£400 Build? This okay?

[Duncan_Mon]

Hey all,

Just about to order hopefully today and just speccing up a PC at about £400. Minimal gaming, maybe some indie stuff. Mostly get used as a media management for films and music.

Could do with cutting £30 odd off the current bill but not sure where to make the cuts. Want an SSD as system drive.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/XxffwP

Any hints or is this all good guys?

[ceejays88]

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3098909.htm?CMPID=GS001&_$ja=cgid:12488287010|tsid:59158|cid:200223050|lid:104481260450|nw:g|crid:66 128552210|rnd:6271356050699430135|dvc:c|adp:1o2|bku:1&gclid=CLOzh63imckCFRKeGwodQJsC4g

Get that 5450 (saves £20) instead. and as for the CPU cooler, I wouldnt bother unless you are using is intensively, Stock cooler would be fine for you.

[Bagnaj97]

I wouldn't bother with the 5450 at all. If you could do with cutting £30 just use the IGP in the CPU, you can always add a discrete GPU later if it's needed.

Source

That compares the IGP in an i3-2100 to a 5450 and it's not too far behind. You will probably find the IGP in an i3-4160 is noticeably faster than the 5450!


Also http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare...0/m7668vsm7719 shows the i3-4160 IGP being substantially faster.

[Duncan_Mon]

Wow, I'm shocked at how well the IGPs benchmark.

They didn't even exist last time I built a PC. On board video was a laptop thing and never heard of on home builds.

Crazy interesting though got me reading down the lines of how these APUs work I had no idea.

Thanks though, it does seem like no graphics card is the way to go. Strange typing that lol.


E2a: Will remove aftermarket cooler aswell. Thought the CPU didn't come with one.

[ceejays88]

double check when you are buying yours, because some dont come with it. but this one on ebuyers does come with it.

[KnightInd2000]

I've just bought this PSU http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...n-atx-v231-psu and you may want to consider it too. For an extra £10 it is much more efficient and it has Japanese capacitors. Plus it's semi modular so if you're not putting a graphics card in yet then you can leave those cables out for now making for a neater build.

[ceejays88]

I've just bought this PSU http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...n-atx-v231-psu and you may want to consider it too. For an extra £10 it is much more efficient and it has Japanese capacitors. Plus it's semi modular so if you're not putting a graphics card in yet then you can leave those cables out for now making for a neater build.

Good price, although might be a little overkill if he is trying to save money

[Bagnaj97]

Another option is to look at AMD APUs. The cpu is slightly slower, but for "media management for films and music" you wouldn't notice any real world difference. For gaming on the IGP you'd be better off though as AMD's IGPs are more powerful than Intel's.

[EndlessWaves]

Integrated graphics have been fairly common for ten years or so now, although they only moved from the motherboard to the processor and started to advance quickly around five years ago.

I would swap to the new Intel i3-6300 rather than going for the older i3-4160. It's a few quid more but there are various media improvements like better HEVC decoding hardware as well as being slightly faster.

You'll need a new motherboard. The i3-6100 supports both DDR3L and DDR4. The motherboard you picked seems to be fairly expensive for it's limited feature list, what ports and outputs do you need from it?

[Duncan_Mon]

Thanks all for the replies

This is where I'm at now

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/cFmjTW

Seems a good compromise and gets me down below the budget of £400. Can maybe get another terrabyte of storage in budget unless there's something else worth speccing in now.

Modular PSUs are tempting and cool and all but trying to keep this for function only. Last couple PCs I built a decade or so ago were all modular, loved them but I'll be fine without now.

I've not looked at AMD in a long time. Could be worth a quick price comparison between two setups.

From motherboard all I need is HDMI out, Gigabit Ethernet in, on board USB3 be nice. Would like to hook it into amp for sound setup aswell but not looked into that too much and if I need to add a sound card later outside budget that's fine.

Hmm, ready to order nearly I think.

[ceejays88]

That looks spot on.
Nicely picked

[Danashcroft]

Looks like you've settled on a nice build actually

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A few things - that EVGA uses HEC as an OEM who are hit and miss. The XFX PSUs like this one use Seasonic who tend to be better:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-...mm-fan-atx-psu

Also,for basic media usage and some gaming I would get this CPU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...65w-cpu-retail

Fast DDR3 RAM is also reasonable cheap too.

[Duncan_Mon]

Ah you've got me all hesitating and making up amd builds now.

Quick Google shows those A8s bench marking slower?

PSUs a good shot though. Definetly for the price.

I was considering 16gb of the same slow ddr3 taking me up to 404 odd quid so fine. Not sure id ever need 16 gig but it sounded appealing lol.

[EndlessWaves]

The A8-7600 is half the price, competitor to the Pentium G4500 so it is a slower CPU than the i3, although marginally faster graphics-wise (20%?)

JohnnyGuru were happy with the EVGA 500W unless you're saying their are QA problems rather than design ones: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...Story&reid=384

Scan offer a Seasonic 430W directly for £30: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-...ps-haswell-rea

[Duncan_Mon]

Well this is what I ended up with.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3JKVVn

£400 all in after changing suppliers a bit to get most through Amazon and scan. Grudge giving the ***** at Amazon any money but they couldn't be beat on over half my components.

16gb ram was where I put the extra £20 odd I had. Not sure if that's worth while or not. But done now!