New build

[marshalex]

I'm building a comp for my brother for him to go Uni with, so far i've brought the MSI P45 ZILENT P45 MOBO from scan which was on offer (and now no longer appears) and have seen the Coolermaster Black Elite 330 Case With eXtreme Power 460W PSU. He's ordered Win 7 for its release and the grand total so far is £155 out of a budget of no more than about 450. Any recommendations for a processor, memory, HDD and graphics? will attempt some overclocking with it as well seeing as the mobo comes swith a zalman cooler.
Thanks

[Terbinator]

Some people will probably recommend you get a new PSU but depending on what other components your getting that may or may not be an issue. As for RAM a 4GB kit rated at 800mhz should set you back around £40, dont bother getting anything less than 4GB at current prices IMO.
For graphics you could be psu limited (unless you buy a new one) and it depends on which games your going to be playing as the Ati 4850's can be picked up very cheaply now (around £75) and are good bang for the buck at that price.
Processor either go for the E5200/E6300 or if your budget allows maybe the new Core 2 quad range.
Hard drive depends on how much space you want but the Western Digital Black series seems to be a fan favourite around these parts and is around £55 for a 750Gb hard drive.

[marshalex]

well i'm quite flexible on the case and psu if someone can recommend a better combination for not much more and still within budget. was looking at an E6300 as these seem to oc pretty well and run that bit quicker than the E5XXX processors. I was looking at the WD Blacks as i've got one now and have been really impressed with the performance

[Terbinator]

well i'm quite flexible on the case and psu if someone can recommend a better combination for not much more and still within budget. was looking at an E6300 as these seem to oc pretty well and run that bit quicker than the E5XXX processors. I was looking at the WD Blacks as i've got one now and have been really impressed with the performance

Sorry, id reccomend the E6300 actaully becuase as youve said its faster but it also supports virtualisation. A good 450W PSU from Corsair/OCZ or any brand that isnt EZCooL should be fine tbh.

[Pob255]

As long as you're looking at the new e6300 and not the original one

2x2gb 800mhz memory

An ATi 4850 or the gainward gts250 green edition
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=1056567
Rats looks like you've missed the £69 price it was at a week back.

XFX 4850 512mb for £77
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169198
or
1gb version for £80
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168453
Or better stock cooling, Sapphire Vapor-X 4850 512mb
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161309

All of the above will be fine up to 22" resolutions, if you're thinking more then
Sapphire Vapor-X 4870 1gb £130
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-S...DMI-D-Sub-HDCP

PSU should be ok for thoes and a dual core cpu, if you go quad core then personally I'd not go past a 4850

Hard drive depends on how much space you want but a 500gb will cost about £40

[marshalex]

just out of interest also, what sort of price would I be looking at for a decent AM3 board and processor as it seems to be well documented that S775 is on its last legs and ideally i'd like this computer to useable for gaming etc for at least a couple of years

[Pob255]

From another thread

AMD Phenom II 720 BE - £90 (Scan)
ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX - £59 (EBuyer)
4GB DDR3-1600 CL9/8 RAM - approx £70

However just because 775 is going to be replaced shortly there's no real reason that it should be a massive hinderence, I expect my old e6600 to last me another couple of years at least, a quad core should last just as long if not longer.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

just out of interest also, what sort of price would I be looking at for a decent AM3 board and processor as it seems to be well documented that S775 is on its last legs and ideally i'd like this computer to useable for gaming etc for at least a couple of years

You already have got the motherboard so stick with an Intel processor.

I would look to get the following bits:

Intel Q8400 ~ £125

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...che-95W-Retail

OR

Intel Q8200 ~ £103

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...ache-7x-Retail

A quad core will be better supported in future games and with an overclock to around 3ghz would be fine for a while IMHO.

Samsung F1 320gb ~ £34

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/320-G...MB-Cache-89-ms

This is a single platter hard drive.

OCZ 500W Mod XStream Pro PSU ~ £53

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152009

OR

OCZ 400W StealthXStream PSU ~ £34

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152505

If you want a more powerful graphics card than a HD4850 then the 500w PSU will be the better choice especially if you intend to overclock the Q8200 over 3ghz.

4GB PC2-6400 RAM ~ £41

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=1018761

MSI HD 4830 OC 1GB ~ £67

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168791

Coolermaster Elite 330 case ~ £28

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127584

[jim]

To be honest I reckon you could run with any of the afore-mentioned processors for a couple of years, then decide to upgrade to a top-of-the-range model like the Q9650 or whatever (which will be very cheap by then), which will be a nice upgrade and not that far behind an i7 920.

Processor speeds just aren't all that important - okay if you want to do video editing or whatever then it's useful, but the old ones still get it done, just not as quickly. If you want to game, then generally speaking it's not essential to have the latest and greatest. LGA775 will still last a good while longer.

[Zhaoman]

yeah don't worry about the processor, most games don't have a huge cpu requirement. given how easily overclockable recent processors have been it's safe to go for a bog-standard one and overclock it while spending the extra pennies on a better graphics card. that setup will last you much longer than if you got a more expensive cpu and had less to spend on the gpu. the supplied psu *should* be fine tbh but to be safe i would go for one of the suggested ones.

[rushholme]

The PSU you have bought is a bit underpowered and innefficient too.

If you get a £30 dearer PSU, with over 33A combined power on the 12V rails and an 80+ efficiency rating, you will earn back the £30 in lower power usage over its lifetime and it will also allow a much more powerful GFX card, now or in the future.

However, PSUs are ridiculously expensive, so I bought this for £25:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151781

It has 40amps power on 12v, is very quiet and over 76% efficient.

Cons are that it is from a lesser-known brand and comes with only 1 sata connecter. I bought 2 molex splitters and was laughing. The manufacturer is HEC Compucase - which can be regarded as high quality OEM.

[Pob255]

Compucase is NOT a high quality OEM
They are low quality.

I would not trust a £25 650w (yeah right) psu as far as I could throw it.
Ok bad wording given how light these cheap psu's are a 5 year old could probably heft it quite a distance.

The fact that it only has one pci-e connector for a supposed 650w shows how bad it is
I expect you mean that, not a sata connector, pci-e = graphics card connector, sata = sata hard drive/dvd power connector.

I very much doubt it could sustain half it's wattage but as your pc probably don't use more than 300w you should be ok . . . for now.

When it does die expect it to start with hidiously unstable voltages and power fluctuations, then move on to catching fire and finally die with a BANG.
While taking out any or all of your pc components with it.

You pay for quality, not high wattage numbers, when you'er trusting hundreds of pounds worth of pc to your PSU don't buy a real cheap lump of rubbish.

Go over to http://www.jonnyguru.com and have a look through the PSU reviews, they are probably the most comprehensive on the net.
Look at the Death of a Gutless Wonder reviews to see why you should avoid very cheap psu's.

[watercooled]

Just wanted to say there's NO WAY I'd ever use that PSU - even for a moment with a computer - NO CHANCE. Branded PSUs are expensive but that's for a good reason - they work. You spend nearly a hundred on your CPU, maybe more, but don't complain about the price - the PSU is a very important piece of your computer and using a bad one could possibly destroy computer hardware and often does. I agree with everything Pob said and like he said - your '650w' PSU probably couldn't manage 300w - advising someone else to put a timebomb in their computer isn't sound advice IMO. Here's the article Pob spoke of, for reference as well as a few others: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...=Story&reid=71 http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...Story&reid=123 http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...Story&reid=154
I'd also like to add that bad PSUs can slowly damage hardware over time with high levels of ripple and cause components to fail - this won't be covered by warranty so the cost for replacing them will come out of your wallet. Best spending an extra ~£15 on a decent branded PSU now and saving lots more money in the future, eh?

[Pob255]

Corsiar did a fun little video to show why you shouldn't buy cheap psu's
http://corsair.com/cinema/movie.aspx?id=622747

Ok granted there's a strong element of self promotion in this and Corsair have refused to name the brand/model so they could of used a "known" bad psu.
However this is a good illustration of what a bad PSU can do.

[Behemoth]

I'll mirror cat-the-fifths suggesstion of the OCZ PSU. I have the 500 wat version and so far so good

[rushholme]

LOL.

I knew my PSU would cause and controversy and outrage !

FWIW My system uses 315W at the wall whilst gaming. http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ml#post1762039

The PSU stays quiet and doesn't heat up. It doesn't feel much lighter than a Seasonic s12 I had. Monitoring various voltages with Speedfan and Rivatuner + plugins show a
12V vdroop of 0.2V at max load, 5V and 3.3V are unchanged.

I have always been a cheapskate gamer and overclocked as far as possible with cheaper hardware.
Over 15 years the only damaged parts I've had were HDDs and 1 Motherboard. And a socket-A cpu I mangled with the heatsink! Oh, And a 8800gs I voltmodded to destruction!

I've never had a PSU go on me yet and I think what I've got will be reliable with my hardware. YMMV !

edit: I should add that the Arctic Power range from the same manufacturer is crap and that the Z-power series is an anomaly that is only cheap because it has eccentric cabling due to god-knows-what.