Looking for ideas for pc build sometime next year

[Anakey]

Hi all, been a long time since i was last on here, but i am thinking that this is probably the best place to go for hardware advice. Now that i have finished my university degree, the laptop that i used whilst doing so is starting to look very old and slow after 4 years so i have been thinking about building my own pc. i will be mostly using it to play games, however not the new fps or anything like that. My games are mostly 3-4 years old and even though they did play on my laptop with the integrated graphics i could not play them in the full settings. Also my laptop lacks a HDMI output to take full advantage of my full HD monitor. I am looking to spend about £600-700 so not a cutting edge machine, but one that will hopefully last a long time. i have pretty much no idea about hardware other then knowing what components i would need, but have started to pick out some components which may work.

Motherboard - Gigabyte SKT-1155 Z68MA-D2H-B3 Motherboard
CPU - Intel / Core I5 / 2400 / SKT 1155 / Retail
Memory Corsair - CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9 16GB 1600MHz PC3-12800 CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Four Module Kit
Blu ray rw - LITE-ON IHBS112-32 Internal SATA Blu-ray Writer - Black
Case - Xigmatek Asgard III Chassis with Window

What i need help on

Storage - Probably ssd for os with a larger hdd for everything else
Graphics card - as long as it will have no problems playing old games at full HD and has a HDMI port
Wireless card - As i do not have an earthernet port in my bedroom i would need a wireless card
Power supply

obviously budgeting is going to be the main concern, i don't mind taking a slight cut in performance, as long as the amount saved is worth it.

[Bearcat]

Hi Anakey. Welcome back to the forum!

Here are links to a couple of threads, that were started by myself and BigGuy, when we were in the process of building our new PC's. There is a lot of useful information there. I really enjoyed building my own PC and I am sure you will also.

It would also be helpful if you could give us an idea of how much you are willing to spend on the hardware you mentioned in your post.

http://forum.raymond.cc/hardware/310...ter-build.html

http://forum.raymond.cc/hardware/288...ter-build.html

[Anakey]

as i said in my opening post about $600-$700 i think thats about $1000

[BigGuy]

I think Bearcat was asking if you had a price range for each separate piece of hardware. That way posters can make recommendations based on what you want to spend on each one.

[Anakey]

well at the moment, the motherboard that i listed in my opening post is £90 there may be another board that will still have all the required connections etc for cheaper though.

The i5 that i listed is £160 but i could probably go with a less expensive cpu.

The 16 GB of RAM is £75 with 8GB being £66 so i would probably still go with the 16GB as there is so little price difference.

The case that i listed in the opening post is £33 as long as everything fits inside i don't want to be spending a lot of money on a case that is going to be under my desk.

Storage, i have been having second thoughts about the ssd as right now they are still fairly expensive components and after taking in everything else it might not be cost effective to go with a ssd until they get a bit cheaper. As for the 2nd HDD, i think about £90-100 would be the cost of a 600GB-1TB HDD

Graphics card, as i don't know how much a graphics card would be that i am after i can't really put a price down other then <£100

Power supply, again i don't know anything about PSU so probably about £50

[Bearcat]

Hi again Anakey. Thanks for additional information. Here are a few ideas I have. Take them for what they are worth! And I'm sure the other guys will have their own recommendations also.

1) Intel / Core I5 / 2400 / SKT 1155 / Retail - Looking at the cost for this it looks like for an additional £8 you could buy the Intel i5 2500k, which is the CPU I bought last summer. It would give you better performance for not that much more money.

2) case - Xigmatek Asgard III Chassis with Window - I would consider going with a different case, something like the CoolerMaster RC-692 CM690 II. The main reasons are that it has very good airflow for internal cooling and I believe is big enough to handle the rather large heat spreaders that come on the Corsair Vengeance RAM.

3) Since your motherboard will support SATA III, I would go a 6 Gbs hard drive for better performance. The 1 Tb hdd's I looked at were all around £100, but you could save some money by going with a 750 Gb hdd.

4) For the PSU, I think a 500 to 550 watt model would be plenty sufficient. Two models that I like are the Antec BP550 (550 watts) or the SeaSonic 512 (520 watts). They are both around £61.

5) As for a GPU, I have the EVGA GTX460 superclocked and I love it. It will handle any games you wish to throw at it. The cost is around £120, but I think it might be worth considering.

[hal9000]

The 16 GB of RAM is £75 with 8GB being £66 so i would probably still go with the 16GB as there is so little price difference.

Where on earth are you finding 8GB Ram prices like that?! 8GB is widely available for around £30-£35 and is going to save you ~£40 to use elsewhere in the build. 16GB would be a waste of money that could be put to better use on the CPU, HDD, GFX etc...

The 2500k has long been known as the Sandybridge bang for buck king and is worth the extra £10-£15 as Bearcat points out. Don't forget, any overclocking would ideally need an aftermarket cooler so another ~£15 would be needed for something like an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro.

Although the Gigabytes are reasonable boards, they do seem to be a bit behind on the Z68 front. They're lacking most of the extras of the Z68 like 'Smart response technology' and 'Lucid Virtu'. Although not a problem, they still use the old keyboard driven BIOS and not the shiny new mouse driven UEFI one. Also, you have picked a microATX board which is a little more cramped around the GFX card area than a full ATX board. It looks a bit lost in a reasonable size case as well!! Something like an Asus P8Z68-V LX is ~£80 and is ATX, has the Z68 features, has the UEFI BIOS and still has SATA3, USB3 etc. like the Gigabyte.

Not quite as good as Bearcats CM690 II, a Coolermaster Elite 330 & Coolermaster eXtreme Power 500W PSU can be had for <£50 and are both adequate for your needs. There are also plenty of other Coolermaster cases at £30-£40 to look at. My mate has just got a HAF 912 Plus case and loves it so it's something to look at although I think it looks like the bottom of a work boot!!!

As for Blu-ray, I've just put an LG into my own PC and apart from looking really cool, it's burned several of the cheap Aone BD-R's without any problem. Mine was £62 for the retail kit so it gets a thumbs up from me.

You really can't go too far wrong on the PSU front as long as you stay away from the cheaper brands like Winpower, Casecom, Sumvision and Ace etc... 500w+ and a quality brand should be more than enough.

An overclocked GTX 460, a Radeon 6850/6870 or a none Ti GTX 560 will all do what you want for around the same price. They are all over £100 but you may have to adjust your budget slightly for this as most cards under £100 just don't cut it at 1920x1080. Just found an EVGA Nvidia 1Gb GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked at Scan for £107! Cracking price.

Sadly, as you probably know, now is a bad time to buy a Hard Drive although prices seem to be dropping slightly these last couple of weeks. A WD 750GB SATA-III Caviar Blue is ~£80 and an OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SATA-III SSD is around the same price. If your budget can stretch to both, great. If not, get the HDD now and save up for an SSD, it makes a BIG difference at the end of the day.

If you ever game online, Wifi isn't really going to cut it and you should look at something like powerline adapters for ~£30 or getting Ethernet to the PC somehow. If you don't game, there are plenty of USB sticks or PCI cards (a full ATX motherboard is helpful here) at the £10-£15 mark which will do the job. Had a lot of success with Edimax USB / PCI adapters myself even though they aren't known as a 'quality' brand.

[Bearcat]

Judging by the prices that hal is listing, it looks like computer hardware is a bit cheaper in the US. So the prices I show may not be applicable for you. The price Aanakey is giving for Corsair Vengeance RAM are in line with what I could find over here, but like I mentioned below, be aware of the height of those heat spreaders. Another member, JayCub, actually removed them, because they stood up too tall. This kind of thing was why I opted to spend the extra money for a full tower computer case. It has plenty of room to accomodate all my hardware, but allows maximum air flow, so it stays cool inside the case. The biggest drawback is that they cost quite a bit more than a mid tower.

[hal9000]

Judging by the prices that hal is listing, it looks like computer hardware is a bit cheaper in the US

Welcome to the UK mate!! Everything is dearer here, even stuff made here and shipped to the US is cheaper over there! Judging by Anakey using £'s in his posts, I'm assuming he'll be buying that way as well.

The Corsair Vengeance RAM can also be purchased in low profile size without the extra height of the fins for the same price, which is what I would recommend to avoid any problems. Got some of the Ice White stuff myself and it looks pretty cool (no pun intended!) attached to a black motherboard. The main problem with the high sticks is clearance with an aftermarket CPU cooler more than anything else.

[Bearcat]

Welcome to the UK mate!! Everything is dearer here, even stuff made here and shipped to the US is cheaper over there! Judging by Anakey using £'s in his posts, I'm assuming he'll be buying that way as well.

Glad I didn't have to buy my computer hardware over there. I paid plenty the way it was. But a large chunk of it was for my SSD, which consequently has come down quite a bit in price.

The main problem with the high sticks is clearance with an aftermarket CPU cooler more than anything else.

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that.

The Corsair Vengeance RAM can also be purchased in low profile size without the extra height of the fins for the same price, which is what I would recommend to avoid any problems.

OK. I didn't realize that. I would definitely go that way then.

Got some of the Ice White stuff myself and it looks pretty cool (no pun intended!) attached to a black motherboard.

I never thought doing something like that! It does sound cool!