Building a new PC

MoneyPound

I would personally recommend an AMD Phenom II x6, bang for buck wise they really do compete with the i5/i7 range.

Stooby2

Have a look at Novatech - http://www.novatech.co.uk/ they do motherboard bundles with everything installed - all you have to do is fit it in your case.

But you may need a better power supply if yours is fairly old - so it might be better to go for a new case / tower unit anyway.

mauwf

Thanks all. I had a look at the Novatech kits but the more powerful ones seem to be ATX form factor rather than mATX.

I think I'll probably build something up around the Intel Core i5 3570K or similar. In terms of motherboards, if I'm not looking at overclocking is there much of a difference between them? I'm not planning on using onboard graphics and will only use stereo sound. There's the obvious like USB 3.0 but is there anything else I should be looking at?

Thanks

Guardsman

This is what I got,, They fit the processor and cooler on the MB for you.
The onboard graphics and sound are very good on this setup so you may find that you don't need to spend on a dedicated one.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/INTEL-Core-i5-3570K-3-4Ghz-ASUS-P8Z77-V-LX-Motherboard-CPU-Bundle-/150807175953?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item231ccee311

Overclocking if you choose to do it is easy on this setup it does it all for you. If you do decide to overclock in the future you will have to get a better cooler than the one provided.

oneblondebrow

To be honest Excel wont use much processing power, Watching videos is not very processor intensive, converting videos from one format to another can be though, Have you thought about using one of the AMD APU's which has built in graphics. Maybe something along these lines..

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a10-5800k-black-edition-s-fm2-virgo-core-quad-core-38ghz-amd-radeon-hd-7660d-800mhz-100w-retail

using this motherboard, I have always liked Gigabyte for stability.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-f2a85xm-d3h-amd-a85x-fm2-ddr3-sata-iii-6gb-s-raid-pcie-20-%28x16%29-d-sub-dvi-d-hdmi-matx

Some memory, Also as it is over 4Gb you will need to use a 64bit version of Windows.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%282x4gb%29-corsair-ddr3-xms3-pc3-16000-%282000%29-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-9-10-9-27-165v

That comes to 209.76 delivered.

As for SSD, You could get a good quality SSD and install your operating system and programs on it or you could buy something like 3 1Tb SATA 3 7200rpm drives in a RAID 5 configuration which will give good performance and a much larger HDD capacity at the same cost of a 128Gb SSD.

Also i would consider getting a new power supply, a good quality power supply is arguably one of the most important parts of a computer.

mauwf

I'll have a look at that Ebay, I do play the occasional game so I'm not sure whether onboard graphics will be good enough for 3d.

Some of my Excel work is fairly heavy, my work laptop is an older i5 processor and that sometimes struggles. I know very little about the current AMDs though, how do they stack up to the current Intel ones? I seem to remember building a PC many years back with an Athlon and there were occasional incompatibility issues.

HDD wise, I already have a 2TB drive (and another 8TB or so in a server) so I'm not overly concerned about capacity, more the speed boost of the SSD.