Finally finished!!

[marshalex]

After many weeks of planning and hunting around for the best/cheapest components I finally put my brothers rig together:

Core i5 750 - £141.44
MSI GD80 - £85.50
4Gb G.Skill 1600MHz CL9 - £66.99
Asus 4870 512Mb Dark Knight - £91.45
Corsair HX450 - £52.20
Antec 300 - £43.97 (plus 2 x coolermaster blue led fans £10.21)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500Gb - £34.49
Samsung SH-S223B/BEBE - £15.16
Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Currently have the processor set at 3.2 using the XMP profile. When i'm not working/learning i'll get and give it a proper stress test before handing it over. Well impressed with windows 7 taking 15 mins to completely install so things are looking good!
Any thoughts on potential overclocking/tweaking? Didn't find the OC genie that good as it wouldn't run the memory at 1600MHz, but it did give a fairly decent overclock (think it was around 3.4)

[watercooled]

Nice build. I'm planning to get an i5 setup soon - would you recommend that motherboard?

[marshalex]

definately, it was so easy to use and setup, hardly required changing any settings at all, the package that comes with it is really good too, full of cables, adaptors etc. not sure on how much difference there is between the gd65 and the gd80 feature wise (apart from voltage readout points and a debug led that i can think of) but not sure if the gd80 is worth the extra £60 (got a cheapy one from ebuyer). i'll post back a few more thoughts once i've got some time to have a proper play with it. will definately recommend the spinpoint f3 as well (going on how quickly windows installed!)

[watercooled]

Thanks. I'm just upgrading CPU/mobo/RAM and probably won't OC.

[Disturbedguy]

Hey mate, thats a nice looking rig there.

If you dont mind me asking, how much did it cost? If you dont want to tell me the exact amount, can you give a ball park as I am still trying to decide on a new rig for the family.

[marshalex]

no its fine dont worry. including the extra 2 coolermaster fans purchased for the case and not including an OS (student licenses ) it came to £540. i've edited the original post to show individual component costs

[pav]

no its fine dont worry. including the extra 2 coolermaster fans purchased for the case and not including an OS (student licenses ) it came to £540. i've edited the original post to show individual component costs

Would you mind mentioning where you got your components from please.

Thanks.

[marshalex]

processor, psu, hdd, fans all from scan (various today only offers and trade discount on the fans), g.skill memory was collected from overclockers, case and optical drive from dabs, graphics card from novatech and the gd80 from ebuyer when they had the promo stock. Considering originally i only wanted to spend around 500 for an extra 40 squids i think i've got a decent spec which should last a couple of years, possibly with an upgrade to a 5850 later down the line and some extra memory should the need arise. all i need to get him now is a monitor, which he isn't desperate for so will see what comes up at crimbo