Hi, Soon I'll be off to University after the time ive taken out and I am in need of a desktop PC that will last me at least the 4 years of my course. My budget is around £450, a friend of mine has helped me out with a build so far just using eBuyer but he's gone a bit over. I was just wondering whether you could help me out getting the build that I need for the right cost! Here is what I have so far: Black Mid Tower Gaming Case with Massive 14cm Front Fan - No PSU £23.99 Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 Socket 775, 1156, 1366, AM2, AM3 Heatpipe CPU Cooler £17.95 Western Digital WD5001AALS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM Caviar Black £45.61 ASUS P7P55D iP55 Socket LGA 1156 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard £96.68 Sony AD-5240S 24x DVD±RW & DL SATA - OEM Black £16.00 Sony Optiarc DDU1681S 18x DVD-ROM SATA - OEM Black £12.10 Arctic Power 600W PSU - With PCI-E, 3x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed £35.75 Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £170.12 Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-Express - OEM £43.52 OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz Intel Exteme XMP memory Kit CL8(8-8-8-24)£99.52 TOTAL £561.24 This is the price delivered. Im sure these parts can be bought cheaper in other places that I don't know of. Any help on where to buy in the UK would be great. A few notes: I have an Asus EN8800GT graphics card in my home family computer that I can take to use in my new build, so I don't really need a graphics card. I need a sound card with a TOSLink out port (SPDIF) so that I can connect my surround sound, doesnt matter which one as long as its good. I will be doing some video editing, graphics work and playing games such as WoW, web design, "office" work and maybe some programming. I would ideally like 4GB or more DDR3 RAM - though i am not sure at all what each variant offers. In regards to the motherboard, I have little clue as to what is good and what is not. I need something good that will last and will be upgradable if needs be. I would ideally like a quad core i5 processor, as it will last a long time and provide a good base. Any help on where to buy, what to change, how to make the build cheaper without sacrificing too much performance, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
HSF is PROBABLY fine, but I'm not sure. Memory doesn't matter much anymore since the CPUs have huge L3 caches GPU will mostly be fine CPU is fine not sure about board, too lazy to research I'm not well vewrsed on soundcards unfortunately, I'd go to http://headfi-org/ just know that onboard sound will work for the time being and the onboard DOES have spdif/tosslink on it case is a case... PSU is crap, it's rated 600W, but chances are it can't give out STABLE voltages past 300W CPU <100W RAM <20W Motherboard <50W Drives <50W GPU <200W so total load will be less than 420W, and in all likelihood, less than 350W most of the time. keep in mind those are maxes for each part and that the system really won't get near all that... choices: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135159 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/185183 I'd probably go with something like that. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/120376 http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=35 assuming the 430W is like the 500W it's solid this should give you an idea of how things work in PSU land http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/10/03/50_power_supply_roundup/17 not everything is rated consistently and it's up to each manufacturer to give a rating. Even within the same manufacturer a unit can vary a bit by series
Hi, Thank you very much for that reply. They should really be clear about what stable voltages the PSU's can supply. I'm guessing 600w is the peak it can reach at one point under load for like 5 seconds or something? Seeing as I was looking to cut down a bit on the price, ill probably go for the OCZ 500w PSU if this can cover what I need. Plus it's black and will fit in with the look of the case! It seems to have enough power connecters so that should be alright. Good spot.. I also didn't notice that the board actually had an onboard optical spdif out, this will save a good £40 as the cheaper soundcards don't have this functionality from what I can see! I don't really think there will be much difference from the onboard audio chipset than a internal sound card right? Ill be using a 5.1 ~1500w RMS system, and it supports 8 channel (7.1) so it should be ok. I've heard the HSF is really good and is the best one you can get by miles in that price range. It should be better than the stock one, and allow for a decent amount of overclock, at the very least 3ghz with low temps. This should make a huge difference with the i5 right? Current total: £533. Any ideas for any cheaper online stores to use? Maybe I can cut this down a little bit more.
for most audio systems, the source doesn't matter THAT much until you've got pretty good speakers and/or headphones so getting a real soundcard isn't vital. one easy cost to cut might be on RAM, as I said, RAM performance doesn't affect overall system performance too much. other than that, look around. I'm an american so I'm not familiar with UK pricing, but check http://dabs.co.uk/ http://overclockers.co.uk shopping around pays. I will admit, I'm not as well versed in computer stuff as I once was(in terms of what specific parts/brands are ideal) but I'm still up to date on the big picture type of thing. just quickly browsing http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-hyper-x-4gb-1600mhz-ddr3-5FSR.html?refs=4294953914-52280000 I'd argue that that is "good enough" might not OC as well, but at the end of the day CPU speed is king, screw memory.
Alright, thanks - I'll leave out the soundcard for now then. I'll check out dabs, i knew about overclockers but it did seem slightly more expensive though no harm in double checking before I order. I probably won't overclock the RAM as im not too sure how it's done correctly at the moment, and I don't want to mess anything up - unless theres an easier way using XMP? I will also have a look at some of the other RAM - there are so many at the same prices I am not sure what all the differences are.
