Building my own PC

rmg1

Hi all

I'm looking to build my own PC (just for the experience) and I've got a budget of around £500.
I've been looking on the Scan website but I'm unsure of what's compatible with what.

Here's a list of nice-to-haves:-
A good processor (I've been looking at a Phenom II but maybe that's overkill as I don't do that much gaming).
Plenty of storage (2 drives, possibly one to use as a backup? I'm looking at 500GB per drive).
Plenty of RAM (minimum 4GB).
I'll also need a DVD burner, a good graphics card Ieither ATI or nVidia, not particularly fussy) and anything else that might come in useful that I've probably missed.

Could someone please point me in the right direction?

Cheers

gonzo127

not being funny but really what are you wanting to do with the system? as this will change what you might want considerably

for example if you want to be doing some modern gaming you should be looking at spending closer to £150 on a graphic card than £50, however if you only plan on playing some old games or flash/facebook games then a card closer to £50 would be more sensible than one closer to £150

lots of storage? 500gb really isnt that much these days, a 1tb hard drive is only around £60 (samsung f3 7200rpm one of the best)

processors - intel have just launched their sandy bridge chips which have a lot more power than the previous core i chips (you can tell the difference with the amount on numbers in the name old core i series have 3 numbers new ones have 4) however due to them being new you are limited on your motherboards at the moment so they are likely to be more expensive

will you over clock? if so you need a aftermarket cooler however you can get a good one for £15 if you are not going to be going mad

which operating system are you going to use and do you have a retail copy you can use or do you need to buy one?

also are you actually after a monitor mouse keyboard etc or is the £500 just for the base unit?

really these things do need to be thought about before we can start pointing you in the right direction

rmg1

See, I knew I'd miss stuff

In some semblance of order:-
I'll need to buy an OS but there's a separate pot for that, same for the monitor, etc. The £500 is just the base unit.

I'm not intending to overclock, which is why I want a good processor to start with.

Not really into modern gaming, but I do some video editing so a good graphics card is a must.

I'm open to advice on the storage, but I don't really hold that much information on one drive which is why I specified a slightly smaller drive but two of them (if that makes sense).

I'll also need things like a DVD burner (not bothered about Blu-ray at the moment).

As for what I need it for, it's basically going to be a general purpose machine that won't fall over when I do some video editing or ask it to do something out of the ordinary or soemthing that's processor intensive.

Hope this helps.

gonzo127

ok this is not ideal with what you are after however i personally think it is a good bet for the performance side of things - all priced at ebuyer so you could knock some of the price if you shop around

Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz Socket LGA 1155 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor 251595 50 in stock £148.98

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache 173804 > 5 in stock £40.98

Gigabyte GA-H67M-D2 H67 Socket 1155 GB LAN 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard 247120 9 in stock £76.47

Samsung SH-S223 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black 145450 > 200 in stock £11.99

Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V 166995 12 in stock £35.00

Corsair 500W CX PSU - 5x SATA 2x PCI-Express 240999 89 in stock £48.65

Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Mid Tower Case - No PSU 127584 100 in stock £29.27

PALIT GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 VGA DVI HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card 227181 26 in stock £117.41

Cart total inc vat: £508.75

ok so reasoning

CPU - the latest core i processor from intel knocks the socks of all other current processors - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/1 - can save a bit of money by going for a lower model and it wont make that much difference

HDD - only put in one because of the cost of the system, this is a easy upgrade in future when you have more money to add another 1tb samsung f3 7200 rpm is the muts nuts for price to performance

Motherboard - well your not over clocking so not much needed in looking went for a cheapy by a good named brande who are usually reliable

DVD drive - all will do a job not worth spending lots of money on got a cheapy in the same colour as the case

RAM - 4gb named brand wont stand up to major overclocking but i just dont like generic RAM although you can get some for £5 cheaper - just make sure its 1.5v and not 1.65v due to the motherboard

PSU - not the best but decent enough, 500w should be enough to run everything in there plus an extra hard drive when/if you want it

case - decent cooling, reasonable to work in and pretty cheap been a stable part of a budget build for a long time

GPU - can go lower and save some money but you are getting into the realms of exponential drop in power to amount of money saved would not drop lower than the 450 GTS or the 5770

rmg1

That all looks reasonable to me (although I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at )
Must admit, I do prefer AMD's to Intel's but for that price I think I'll make the change.

gonzo127

well have a quick read of the review i linked to get the details about the sandy bridge chips, note that the only AMD chips in there are the x6 chips and as you can see in a lot of instances the sandy bridge chip is faster and in some case's is actually a lot faster at base clock of 3.1ghz than the x6 is when overclocked to 4.1ghz - although of course is slower in some other tests

rmg1

OK, thanks.
I'll have a shop around and see what prices I can get items for. If I get some good deals, I might be able to get the second hard-drive now, although it's not a must.

I've got two IDE drives on my current machine, what's the best way to transfer the files? I have a cross-over cable if that's going to be any use?

gonzo127

simplest would be do it over your network (guess you have a router) just sort out the file sharing and copy them over, other than that maybe a USB hard drive caddy - basically turns a drive into a external hard drive

rmg1

Router sounds like a plan, I've loads of spare cables. Not set up for wireless yet, and I would imagine it would be slower anyway.
Thanks for all the help/advice.

One last question, does everything just plug in and go or do I need to do fiddly setting up bits?

JJ_Egan

Price up your self build then look at what you can get built for the same price .
My last three builds have not saved money just put in what i preferred .

jje

gonzo127

it should be a plug in and go for the most part but then again as i build my own normally i am not sure i would know what a 'regular' persons idea of fiddly bits is when it comes to building a computer as i enjoy every part of the process

of course there might be a bit of fiddling with cables but thats always worth while to get the best air flow in the case and is something i would spend a decent amount of time doing