices will be high - i.e. not much cheaper than i7. Oh and apologies, I got confused with Seasonic and Silverstone.
Mate, there's a million different options that you can take and everyone will have their own way of looking at it. My advice is, if you want something now - get it now. There will always be better and faster technology coming out, so you can never really be satisfied with what you have got - your gear will be outdated in 12 months. Set your budget and stick to it. To do this you need to ask yourself what value a good system to you really is worth. If you will be satisfied with a £500 budget gaming rig, then great. Or you may want to spend more. It's all about what it means to you at the end of the day. Also ask yourself what do you want from your system? Gaming, encoding, general internet/email...etc. My approach has been to save until I can afford a system that I will love, I'm planning to invest in one soon. i7 is streets ahead of everything else out there at the moment, but hotnikkelz makes a great & interesting point about AMD - you might want to look into that. I for one really hope AMD put out some killer products in the next 12 months. That level of competition is just great for the consumer. As far as I know, they're not going to discontinue i7, merely drop the i7 920 chip. i7 will be around for a bit - it will be for Intel's higher end cpus. Good luck, mate.
