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

custardy

Landprofits wrote: »

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

its daunting at first,but once you sort out the mobo/cpu/wiring its near done as stuff like,drives,ram are pretty simple

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

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

first time I did one all I needed was the manual that came with the motherboard -just worked thru it from start to finish plugging things into all the various sockets it was listing as I went

Just remember to use the raised 'stand off' screws that stop you shorting the back of the motherboard against your case when you fix it in....

Mobeer

My own thoughts

The processor either needs to go down to i7-930 (maybe overclocked?) or if you insist on spending big, up to a 6-core i7-980X. Downwards looks the more sensible move.

Motherboard looks expensive if you don't use all it's features.

Graphics card looks sensible to me - benchmarks I've seen put it equal to the GTX470 and quieter

SSD is a real luxury item

Landprofits

jweb2k wrote: »

i7-930 over the 960 imo. Especially if you're not a heavy gamer (i.e. Crysis on full). Anything over an i7-920/930 is overkill.

The P6X58D is a lovely board, but shop around for a Gigabyte x58 with the same features, at around £40 less. See: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1167642 for a starting point...

The RAM.. well... the timings are matched by the XMS3 half it's price...

An 80GB SSD is nice but is it really necessary for what you need/do?

I'd imagine by trimming the excess/un-needed you'll end up around £1,100 with a very fast and excellent PC. I built in Sep 09 with the following for reference, and it's still awesomely fast!

i7-920 (now superseded by similar priced i7-930)
6GB XMS3 Classic
2 x GTX 260 (Sold one now, still plays COD4MW2 excellently)
1TB Spinpoint F3
850w Antec PSU
HAF 932 (although it is massive, so 922 is a better option!)

Hope that helps, and my biggest advice, spend good money on your monitor, I got a Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA with tilt but there's better about now.

Pick up a copy of Custom PC and have a read through an issue or two first, i'd highly recommend it and it'll save you lots without losing performance!

Thanks for this.

I agree about the monitor - in fact I am going to be lookng for the biggest monitor I can find as I need a lot of visual workspace.

The problem I have with all this though is the fact that I haven't really got a clue about hardware. I believe Intel are better processors than AMD, but beyond that......how am supposed to know if one model of a processor is overkill etc??

As I have mentioned, I have a good budget for this PC, but I don't want to spend money unnecessesarily Having said that - don't want to compromise on anything either. The speed of the computer for instance is important to me. I want it to boot up quickly, and I also want it to load programmed quickly (is that affected by processor speed for instance).

I've decided against the self build idea for this particular PC, I need it doing right and I need it fairly quickly, so where does a lot soul like me go for advice and service? My last PC was from PCspecialist, and that is where my quote was from in the OP. I would use them again, but judging from the responses on this thread I could save money.

Landprofits

Mobeer wrote: »

My own thoughts

The processor either needs to go down to i7-930 (maybe overclocked?) or if you insist on spending big, up to a 6-core i7-980X. Downwards looks the more sensible move.

Motherboard looks expensive if you don't use all it's features.

Graphics card looks sensible to me - benchmarks I've seen put it equal to the GTX470 and quieter

SSD is a real luxury item

Aha - you see I didn't know what a SSD was until I just googled it - "solid state hard drive"

I notice by selecting a different hard drive, I make a substantial saving instead of the SSD. In fact, the SSD drive is 80gb, yet I can actually have a 2 terabyte drive for cheaper!

However, would I be correct in saying that I don't need that massive memory storage? Any video files/photo files that I have I actually put onto external hard drives so maybe big hard drive storage is overkill? OR is it a good idea to have that storage space for programmes?

Landprofits

Mobeer wrote: »

My own thoughts

The processor either needs to go down to i7-930 (maybe overclocked?) or if you insist on spending big, up to a 6-core i7-980X. Downwards looks the more sensible move.

Ok, the i7-930 is 2.8Ghz, whereas the i7-960 is 3.2 Ghz.......so obviously technically the 960 is the faster processor - but what does this mean in real terms? Is the difference really negligible? Could someone give me an example of where one would notice the difference?

Mobeer wrote: »

Motherboard looks expensive if you don't use all it's features.

What featured should I look for in a motherboard? I wouldn't want to run out of plugholes....:D

Mobeer wrote: »

Graphics card looks sensible to me - benchmarks I've seen put it equal to the GTX470 and quieter

Mobeer wrote: »

Wow - first thing I've got rigt so far!

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

However, would I be correct in saying that I don't need that massive memory storage? Any video files/photo files that I have I actually put onto external hard drives so maybe big hard drive storage is overkill? OR is it a good idea to have that storage space for programmes?

I'd say its good to have a decent amount of space so you can keep a backup copy of everything on your HDD incase it gets 'dropped' etc and also for future proofing reasons but not too much space as:

1- the 'biggest' drive on the market often has an unreasonable £ per GB premium attached.

2- as drive technology improves chances are by the time you fill a current 'large but reasonably priced' one when you buy the next one just as big/bigger it'll probably be cheaper AND alot faster than the one you just filled up.

About 1 TB will be fine and as I said before I'm a big fan of the samsung F3 due to its blisteringly fast access times (and hard drive data access is still one of the slowest 'bottleknecks' of a modern PC)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/10/06/samsung-spinpoint-f3-1tb-review/3

JasX

EDIT: PS realise i was a little out of date (The 1TB F3 released oct 2009, Samsung model no HD103SJ) but checking here http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.php The F3 comes in at position 118, drives from position 117 upwards start hitting soild state drives -still seems to be the best 'conventional' drive out there

Landprofits

JasX wrote: »

EDIT: PS realise i was a little out of date (The 1TB F3 released oct 2009, Samsung model no HD103SJ) but checking here http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.php The F3 comes in at position 118, drives from position 117 upwards start hitting soild state drives -still seems to be the best 'conventional' drive out there

The company i'm using to form my quote - it doesn't seem thatthey guarantee the brand of hard drive you get, although they do state they only use leading brands (Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi or Samsung)

With that in mind - do you think I should go elsewhere? That's a good point you made about access times......

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

What featured should I look for in a motherboard? I wouldn't want to run out of plugholes....:D

Bascially that (sockets) and is it compatible with the rest of the hardware you've chosen (typically you look for the motherboard after choosing processor and graphics card, get a motherboard compatible with processor + card, then choose RAM compatible with the motherboard chosen.

Beyond that as you spend more you tend to get extra 'advanced' tools for use in overclocking (eg ability to adjust clock speeds of individual components, extra temperature sensors, a 2nd built in BIOS copy to switch to if you make an unstable one, a little LCD display that tells you component by component what stage of the boot-up you're at for troubleshooting). If you're not planning much overclocking you'd probably never use em