£250-£300 burning a hole in my pocket .....

[killie99]

Ok, not built a pc in years - too many good misprices from Dell - but I now need to build a new pc for myself as my daughter is needing her's replaced so she can have my current machine. I've got various bits and bobs lying around so I don't need that many bits - just the important ones. I need the following:

A motherboard
A CPU and cooler
Memory
Case
Power Supply

I'm not a gamer but I do edit photo's/videos.

I have an HD2600XT PCIe graphics card that I'm quite happy to continue to use, got HDD's and DVD writers that will be re-used and I have the OS.

Would love to have a crack at overclocking again after many years of using Dells so any suggestions anyone?

[staffsMike]

Perhaps something along the lines of

Coolermaster CM-690 ~£50 (scan)
OCZ Modextreme 400W ~£40 (ebuyer)
Asus-M4A785TD-V-EVO (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-SATA-RAID-VGA) ~£70
£50 for DDR3 (3GB) http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/3GB-%...d-CAS-9-9-9-24

Leaves enough for either an Athlon II, phenom dual or at a push phenom tri core
http://www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?ProductId=28501

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ok, not built a pc in years - too many good misprices from Dell - but I now need to build a new pc for myself as my daughter is needing her's replaced so she can have my current machine. I've got various bits and bobs lying around so I don't need that many bits - just the important ones. I need the following:

A motherboard
A CPU and cooler
Memory
Case
Power Supply

I'm not a gamer but I do edit photo's/videos.

I have an HD2600XT PCIe graphics card that I'm quite happy to continue to use, got HDD's and DVD writers that will be re-used and I have the OS.

Would love to have a crack at overclocking again after many years of using Dells so any suggestions anyone?

This is what I would look at:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 ~ £89

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159071

Asus M4A785TD-V EVO ~ £73

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169532

OR

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P ~ £69

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/GIGAB...770T-UD3P-MOBO

If you are lucky you maybe able to unlock the fourth core on the X3 720.

4GB DDR3 ~ £43

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166996

Antec 300 case ~ £45

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854

Corsair 450W HX ~ £55

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152606

OR

OCZ 400w ~ £34

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

Get the latter PSU if you do not intend to get a higher end graphics card.

Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro CPU cooler ~ £16

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/101471

With the cheaper motherboard and PSU the total comes to around £300. You should be able to get the X3 720 upto around 3.4ghz to 3.5ghz at least although as with any overclocking YMMV.

Video encoding software tends to like more cores so the triple core does have an advantage over most dual cores especially when it is under £90 and has an unlocked multiplier.

Both motherboards are decent for overclocking and have had excellent reviews o the internet.

[Pob255]

Would it be worth looking at Asus M4A785TD M EVO (granted not currently in stock)
and useing the onboard 4200 instead of that HD2600XT (I think it's ether faster or about the same)
But at the same time to run a desktop you don't need anything much at all, photoediting will not benefit at all (photoshop CS3 can but only with nvidia cards)
Video encodeing/decodeing will get some benefit.

with an mATX motherboard you could then look at an mATX case
The Antec p180 mini would be nice for £60
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140996
or the Coolermaster elite 340 for £32
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129891

With thoes look at the OCZ ModXStream 400w modular psu for £42
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152509

[staffsMike]

mATX and P180 mini is a lovely combo for quiet computing.It's what i use

[killie99]

just curious, why is everyone going for AMD's?

[Sputnik]

just curious, why is everyone going for AMD's?

Best bang for buck at the moment with an upgrade path for the future.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

just curious, why is everyone going for AMD's?

The X3 720 is the best CPU under £100 for video editing:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16382/8

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...710-am3-cpus/8

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ph...-review-am3/16

At stock speeds the X3 720 is competing with much more expensive Intel processors such as the dual core E8400 and E8500 which are over £100. The E7000 series dual cores have less cache so are slower clock for clock than the E8000 series for image editing and video encoding.

[killie99]

hmm, what about an X4 9650 instead of the X3?

[staffsMike]

I wouldn't. Try to stick to the X4's that are Phenom II's.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

hmm, what about an X4 9650 instead of the X3?

The Phenom II is at least 5% faster clock for clock than the Phenom and consumes less power too.

[killie99]

ok , thanks. Looks like the Antec mini case and the X3 720 is the one for me .....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look to get one of these motherboards:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?asu-m4a785

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?gbt-785gmt

They are both DDR3 ones. DDR3 will mean a slight performance bump and a slight decrease in overhaul power consumption.

If you do not mind staying with DDR2 this motherboard is also decent:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/pr...ource=googleps

[killie99]

OK, some parts bought! Got an Antec P180 mini case withe Antec power supply. Bought a Phenom II X3 720.
Seeing as I'm looking to overclock the processor should I be going for 1333MHz ram or 1600MHz ram?
I thought both of these looked like good prices but do I really the 1600MHz stuff?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166995
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148818

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OK, some parts bought! Got an Antec P180 mini case withe Antec power supply. Bought a Phenom II X3 720.
Seeing as I'm looking to overclock the processor should I be going for 1333MHz ram or 1600MHz ram?
I thought both of these looked like good prices but do I really the 1600MHz stuff?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166995
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148818

If you are overclocking the 1600mhz RAM will help if you need to run the RAM faster than the official 1333mhz which is supported. Also it will enable you to run the RAM at 1333mhz using low latencies which is good for AMD processors as their memory controllers are more lantency sensitive rather than memory speed sensitive.

[killie99]

For a motherboard, I think I'm down to looking at either the Asus M4A785TD-M or the Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H (unless someone knows better).
The Asus board is listed as supporting 140W CPU's but I can't see anything about this for the Gigabyte, anyone know if it does? Are there any real differences between these boards or is it just a matter of tossing a coin?