New Build Views

[Apache]

Really sorry about this but at the last minute I decided to go self build. OK, after some very helpful advice on another thread and reading that in conjunction with the Custom PC 'Gaming Workhorse' Buyer Guide I've come up with three possible new builds, all priced from Scan:

OPTION 1

Case: £80 Fractal Design Define R3

CPU: £217 Intel i7 950 (I have seen comment that the i7 930 may actually be a better 'pair' with the below mobo)

RAM: £67 Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 1600

Mobo:£139 Asus P6X58D-E (SATA3/890)

Fan: £25 Gelid Tranquillo (a Thermaltake Frio is an option here but may be too loud)

PSU: £62 CoolerMaster GX 750W RS750-ACAAE3-UK

Mon: £100 Approx (looking for good 24 – 27" LCD??)

Vid: £163 Gainward (or Palit equiv?) GTX 460 GS GLH, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 800MHz, 336 Cores, D-Sub/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI

HDD: £67 Western WD1002 FAEX (7200 SATA 3)

CD1: £16 Sony AD-7261S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA, Black, Lightscribe, OEM

CD2: £16 Sony

WiFi: £19 Edimax EW-7722In

KB/M: £44 Logitech Wave (or MX5500 @ 100)

Win 7: £77 Home Premium 64 Bit (OEM)

Total £1092

I could go for an i5-760 and drop the price by about £70 and maybe even 4 GB RAM v 6GB. The latter may be penny pinching though. I could of course reduce the price of the case (but I do want one that is good and easy to build into and route cables etc and also that is quiet). If I dropped the CPU to an i5 I could perhaps add a 64GB SSD for the OS? For another £20 or so I could also swap the vid card for a GTX 470.

OPTION 2 (this is pretty much the Custom PC default spec):

Case: £80 Fractal Design Define R3

CPU: £140 Intel Core i5-760

RAM: £63 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666

Mobo: £85 Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 (there is comment that this mobo is now almost impossible to get and this was a November publication!!! I'd likely go for the UD3 in this price range)

Fan: £25 Gelid Tranquillo

PSU: £65 Antec TruePower New 650W

Mon: £100 Approx (looking for good 24 – 27" LCD??)

Video: £245 Zotac GeForce GTX 470 AMP Edition

HDD: £40 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3

CD1: £16 Sony AD-7261S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA, Black, Lightscribe, OEM

CD2: £16 Sony

WiFi: £19 Edimax EW-7722In

KB/M: £44 Logitech Wave (or MX5500 @ 100)

Win 7: £77 Home Premium 64 Bit

SSD: £110 Crucial Real SSD C300

Total £1015 or £1125 with the SSD

I could add/swap:

£139 Asus P6X58D-E (SATA3/890)

£62 CoolerMaster GX 750W RS750-ACAAE3-UK

£163 Gainward (or Palit equiv?) GTX 460 GS GLH, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 800MHz, 336 Cores, D-Sub/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI or £189 for a GTX470

£67 Western WD1002 FAEX (7200 SATA 3)

OPTION 2a:

Basically as above but with a 460 GTX (saving about £80) or 470 (£60) and either leave it at that or add the SSD:

Video: £163 Gainward (or Palit equiv?) GTX 460 GS GLH, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 800MHz, 336 Cores, D-Sub/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI

SSD: £110 Crucial Real SSD C300*

Total £933 or £1043 with the SSD

I could still add/swap:

£139 Asus P6X58D-E (SATA3/890)

£62 CoolerMaster GX 750W RS750-ACAAE3-UK

£67 Western WD1002 FAEX (7200 SATA 3)

There is a suggested build for a 'Power Gamer' PC that bundles more expensive components (case, PSU and SSD etc) but it only seems worth going with those if you add in the other thing that is responsible for most of the price hike, a £400 GTX 480 card which for me I think is overkill. Once I drop down the spec of that card and the SSD I am left with a pricier case, mobo and PSU, seemingly for no purpose. As such it seems better to stick to option 1 in that regard.

Any views on the above greatly appreciated. Good monitor reccomendations welcome and any new s re new component releases imminent which might reduce the cost of the above. The PC lives next to the DG834PN router so wifi is perhaps redundant across all three saving another £20.

[Apache]

As another option i could also drop the i7 930 2.8 Quad Core for and i5 661 3.33 Dual Core.

[Redwolf]

You don't even list the clock speed. You don't seem to be aware that for CM (all variants) and for other games such as most MMORPGs you won't use multiple cores. If you want to specifically improve price/performance for those games you need to go low # of cores and high per-core clock speed.

Myself, my latest build (not gaming but mostly single-thread apps) was a 3.1 GHz Phenom II dual-core and a dirt cheap Asus microatx mainboard with AMD chipset. Apart from the useless Ethernet chip on there is is a very solid performer and will easily keep up with a 2.8 and sometimes with a 3.0 i7 or i5.

[Apache]

AFAIK both the i7 930 and i5 760 are 2.8 Ghz Quad core, the former being socket 1366. Both have 8MB L2 cache. Being TOTALLY new to building I am not to sure what other figures are/are not important.

[Redwolf]

AFAIK both the i7 930 and i5 760 are 2.8 Ghz Quad core, the former being socket 1366. Both have 8MB L2 cache. Being TOTALLY new to building I am not to sure what other figures are/are not important.

Most thing don't matter for normal gaming. The L2 cache is big enough, you only get into trouble when buying decaf CPUs such as Celerons and Semprons that have very low cache. The memory bandwidth on any i-core is sufficient, the triple channel RAM on the i7s won't be noticeable. But the triple-channel i7s boards have 6 memory slots so your future expandability is better.

When comparing different CPU architectures assume that a i7/i5 at the same clockspeed is about 5-10% faster than an AMD Phenom II. A 2.8 GHz i7/i5 == roughly 3.1 Phenom II. But this can vary a lot depending on what you do.

The graphics card generally has a bigger impact.

You need to decide what is important to you and how much money you can spend. You can buy a dirt cheap gaming box with a dual-core 3.x GHz Phenom II, a cheap AMD chipset board, 4 GB of cheapest RAM and a GT 240 or whatever is in the budget other than a GTS 250. It will run circles around any slower quad-core in a game like CM. And it's pretty low power, so you don't need a ninja power supply. Which you do need for a 4-core i7/i5.

[Apache]

Aaaaaaaaaarrrggggg. Really I hate PC change time. Several suppliers have machines around the £800 mark so I decided I might build and get a better one. trouble is it REALLY is for JUST CM (and some Rome Total war) and some very light Office type work and CD ripping to FLAC, and most of that is done now and with Napster, I rarely buy CDs even!!!

The price has crept up to £1,000 + now (always the way) and I do wonder if it's time to say right STOP. Go AMD/ATI at around 3.4 Ghz and Radeon (not sure which) and save 30% plus. Or maybe, not quite so sure having just had a QUICK look that it'll be much cheaper, maybe £100 in which case I may as well go with the original (latest - LOL) plan.

[Redwolf]

Why would you combine going AMD on CPU+mobochipset and going ATI graphics cards?

That doesn't make any sense. Intel doesn't offer you a competitive price/performance product when you can't use multiple cores. That's hard fact. Whether ATI/AMD graphics cards have good drivers these days is a matter of debate. But which ever way your opinion goes, there is rough price/performance equality with NVidia.

[Apache]

Right. I'm now looking at a Phenom II X4 970 Quad 3.4 Ghz, Asus M4A87TD mobo, GTX 460 (as the only lower spec they do is a 1GB 430 at £60 cheaper and I'm not sure if that will hack CM or, for the sake of £60 if it's just carving the spec down to CM capable too much, whereas a 460 should do the job. The latter needs a 700W PSU rather than a 450W mind. Again the price is creeping up to near the original Intel spec machine so I'm beginning to wonder about the benefits. I'll look more tomorrow. Specced out now!!!

One thing that will help is getting this right. I'm assuming here that a quad core 3.4 Ghz is better, £ for £, than a dual core 3.4 Ghz? On the same line, is a 3.33 Dual Core better than a 2.8 Quad??? Trying to get my head round this but not too well!!!

[Redwolf]

One thing that will help is getting this right. I'm assuming here that a quad core 3.4 Ghz is better, £ for £, than a dual core 3.4 Ghz? On the same line, is a 3.33 Dual Core better than a 2.8 Quad??? Trying to get my head round this but not too well!!!

CM and many other games only use one core. Very simple.

Of course your price for the AMD system creeps up of you slam in a 4-core 3.4 GHz CPU. That's comparable to a 3.1 GHz i7.

[Apache]

Actually the price between Phenom II dual 3.X and quad 3.4 is not that great, between £40 - £60 here. Rest of components remain at around the same price and even the video card is only about £50 difference between the 250 and the 460. So, in all, about £100 saving or so, or roughly 10% of the overall cost, which, given the compromises, does not really seem a significant enough difference in terms of cost/benefit analysis. But thanks for the suggestions, good to check these things out at least. If there was a significant price difference for a machine specced lower and just for CM I'd consider it but for 10% I'll probably go for the contingency that I MIGHT use it for more.

I'm not just asking with regards to CM. I'm trying to work out (for the few other things I do) if a 3.4 quad is better, per se, than a 3.4 duo and THEN where CM is concerned will there be any difference in performance if it was operating on either of the two systems, other components notwithstanding. If I understand what you're saying there's no difference as the 3.4 is per core and the game will only access 1?

And the other aspect is a 3.4 dual better than a 2.8 quad for instance? On the gaming front it seems that in this regard the 3.4 dual is indeed better (albeit most intel 2.8 quads are more pricey than the higher Ghz duals).

[Apache]

My understanding also was that if you went AMD with the CPU you need and AMD board and that they tend to pair better with ATI graphics cards. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe that's old hat now.

[Redwolf]

The only restriction wrt mainboard chipset and graphics card is that to use SLI you need a SLI-capable mainboard, likewise for Crossfire. And that certain NVidia mainboard chipsets did not work with many NVidia cards, but that was during AGP times.

[Apache]

Ah thanks. There seems to be a myth then that AMD = ATI as others have mentioned that preference for pairing before and I seem to recall it from years back too.

Having looked more I CAN probably save £200 or so by going with this system:

CPU: AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 Ghz Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology

HDD: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16M Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive

MEMORY: 4GB (2x2GB) PC12800 DDR3/1600mhz Dual Channel Memory

MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M4A87TD EVO AMD 870 Chipset CrossFireX Support DDR3 Socket AM3 ATX w/ 7.1 Audio, GbLAN, IEEE1394a, USB3.0, SATA-III, RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 3 PCI

SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB 16X PCI Express

It comes out at about £854 but nearly £300 of that goes on the monitor, OS and a Logitech Wave KB/Mouse and they will need to be in any system I go for. I suspect this could eat CM. This is a pre-built machine as I'm beginning to wonder if it is really worth it at this price, given I have a million other things to do. I could probably save £50-80 tops by self building and of course I don't have the access to their testing kit etc if anything does go wrong.

That said, Sandy Bridge launches 9/1/11 and indications seem to be that performance and power consumption are top notch and at a good price.

[Redwolf]

Looks good but as I said the GTS is crap, it's just a rebranded 9xxx series card. The problem with that is that it is a power hog, even idle.

I also predict that you will ignore my warnings that the power supply is of utmost importance until you buy one that blows up your new toy

[Apache]

So what not GTX 460 or above would you put in a lower spec rig, a 250?

Not sure why you make the assumption re me and/or the power supply. A little insulting to be blunt - don't mistake novice for stupid! I'll get whatever power supply is appropriate. Most systems using any of the Nvida 1GB cards seem to demand a 700 or 750. I will run it through a system spec/power ratio site and past any supplier/builder I source the parts/machine from.

I'm leaning towards not scratching around trying to build a lower spec machine now and just get a Sandy Bridge i5 2500K/P8P97 Pro based system with an appropriate card. For the sake of £100-150 for me it's just not worth chopping bits here and there. I figure a GTX460, 470 or even a 570 (if the price is right).

[Apache]

I'm erring more and more on the side of waiting for the Sandy Bridge i5 2500K and the Asus P8P97Pro now I have to say. Aria has the i5 2500K listed as £172 and the price of the P97 will be around £140 I think, the board a bit pricey maybe. In fact, as I have gotten by for 5-6 years with my current machine, a few more weeks wait is neither here nor there particularly given that Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer are both new architecture as opposed to just tweeked, I think they will both be worth waiting for to check out, performance and price wise. The GUI on the P97 IMO makes it s superb board though.

Still can't make my mind up on build/buy. The access the pre-built suppliers have to labs, testing kit and diagnostics is an issue, if of course, they use them.

[Apache]

DONE!!

Just waiting for CPU/Mobo/GTX570 to be available (hence estimated prices) then I plan to go for:

Case: £30 Xclio Godspeed One Full Black or Antec 300 (could go for a Silverstone FT02RW but stupidly expensive!!!)

CPU: £172 Intel i5 2500 K ???

RAM: £63 4 or 6 GB(2/3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 1600 Mhz

Mob: £140 Asus P8P97 Pro ??? (supports SLI and Crossfire)

PSU: £65 Corsair 650W (or maybe 750/850 - need to check system parts - i5 2500 and GTX 560 are supposed to be quite efficient)

Mon: £175 BenQ G2420 HDBL (or Samsung 2494 HM, £200, or 27" Iyama E2710 £270)

Video: £163 Gigabyte or MSI GTX 460 (probs with Palit/Gainward heatsinks and noise) or GTX 560 £200

HDD: £40 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 or Western WD1002 FAEX (7200 SATA 3) @ £65

CD1: £16 Pioneer

CD2: £16 Pioneer

KB/M: £45 Logitech Wave (need Bluetooth dongle??) ***

Win 7: £77 Home Premium 64 Bit

Total: £1,063

Need to consider:

SSD: £97 Crucial Real SSD C300 *** REALLY consider this for the OS!!!!

Fan: £25 Gelid Tranquillo

WiFi: £19 Edimax EW-7722In but not needed I think

Bluetooth: Unless I go for MX5500 KB/M

All I plan to do with this is add more RAM, replace or add another gfx card in 2-4 years time and maybe change the CPU for the top end Sandy Bridge K when they have come down again in 3-4 years. I figure should be OK for 6-8 years, form me at least!!!

Thanks for all the help.

[Redwolf]

Looks nice. Congrats.

[Apache]

Thanks and thanks for help. Glad it's over to be honest, well the spec part!!! Still looking at cases as I can't find the perfect one at moment, at least not for less that £191!!!

[Apache]

PS Motherboard should read P8P67