Need advice & opinions for my new build

[Savas]

Hello all!

I need advice and opinions on my new build. Before I go ahead and purchase, can someone let me know if I'm doing something wrong or buying something that's going to be out-dated in 6-9 months or anything else that they've spotted? Thanks a lot. Really appreciated.

Here's the list:
Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.06 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 23x Ratio, 130W, Retail
£234.02

850W Corsair HX Series, Modular, 80 PLUS Silver, 90% Eff', SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, 7 Year Warranty
£129.23

6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), CAS 8-8-8-24, DHX, XMP, New connector, 1.65V
£111.81

Asus P6X58D-E, Intel X58, S1366, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2000 (OC), SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX
£149.91

120GB Corsair SSD 2.5" Force Series 285MB/s Read 275MB/s Write, includes 2.5” to 3.5” bracket
£174.04

Corsair Hydro Series H70 High-performance CPU Cooler, LGA1156, 1366, 775, AM2/AM3
£72.83
1

LianLi PC8FIB, Black, Mid Tower Case, USB 3.0, eSATA, 120mm LED Fan, w/o PSU
£129.20

Total: £1,047.52

Here's the direct link: (Sorry can't use a full URL due to forum rules).
scan.co.uk/savedbasket/432bb17ca85841ad8814d881f529e0e6

P.S. The only thing I'm missing at the moment is a graphics card, but I'll choose that after I've built my system. As I've not yet properly decided on which one.

[vinnyT]

Welcome to the forum.

Componants look good, but the psu, at 850w is rather powerful, unless you are intending on adding dual gfx cards (top end cards, at that), you could get away with a good quality (like Corsair) psu rated at ~650w.

[Pob255]

Yep as vinnyT said, psu is overkill unless you're considering sli/crossfire
Other than that you've got a very nice system there, although one big question is what are you planning to use it for? if all this is going to be is for internet and office use then it's massive overkill.

As to being out of date in 6months, almost all cpu's and gpu's are but that will not stop what you got still being very good.

personally I would add a 500gb or higher hard drive for additional storage

Also just checking the obvious but do you have a 64bit OS to go with it?

[dirky]

Dvd drive?

[Savas]

Hey thanks guys. I registered a long time ago (2006), but never was the posting type. Only now my system is considerably out-dated that I need a well deserved upgrade (still using IDE haha).

vinnyT, Pob255, Yeah I chose the PSU specifically in case I would need it for SLI/crossfire. Considering computer requirements and also the duel cards, I wasn't sure exactly how much watts I would need, so I went with 850 watts. What's do you guys think the minimum is for duel GPU?

Pob255; I plan to use it specifically for gaming. In terms of being out-dated I'm specifically concerned about bottlenecked components. I don't mind out-dated CPU's or GPU's that's inevitable, but if my mobo or socket type isn't capable of using a new CPU (GPU) in 6-12 months then that would mean the whole system would be redundant. Same with other parts, pretty much.

I have about 1 TB in storage space (externally) so I'm good.

I have a Windows 7 student edition waiting to be used (still on XP atm).

dirky: I use an external DVD drive at the moment, but plan to get a blu-ray later when I have the funds. I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible while going for the near-best products then later buying the optional extra stuff.

Here's the updated basket:
scan.co.uk/savedbasket/2efb455e69dc4acaafe1d8559fc7d6a3

I removed the case considering it was out of stock, so I ordered it elsewhere.
I also removed the SSD because it was out of stock and went up in price, so if anyone can recommend me a really good SSD at around 100 GB's with top range specs, please do. I'm still newbish with SSD's.

[c.ruel]

I just bought a HD 5850 for £115 on play.com along with a few other members of this forum. Here is a link to the thread: http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...-114-99-a.html

Don't want to steal the thunder of the guy that discovered it. Although it is preorder so it won't be available until the 6th. Might be an idea for a decent gpu and then you xfire them later on if you fancied and make use of that 850w psu!

Also is that savas that use to play 1.6 for IMG?

TBH just get a H50 plus another fan rather than shelling out for a H70 ... honestly not worth it.

[Savas]

hey c.ruel. I'll keep an eye on that. Thanks for the heads up.

I've not been paying attention to GPU benchmarks for a while now so in terms of GPU, I need to go and read a whole bunch of reviews and update myself before I make a proper decision. At the moment I'm contemplating even going SLI/crossfire and just down grading the PSU and saving on the watts. Also temperatures and specially noise that would be generated by the duels. But that all depends on what's currently my best choice of GPU, which depends on bang for buck in the GPU market.

I can't recall IMG, but I did play cs1.6

A while ago I checked out some reviews in regards to H50 (with a custom fan) vs H70 and the H70 was still capable of being better. Plus it had some minor improvements, so considering the price differences, it's not that bad to just go with the H70 as it's just £20 difference. Which would pretty much cover the price of a separate fan.

Right now I'm missing:
*1 SSD for main OS.
*GPU choice(s).
*PSU adjustment based on the GPU I choose. (HX650W if I go with single GPU, unless someone recommends a better CPU) or 850W Corsair HX Series for duel GPU.

Question: Can a Corshair HX650W be enough for a duel card set-up?

[c.ruel]

To answer your question about which psu to go for, for which graphical setup, I would recommend having a look at this list. Now this list is for silverstone psus, but the same should apply to any decent brand of psus especially as many would argue that corsair, antec, enermax, sea sonic etc etc are better than silverstone.

Basically in a nutshell according to that list this is what the following wattages can support:

600w will support dual HD 5850s, 1 HD 5970 or 1 GTX 480

700w will support dual GTX 470s and dual HD 5850s as well a single GTX 480 and a single HD 5970

You need 850w before you can get dual HD 5870s

and You need 1200w before you can support dual GTX 480s

TBH I think 1200w for dual GTX 480s is over kill but there you go.

But like I said that is just silverstones guide and it should be fairly conservative as well.

With regard to the H50 second fan I meant why don't you use one of the ones that come with the case

[ed^chigliak]

Seasonic 650KM 650W Modular Power Supply (PSU)
650KM - 650W Seasonic X-650, Modular, 80 PLUS Gold, 90% Eff', SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Fan Cooling
Scan £114

Intel 120GB X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive SATA-300 34nm 2.5" Retail
Dabs £169

[Savas]

Thanks for the PSU/GPU infomation c.ruel, I'll get back on that soon. I think I'll just stick with the 850HX until I'm sure I'll be using single card.

With regard to the H50 second fan I meant why don't you use one of the ones that come with the case

The difference in the H50 and H70 is like £20, not really worth using a different fan when I can just go with the H70 and also benefit from the other minor improvements they did. Personally I think that's best.

Intel 120GB X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive SATA-300 34nm 2.5" Retail
Dabs £169

I think I'm going to go with;

OCZ 120GB Vertex 2E SSD - Solid State Drive

or

back to the Corshair F series.

Any specific reason you would suggest "Intel 120GB X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive SATA-300 34nm 2.5" Retail". What's better about it? Do you have a good review that you can link me to?

[ed^chigliak]

Sandforce drives quote performance under ideal data compression conditions. The real world performance of Sandforce vs Intel are much the same.

[Pob255]

5850 for under £120 is a real bargain.

And dependant on resolution will last a good long time. eg if you want to go down the eyefinity route of the tripple monitor setup then I'd say get two 5850 for crossfire, but for pretty much any single monitor a single 5850 can cope with almost every game out at max settings.

If money is an issue then I'd look at at steel case in all honesty, as you are paying about 50% more for aluminium.
have a look at the LanCool K62, LanCool is a new subsidiary of Lian-Li, same sort of build quality and features but in steel with plastic bezels to reduce the cost.
Also have a look at the CoolerMaster HAF 912 Plus

If you can afford it the Seasonic X-650w is an amazingly good psu (the Corsair AX range are based on it, except for the top end one)

OCZ vertex2E, Corsair Force, Super Talent TeraDrive FT2, all use the sandforce controller (pretty sure Mushkin also make on with the sandforce
Crucial Real SSD C300, Uses a Marvel controller, it have very high read speeds, even higher than the sandforce, but slower for write speeds. (although still fast)
Kingston SSDNow V+, toshiba controller, slower again but still fast.
Intel X25-M, it is now starting to fall behind in terms of top speed, intels controller is simular to the toshiba and marvel controllers in higher read than write, although behind both esp in trems of write speed, still it's far faster than a hard drive

The main thing is watch for is TRIM support (all the SSD I listed should have it) TRIM is a automatic maintance and clean up function, to make sure all the temp & cache data is correctly cleared and data is correctly broken up across the chips, older drives without TRIM had a tendency to slow down over time due to data crud.

EDIT:as to cpu sockets and chipsets intel is currently not the route to go for later cpu upgrades as they currently seem to be unable to release a new cpu without changing chipset or socket that said the top end i7 socket 1366 generally has more cores and speed than any game can make use of and should last a good long time.

[c.ruel]

seems you have your heart set on that psu ... in which case get it. TBH new (3rd gen) SSDs will come out in jan and so will intel's sandy bridge cpus and so will the HD 6970. Since you don't seem that sure on what you want I would wait until jan, there will also be sales then as well to get rid of the older stuff ... that is of course if you can hold on until then.

Just and idea ... I think that was sort of what pob was saying about intel and new sockets what with socket 1555 or whatever it is called coming out in jan.

EDIT: no it wasn't I think he was basically saying an AMD motherboard will last you a while because they do backwards compatibility and stuff but intel change sockets with every cpu release.

[Savas]

The only benefit of waiting next year would be for the sales. The best solution right now I guess would be to reduce the budget and at least save cash from that end and upgrade mid or late 2011. What a bummer, though. This is exactly the question I was asking and dreading.

In terms of SSD's I'm looking at a specific price then comparing it for bang-for-buck and that's why Intel's aren't holding weight as they're costing more.

I plan to use a 24inch single monitor and nothing else. Gaming priority.

I've already ordered a Lian Li PC-8FIB for my case and I'm not interested in plastic casing or budget ones which tend to not last very long. I did that last time and I've ended up buying a case nearly every build. Rather than spending little amounts, this time with the Lian Li PC-8FIB, I can hope to use it for my next build.

Anyway! My last question and thing to know is; which GPU in the Nvidia range is the best bang-for-buck? Such as cards like the 8800 GT, very cheap, but really good.

[c.ruel]

Well as pob said an i7 950 will be more than enough for gaming for a quite a while to come especially if you overclock it with that H70. Personally I think best bang for buck at the moment is that HD 5850 for £115 ... as for nvidia a GTX 470 but I am not certain.

If I was you this is what I would get:

Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.06 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 23x Ratio, 130W, Retail
£234.02

650W Antec TruePower New, Modular, 80Plus Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, 120mm Fan, DC to DC PSU £70

6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), CAS 8-8-8-24, DHX, XMP, New connector, 1.65V
£111.81

Asus P6X58D-E, Intel X58, S1366, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2000 (OC), SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX
£149.91

1TB Western Digital WD10EARS Caviar Green, SATA 3Gb/s, 5400+rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms
£40

Corsair Hydro Series H70 High-performance CPU Cooler, LGA1156, 1366, 775, AM2/AM3
£72.83

Then at this point I was going to suggest that HD 5850 for £115 but it is now £230 on the same website ... quick and the dead with internet bargains unfortunately.

In which case next best bang for buck would be a GTX 470 which are retailing for a bit under £200 in a lot of places, so have a look around and see if you can find a good one.

LianLi PC8FIB, Black, Mid Tower Case, USB 3.0, eSATA, 120mm LED Fan, w/o PSU
£129.20

Then get an SSD in the new year when prices have fallen a bit more and use the standard HDD in the mean time and then you have it for storage when you do get an SSD.

That comes to a little over £1008 (£200 guesstimate for GFX card), and all you are missing is an SSD which is a bit of a luxury really anyway.

If you were willing to go non modular you could get a 850W XFX P1-850S-NLB9 Core Edition, 80 PLUS Bronze, 85% Eff', SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, 135mm Fan for £85 which would add another £15 to your overall total. That psu would handle dual GTX 470s I reckon, not to sure whether your motherboard supports crossfire or SLi or both.

Bear in mind that the system I suggested above is certainly one I would kill for and one that most of the people on these forums would kill for even without the SSD. If you are just driving one monitor a single GTX 470 would be more than adequate for a year or two to come, in fact so would a HD 5850 or HD 5870 or a HD 6870. Personally I really would not bother with a dual card setup since most pc games are just ports anyway of console games and the current generation of consoles is 5 years old anyway so really it isn't necessary. I think it was a bit extravegant me replacing my old HD 4850 with a HD 5850 considering that my 4850 still played most things fine.

Anyway that is my opinion, either way I think you are going to end up with a very nice system!

[Savas]

Thank you all very much for your advices and suggestions.

I've gathered enough information to decide on my system. The question remains is which GPU card to get and how much sales will affect the current price of my basket. I'm only worried that I buy all this now and next month I could have saved a considerable amount.

Waiting next month to buy the latest hardware would be a waste of money due to the bloated prices of the new CPU's and mobos so that's out of the question. Only saving money on the current set up is the logical thing.

Anyway that £40 1TB is a bargain! I have enough storage space that I don't need it, but still it's pretty good.