Building a PC for Folding / Gaming and Media PC

Lil306

Getting sick of having so many pieces of junk lying around I'm debating about building a new PC that I can use for almost all tasks I wanna do

Main subjects will be

• Gaming (just general CoD, BC2, etc)
• Folding (F@H)
• Media Centre (storage and watching movies)

Anyone got any suggestions for cases?

Currently I'm looking at the Silverstone GD03B

I'd like to keep it somewhere in true media PC style so I can hide it away, nothing stopping me doing some wireless gaming or running a projector from it

I've got the general PC specs worked out for folding + gaming, but need something with decent room for 3-4 cards / expansion slots and lots of HDD storage

The case above has room for 2 x 5.25", 8 x 3.5" so lots of possibility but being a gaming PC I'm limited by room, so I need to choose it wisely

BTW - Budget will be in region of £1800 so I've got headroom to play with since I'm hoping to have one PC for everything, rather than lots of PC's doing little bits.

GeoffX

I think nVidia's graphics cards are still better for folding than AMD/ATIs. I'd recommend reading this as a more general starter:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2011/05/10/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-may-2011/5

Lil306

GeoffX wrote: »

I think nVidia's graphics cards are still better for folding than AMD/ATIs. I'd recommend reading this as a more general starter:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2011/05/10/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-may-2011/5

They are, I'd never choose AMD for folding since they don't truly support it yet.

Here's the specs I'm going for some components may change

Geforce GTX560 Super Ti OC Card
Asus Xonar Xense Sound Card
Corsair H70 Water Cooling
Sandy Bridge i2600k
700w modular 80+ PSU
Blu Ray Player
DVD Burner
Asus P8P67 Pro M/B (might change, not sure yet)
1 (or 2) OCZ Agility or Revodrive (for HDD O/S and Gaming)
3 x 2TB WD Green Power in RAID 5
8-16GB RAM DDR3 Dual Channel

I'm not overly fussed about getting a tower case if I can't fit it, since I designed a build for £999 without the SSD Hard Drive using a HAF912

If I added in above specs, the build would come to around £1600

Lil306

BTW, here's a similar spec I'm using for £1000 but more for gaming

• G.Skill Ripjaws-X 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
• Novatech PowerStation Gaming 500W Silent ATX2 Modular Power Supply
• Windows Home Premium Edition 7 DVD - Retail
• Intel Core i7 2600K 3.40GHz (Sandy Bridge) Socket LGA1155 - Retail.
• Cooler master HAF 912 Plus
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti Super OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe
• Corsair H70 Liquid CPU Cooler ***Low Profile Pump***
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 64MB Cache Hard Disk Drive SATA 6 Gb/s 126MB/s <4.2ms 7200rpm - OEM
• Asus P8P67 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) Motherboard - B3 Revision
• LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD+/-RW SATA Black - OEM

Evren

At the moment, you might as well get the new Sandybridge i5's, as they run smoother than the new i7's do at the moment.

Where are you buying all these parts from btw?

Lil306

Evren wrote: »

At the moment, you might as well get the new Sandybridge i5's, as they run smoother than the new i7's do at the moment.

Where are you buying all these parts from btw?

Novatech, I've tried scan, they're cheaper on some but the overall price works out at nearly 100+ higher

I haven't tried ebuyer as yet. I know there's sites like aria too.

Evren

Lil306 wrote: »

Novatech, I've tried scan, they're cheaper on some but the overall price works out at nearly 100+ higher

I haven't tried ebuyer as yet. I know there's sites like aria too.

Ebuyer is okay, but customer service is terrible if something goes wrong,
Overclockers.co.uk sometimes has some good deals.

I am surprised about scan, when I made my rig, I made it on about 8 different sites and scan was still the cheapest, especially when I got everything the next day for free.

Lil306

Evren wrote: »

Ebuyer is okay, but customer service is terrible if something goes wrong,
Overclockers.co.uk sometimes has some good deals.

I am surprised about scan, when I made my rig, I made it on about 8 different sites and scan was still the cheapest, especially when I got everything the next day for free.

Try the spec on Novatech and similar one on scan. To me it seemed Nova was cheaper.

I don't go near ebuyer now, I usually stay with Novatech for their customer service it's just down to preference. I haven't tried scan as yet

Lil306

Scan
Sub Total (inc VAT)
£1022.28

Delivery Charge
£16.78

Total (inc VAT)
£1039.06

Novatech
Total Basket Ex VAT: £834.07 ex vat
Delivery Charge: 0.00 ex vat
Basket + Delivery Ex VAT: £834.07 ex vat
VAT @ 20%: £166.81
Total Basket Value: £1000.88 inc vat

Did some playing around on Novatechs site and didn't realise I had selected two PSUs

The above price is for the following extra
1 x 2TB WD Black
8GB RAM

Lil306

I didn't even realise the spec I had selected above is better than my original sub 1000 plan.

So now I'm gonna try and get a really fast PC for sub 1k

Total Basket Ex VAT: £824.08 ex vat
Delivery Charge: 0.00 ex vat
Basket + Delivery Ex VAT: £824.08 ex vat
VAT @ 20%: £164.82
Total Basket Value: £988.90 inc vat

4GB RAM, 1TB WD Black, Nvidia Geforce GTX570

TwistedPsycho

Lil306 wrote: »

Novatech, I've tried scan, they're cheaper on some but the overall price works out at nearly 100+ higher

I haven't tried ebuyer as yet. I know there's sites like aria too.

I use Novatech quite a bit (as I use their FastTrack collection facility). Note that if you do go with them, sign up to quidco and you can get 3% cashback (and they don't fiddle the prices if you go via a cashback site).