PC Build - mid-high end

[Agent]

Do not get a Kingston V300. Loads of issues with them.

Go with a Crucial or Samsung. You'll see differences in some benchmarks, but in the real world you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference.

[TAE]

I think I've swapped the SSD for the M500. I'll post the new specs up this evening as I've mixed bits from my original specifications with the given advice now to hopefully get the best build I can for the money. Thanks again for the advice so far

[Bonebreaker777]

Do not get a Kingston V300. Loads of issues with them.

Go with a Crucial or Samsung. You'll see differences in some benchmarks, but in the real world you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference.

Beside the publicised problems with cheaper parts thus (significantly) reduced speed as opposite of the reviews, any other problems? Asking out of curiosity.

[Agent]

Beside the publicised problems with cheaper parts thus (significantly) reduced speed as opposite of the reviews, any other problems? Asking out of curiosity.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1457629/p...ay-by-kingston

It's not just the NAND issue. There are some serious performance issues with the drive, even with the synchronous based drives (the 'fast' ones). I know Sandforce has always been pretty pants at long term performance, but these seem to really fall through the floor.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A few things - if you want VT-d support you need to make sure the motherboard supports it.

The RAM speed is OTT and I would go for the cheapest half decent RAM which can run at 1600MHZ.

I would probably get a better graphics card,unless you are really not playing intensive games.

Also,a 500W PSU would be more than enough even with something like a GTX760 or R9 280.

512GB SSDs are getting quite "cheap" too:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT51.../dp/B00KFAGCUM

[TAE]

I've revised the build to the following. After all your advice, I've upped the graphics card, but lowered the processor and ram slightly. I won't go for a bigger/more expensive SSD at the moment, but as I expand the HDDs in the PC, I may upgrade the SSD too.

The current specs are:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/6kWQcf
CPU Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor - £175
Motherboard Asus MAXIMUS VII RANGER ATX LGA1150 Motherboard - £124.76
RAM Kingston Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory - £98.52
SSD Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive - £52.68
HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - £38.86
Video/graphics XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card - £149.99
Case Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case - £44.99
PSU Corsair Builder 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply - £62.70

Total: £747.50

As I said before, it is not a gaming machine primarily (so the graphics card is over the top), but since it's a pretty good graphics card pretty cheaply, why not!
As I said before, It will probably mainly be used for virtual machines (although when I add more hdds, I'll probably set it up in RAID and back up my laptop to it too) with some web development (PHP/html/mysql) and a small amount of programming (java/c#/python)

What are the thoughts on the PSU? A lot of people have said to go for a 500W one, but I want to be safe with any future expansion too, so haven't downgraded it yet.

Do you think it's now about as good as I'll get for my money, or any further suggestions/improvements?

Thanks for all the suggestions, I think it's a better rounded machine now,

TAE

[sgtfluffybutt]

I've revised the build to the following. After all your advice, I've upped the graphics card, but lowered the processor and ram slightly. I won't go for a bigger/more expensive SSD at the moment, but as I expand the HDDs in the PC, I may upgrade the SSD too.

The current specs are:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/6kWQcf
CPU Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor - £175
Motherboard Asus MAXIMUS VII RANGER ATX LGA1150 Motherboard - £124.76
RAM Kingston Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory - £98.52
SSD Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive - £52.68
HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - £38.86
Video/graphics XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card - £149.99
Case Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case - £44.99
PSU Corsair Builder 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply - £62.70

Total: £747.50

As I said before, it is not a gaming machine primarily (so the graphics card is over the top), but since it's a pretty good graphics card pretty cheaply, why not!
As I said before, It will probably mainly be used for virtual machines (although when I add more hdds, I'll probably set it up in RAID and back up my laptop to it too) with some web development (PHP/html/mysql) and a small amount of programming (java/c#/python)

What are the thoughts on the PSU? A lot of people have said to go for a 500W one, but I want to be safe with any future expansion too, so haven't downgraded it yet.

Do you think it's now about as good as I'll get for my money, or any further suggestions/improvements?

Thanks for all the suggestions, I think it's a better rounded machine now,

TAE

I would say that since you're not overclocking and that the xeon doesn't allow for it there is no point in getting a z97 board. The H97 board I've added still allows for raid support so you're fine in that case. I've also changed the power supply, I've gone for a 550w 80+ Gold psu that is of a much better quality than the CX brand. You don't need 750w unless you're crossfire-ing and even then it's better to just upgrade the whole GPU. Also changed the GPU since you saved money on the motherboard to the 280x, if you still want to save more money then drop down to the 280 since you won't be doing tons of gaming.

[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/CykM4D) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/CykM4D/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/inte...x80646e31230v3) | £175.00 @ Aria PC
**Motherboard** | [ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/asro...rboard-h97pro4) | £65.45 @ More Computers
**Memory** | [Kingston Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/king...x16c10b1bk216x) | £98.52 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | [Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cruc...-ct120m500ssd1) | £52.68 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | [Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/seag...ve-st1000dm003) | £36.00 @ Aria PC
**Video Card** | [XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-...ard-r9280xtdfd) | £188.74 @ Scan.co.uk
**Case** | [Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-case-200r) | £44.99 @ Amazon UK
**Power Supply** | [Corsair CSM 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cors...-supply-cs550m) | £55.31 @ More Computers
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £716.69
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-28 09:47 BST+0100 |

[TAE]

I would say that since you're not overclocking and that the xeon doesn't allow for it there is no point in getting a z97 board. The H97 board I've added still allows for raid support so you're fine in that case. I've also changed the power supply, I've gone for a 550w 80+ Gold psu that is of a much better quality than the CX brand. You don't need 750w unless you're crossfire-ing and even then it's better to just upgrade the whole GPU. Also changed the GPU since you saved money on the motherboard to the 280x, if you still want to save more money then drop down to the 280 since you won't be doing tons of gaming.

[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/CykM4D) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/CykM4D/by_merchant/)

I'll swap to that motherboard and PSU. I'll leave the graphics card as is (I think the current one is plenty good enough for me ). Any money I save, I'll put towards a decent monitor!

Thanks again,
TAE

[Bonebreaker777]

Out of curiosity, does that PSU supports the new C6/C7 Haswell states? If not,might as well change the PSU for one which does (a subtle excuse to make you change that PSU for different one, a nice build like this deserves something better).

[TAE]

Out of curiosity, does that PSU supports the new C6/C7 Haswell states? If not,might as well change the PSU for one which does (a subtle excuse to make you change that PSU for different one, a nice build like this deserves something better).

The PSU that sgtfluffybutt suggested certainly does. I think the other one does too.

I ordered the PC parts yesterday, and it all arrived today (apart from the RAM which might not be here until Friday :'( ). I hope it all works! I might have to buy some RAM tomorrow locally due to impatience!

[Bonebreaker777]

So how's the RAM/build coming along?

[TAE]

I gave up waiting on the RAM and bought a 4GB stick from a local shop. Will upgrade it when the 16Gb arrives.

The PC is built (and more impressively, working!) and I've thus far just been playing around with it installing drivers, customising bits etc.

The final build (well, when the new ram arrives) ended up being:
Asrock H97 Pro 4 motherboard
Xeon E3-1230 CPU (seems to sit at about 3.6/7 MHz, so about 0.3 more than advertised... I haven't (intentionally) overclocked it.
120GB Crucial M500 SSD
1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card
Kingston Black 16GB RAM
Corsair 200R Case
Corsair CSM 550W 80+ Gold PSU

I haven't had any blue screens of death yet (and I've had the PC on for a good few hours in total - must be some kind of record for me!), so it seems to be a pretty stable build thus far.

[MrJim]

Xeon E3-1230 CPU (seems to sit at about 3.6/7 MHz, so about 0.3 more than advertised... I haven't (intentionally) overclocked it.

I expect the Asrock BIOS does the same thing as Asus, which is to offer 'Multi-core Enhancement' for CPUs which have a 'turbo' mode; instead of only using the turbo frequency (3.6Ghz) on a single core, it runs it on all the cores continuously, temps permitting. It's a form of 'overclocking', using the turbo feature of the CPU.

[TAE]

I expect the Asrock BIOS does the same thing as Asus, which is to offer 'Multi-core Enhancement' for CPUs which have a 'turbo' mode; instead of only using the turbo frequency (3.6Ghz) on a single core, it runs it on all the cores continuously, temps permitting. It's a form of 'overclocking', using the turbo feature of the CPU.

That would explain the faster speeds I haven't done anything too taxing on it yet though, so I'll have to try running the system under a more intensive environment

[Dareos]

yes... but can it run Crysis?

Glad to hear you got it up and running bud, cya soon I hope

[Bonebreaker777]

I expect the Asrock BIOS does the same thing as Asus, which is to offer 'Multi-core Enhancement' for CPUs which have a 'turbo' mode; instead of only using the turbo frequency (3.6Ghz) on a single core, it runs it on all the cores continuously, temps permitting. It's a form of 'overclocking', using the turbo feature of the CPU.

Bugger! My AsRock doesn't allows it with my Ivy Bridge, regardless of the setting in the BIOS. Maybe my microcode is too new and it is disabled

If you don't need, don't update your BIOS! So you can keep your free 300Mhz extra.