Buying advice

[DreadedBeastie]

Hi,

My PC has just self destructed, its a few years old so I'm going for a rebuild. I've got all the drives I need, a monitor, keyboard and mouse but I've kind of lost track with hardware so I don't know what to buy.

Basically I need a mobo and chip, ram, PSU and a graphics card. Its for gaming mainly and photoshop. Budget is something I'll think about when I've got a better idea what I'm looking at.

Any ideas?

Cheers

[Queelis]

A rough idea of your budget would help greatly, now we don't know where to start

[DreadedBeastie]

Budget would proboably be around £600

[j.col]

do you need a case as well?

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Lost Planet 2 PC Game - Retail £191.99
(£159.99) £191.99
(£159.99)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE CODMW2 Game £142.97
(£119.14) £142.97
(£119.14)
MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £103.99
(£86.66) £103.99
(£86.66)
Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply £73.99
(£61.66) £73.99
(£61.66)
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP34GB1600C9DC) £38.99
(£32.49) £38.99
(£32.49)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black £38.80
(£32.33) £38.80
(£32.33)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)

or
* Intel Core i5-2500K (1155)

* Gigabyte GA P67A UD4

* 4GB Corsair DDR3 RAM 1600 [cpu/mobo/ram bundle] £353.99

* **B Grade** OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply - £40.84

* Asus GeForce GTX 460 TOP 768MB NVIDIA Graphics Card £107.99

* Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33

* Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler £19.39

these are at OCUK but you can get the parts on scan or ebuyer

[DreadedBeastie]

cheers, no I don't need a case, just the internals.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sandy Bridge needs 1.5V RAM. I also assume the OP has a copy of Windows XP,Vista or 7 64 bit.

Here are two builds I can suggest:

Intel Build

Intel Core i5 2400 ~ £149

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/251595

Asrock P67 Pro3 ~ £87

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/252616

Has USB3.0 and SATA3.0 too.

Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600MHZ 1.5V DDR3 ~ £99

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248846

Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU ~ £57

Zotac GTX470 1280MB GDDR5 ~ £190

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/202283

CUDA can be used to accelerate some Photoshop plug-ins.

OR

Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 ~ £181

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247611

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB ~ £40

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804


With the GTX470 the build comes to around £630. The GTX560 is also being released at the end of the month too as is the HD6950 1GB AFAIK.

AMD Build

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE ~ £116

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673

MSI 870-G54 ~ £68

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/205849

Has USB3.0 and SATA3.0 too!

Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600MHZ 1.5V DDR3 ~ £99

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248846

Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU ~ £57

HD6950 2GB ~ £240

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/250396

Many can be flashed to an HD6970 2GB and the card has a dual BIOS too.

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB ~ £40

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804