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

pendulum

£1677 on a computer and...

No RAID
No SSD's
No SLI
Liquid cooling but no intention to overclock
Not a serious or heavy gamer

Your paying an exponential price premium to get the latest components which you don't need
I'm just left thinking, WHY?

There's been hardly any talk about your actual requirements from the system, what exactly you will be using it for ... this is something you talk about before a build! From the comments you have made though, I get the impression you really don't need to be spending anywhere near as much.

What programs will you be running, what do you use the computer for, how seriously do you take your flight sim (previously running it on a machine bought in 2007 + you do not overclock or know that much about hardware (no offence!) so I don't think you take it that seriously)?

I have to say I also think you can do alot better for £1677 than the spec you have posted. The spec just doesn't impress me but it should do for that kind of money

Landprofits

pendulum wrote: »

£1677 on a computer and...

No RAID
No SSD's
No SLI
Liquid cooling but no intention to overclock
Not a serious or heavy gamer

Your paying an exponential price premium to get the latest components which you don't need
I'm just left thinking, WHY?

There's been hardly any talk about your actual requirements from the system, what exactly you will be using it for ... this is something you talk about before a build! From the comments you have made though, I get the impression you really don't need to be spending anywhere near as much.

What programs will you be running, what do you use the computer for, how seriously do you take your flight sim (previously running it on a machine bought in 2007 + you do not overclock or know that much about hardware (no offence!) so I don't think you take it that seriously)?

I have to say I also think you can do alot better for £1677 than the spec you have posted. The spec just doesn't impress me but it should do for that kind of money

If the spec doesn't impress you for that amount of money - can you recommend anywhere that will custom build a PC to my requests and that offers good value? The site I am currently using seems to offer limited options.

I was just having a conversation with someone and they were saying that I am going way over the top with an i7-930 processor. They recommend I get a quad core i5.

spakkker

What pc specs do you currently have? All the above is overkill - except maybe the 1tb hdd, cheapest per gb .
The game you mention can be used with modern onboard graphics, have you ever seen an hd4670 graphics card in use?
Any cpu from the last year will suffice for your stated needs.

JasX

pendulum wrote: »

£1677 on a computer and...
No RAID
No SSD's
No SLI
Liquid cooling but no intention to overclock
Not a serious or heavy gamer

.......................

I have to say I also think you can do alot better for £1677 than the spec you have posted. The spec just doesn't impress me but it should do for that kind of money

Well I'm more than happy to see other suggestions too:

Processor - the 930 seems a very reasonable price/performance point for the current Intel range, I'd definitely not recommend AMD at the moment

Graphics card, yes to be fair this component seems to still have a fairly hefty price/performance premium, perhaps the OP should that should drop to the 470 (and drop the price by about £140 odd hopefully)... I wouldn't drop below that tho.

470s in SLI? that strikes me as unesescary and expensive, drop a generation and go SLi? doubling the heatloading in a mid-sized case and giving up full 3d functionality for future doesn't seem to gain anything really beyond heat problems?

SSDs? expensive, unproven long term reliability, small? why would you want one of those?

Liquid cooling, OPs been told before its not necesssary but seems set on it.

Happy to be proved wrong with another suggestion, built and delivered..... but the above doesn;t seem too far off

gonzo127

check out cyberpower systems as well as pc specialist as they have some very good upgrade options and seem to be a bit more detailed on your customisations

Landprofits

Liquid cooling, OPs been told before its not necesssary but seems set on it.

Actually no I forgot about the point about the liquid cooling......am I correct in saying that this is for the processor - and that the processor itself will come with a "stock" cooler and therefore you don't need to buy additional cooling?

Landprofits

JasX wrote: »

Well I'm more than happy to see other suggestions too:

Processor - the 930 seems a very reasonable price/performance point for the current Intel range, I'd definitely not recommend AMD at the moment

Graphics card, yes to be fair this component seems to still have a fairly hefty price/performance premium, perhaps the OP should that should drop to the 470 (and drop the price by about £140 odd hopefully)... I wouldn't drop below that tho.

470s in SLI? that strikes me as unesescary and expensive, drop a generation and go SLi? doubling the heatloading in a mid-sized case and giving up full 3d functionality for future doesn't seem to gain anything really beyond heat problems?

SSDs? expensive, unproven long term reliability, small? why would you want one of those?

Liquid cooling, OPs been told before its not necesssary but seems set on it.

Happy to be proved wrong with another suggestion, built and delivered..... but the above doesn;t seem too far off

Thanks - I appreciate your comments, you have been very helpfull and given valid reasons for everything - and as I say PC hardware is not my area of expertise....

The thing is, there is so much to think about and since you only replace a PC every 3 - 4 years - I want to get this right. That's perhaops why I was a bit over zealous at the start and went for top end to have done with it. But I can now see that that is unesssesary.

So obviously I want to be going for the samsung F3 hard drive, and perhaps a processor from the Intel i5 range rather than i7 (what's your opinion on that?)......but things keep cropping up to think about. As an example of this, I was talking to somebody last night and I mentioned to them about flight simulator, and that you can get scenery add ons to it. When I added the scenery add ons to my current computer it caused it to crash. They said there could be various reasons for this - one of those was that flight sim is very power hungry and if you have a cheap power supply the output can vary and cause your computer to crash? So this makes me think "ok I perhaos need to make sure I get a good quality power supply".

It is pretty complicated!

To answer the questions about my requirements - I admit that I am not a heavy gamer. However, I do want the computer to be capable of having several applications open at once and STILL be fast. The speed of the computer is very important to me.

JasX

gonzo127 wrote: »

check out cyberpower systems as well as pc specialist as they have some very good upgrade options and seem to be a bit more detailed on your customisations

Yup, they do seem good value and can do a virtually identical spec to the above for closer to £1200

perhaps worth shopping around a little more OP

PPS the above company also lets you specifty F3s in the build

gonzo127

Landprofits wrote: »

So obviously I want to be going for the samsung F3 hard drive, and perhaps a processor from the Intel i5 range rather than i7 (what's your opinion on that?)......but things keep cropping up to think about. As an example of this, I was talking to somebody last night and I mentioned to them about flight simulator, and that you can get scenery add ons to it. When I added the scenery add ons to my current computer it caused it to crash. They said there could be various reasons for this - one of those was that flight sim is very power hungry and if you have a cheap power supply the output can vary and cause your computer to crash? So this makes me think "ok I perhaos need to make sure I get a good quality power supply".

F3 for sure

i would say if you can afford it go for the I7 as they are not 'that' much more expensive and are the best CPU's at the moment the 930 should be more than enough

yes yes yes get a good power supply, think about it, it is the one item in a computer that if it goes wrong can take the rest of the computer out with it as everything in the computer draws power from it so if it blows and sends a surge through your system EVERY part can blow

Landprofits

F3 for sure

That's one thing I have settled on!

i would say if you can afford it go for the I7 as they are not 'that' much more expensive and are the best CPU's at the moment the 930 should be more than enough

Meh - I have several people who know more about computers than I, Gonzo says i7, but other say it's overkill.

yes yes yes get a good power supply, think about it, it is the one item in a computer that if it goes wrong can take the rest of the computer out with it as everything in the computer draws power from it so if it blows and sends a surge through your system EVERY part can blow

Good point Gonzo, i'll make sure I get a good power supply.