Buying a poweful new PC, what do you think of this spec/price?

tomsolomon

custardy wrote: »

£1K is a drop in the ocean for flight school

You don't realy wanna be dropping in the ocean unless you have one of these......



Your flight instructor may be a little miffed if you dunk his cessna......

Lokolo

bengalknights wrote: »

Replace x4 with x6 and 4890 with 5870 and bobs your uncle lol

Didn't even though X6 was out til I read this thread!

I can't upgrade my 945 X4 just yet

Rotor

bengalknights wrote: »

Replace x4 with x6 and 4890 with 5870 and bobs your uncle lol

Does this mean it's not a quad core but a sex core?
Cool

Gallstones

Sex core lol

Rotor wrote: »

Does this mean it's not a quad core but a sex core?
Cool

jaydeeuk1

globalds wrote: »

Not Alienware ..But Dell XPS

And cheap.. well for this weekend

This is a 6 core processor


http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/677790/dell-xps-7100-amd-x6-processor-ati-

The value in that cpu is amazing. no where near as quick as the intel 6 cores, but its no where near the cost either. I want one, just need to think of a reason to convince the wife its worth the cash! Could put two of these in some motherboards, make it a 12 core

JasX

Price seems a bit excessive, you could probably put together a 'very nearly' as powerful machine for closer to half that amount if you're happy to self build..... (well maybe £1k-£1.5k)

COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE (£80)
hop on the internet and pick one you like the look of, best to get one as big as you can get it as high end PCs are all capable of heat issues, price looks about right

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Processor i7-960 (3.20GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache
typically £454, again you'd probably barely notice the difference with an i7-860 for £230

Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D PREMIUM: DDR3, USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Typically £235
if you switch wither the graphics card brand or processor socket you'd need to switch to a equivilent compatible motherboard, check you're not paying for alot of bells and whistles you'll never actually use and you can look to save a bit here too, just check is hasd enough slots/SATA sockets for anything you'll want to plug in in future. could look to bring the cost down by £100 or so

Memory (RAM)
6GB DOMINATOR GT TRI-DDR3 2000MHz (8-8-8-24) - LIFETIME WARRANTY
6GB is fine, get whatever is compatible with the motherboard you choose around £100-200

1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5870 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

These cost around £315 and are among the most powerful on the market, could easily step down to a 5850 and cut this to around £240
Alternatively consider a Nvidia GTX 470 for around £310 -would outperform the 5870 slightly and Nvidia are way ahead of Radeon for 3D TV/Gaming support (ie you do it now with the 470) however Nvidia's tend to run hotter and be more power hungery than ATIs and 'usually' the ATI will be the more powerful card per £ spent

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
80GB Intel® X25-M 2.5" SSD (34nm / upto 250MB/sR | 70MB/sW)***SPECIAL***
£140 waste of money, get a 1TB samsung F3 (£60), conventional hard drive with bags of space and is very very fast, nobody quite knows how quickly the SSDs wear out these days and personally I don;t fancy being one of the early adopter guinea pigs

2nd Hard Disk
1TB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
grab and extra drive if you really want, same comment as above (£60)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
-these haven't changed in years, if you have a PC <4/5 years old could reuse your current one for free, also you could spend £50 odd and get a Bluray reader drive (can also read/write DVDs too)

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)
£10, get one if you really want

Power Supply & Case Cooling
800W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£89)
should be fine and price looks ok

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£59)
personally I avoid liquid cooling plus unless you plan on overclocking the stock cooler will be fine (£0 - comes with processor)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
basically no sound card, might want to pickup a decent creative or XONAR one for £50-£140

Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
fine, all motherboards have one these days

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
fine, all motherboards have these these days

Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, Lifetime Tech Support)
pffft, if you have a problem just post here

you'll also need -1x copy of Windows 7 upgrade eidtion (RETAIL) for about £65

I think the main risk you're running is you really don;t need an absolute top end machine and are doubleing the price for one that gives you an extra 20% performance over a £1k machine (which would have been a £2k machine 6 months odd ago...) given your planned useage i'd step down a little

EDIT: adding all the basics up thats £1075 inc VAT delivered (priced up on ebuyer) -option to add a top of the range sound card + bly ray drive for an extra £180 odd if you like...

self building is easy, you'll nead a screwdriver and sunday afternoon set aside.... on the plus side you'll have saved yourself £1000 and probably learnt all you'll ever need to fix a PC in future yourself

custardy

JasX wrote: »

I think the main risk you're running is you really don;t need an absolute top end machine and are doubleing the price for one that gives you an extra 20% performance over a £1k machine (which would have been a £2k machine 6 months odd ago...) given your planned useage i'd step down a little

EDIT: adding all the basics up thats £1075 inc VAT delivered (priced up on ebuyer) -option to add a top of the range sound card + bly ray drive for an extra £180 odd if you like...

self building is easy, you'll nead a screwdriver and sunday afternoon set aside.... on the plus side you'll have saved yourself £1000 and probably learnt all you'll ever need to fix a PC in future yourself

agreed,the only issue you can hit is if you get a faulty part
trouble shooting can be a pain
however if you have a 2nd PC you can get help/advice online
ive built a few PC's and only had one PITA build where the mobo had faults on the RAM slots

Lokolo

JasX wrote: »

Price seems a bit excessive, you could probably put together a 'very nearly' as powerful machine for closer to half that amount if you're happy to self build..... (well maybe £1k-£1.5k)

COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE (£80)
hop on the internet and pick one you like the look of, best to get one as big as you can get it as high end PCs are all capable of heat issues, price looks about right

........................save space

Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, Lifetime Tech Support)
pffft, if you have a problem just post here

you'll also need -1x copy of Windows 7 upgrade eidtion (RETAIL) for about £65

I think the main risk you're running is you really don;t need an absolute top end machine and are doubleing the price for one that gives you an extra 20% performance over a £1k machine (which would have been a £2k machine 6 months odd ago...) given your planned useage i'd step down a little

EDIT: adding all the basics up thats £1075 inc VAT delivered (priced up on ebuyer) -option to add a top of the range sound card + bly ray drive for an extra £180 odd if you like...

self building is easy, you'll nead a screwdriver and sunday afternoon set aside.... on the plus side you'll have saved yourself £1000 and probably learnt all you'll ever need to fix a PC in future yourself

Agree with all of that ^^

I wouldn't tend to buy the latest releases as the prices on these are ramped up quite a bit. If you go back 1 or 2 product releases you can still get good performance with a lot cheaper (when I bought my PC above, the 955 was around 1.5x the cost of the 945, for an extra 0.2GHz per core, it wasn't worth it).

Landprofits

Thanks to everybody for the responses. I knew posting that up would get some knowledgable people imparting some advice.

I must admit - leanring how to build a PC is somehting I have never gotten around to, perhaps it is time to start. I've just sent off for a book about it - and also subscribed to 3 issues of custom PC for £1:D

bass3k

Check out http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ I got my pc on there and they were really good value for money your PC spec isn't much higher than mine but mine cost a hell of a lot less. You can pick each part and put it together rather well on there I felt.