Hi & Help? (revised after a venue cock up)

Although the title makes it seem as if I had taken drugs and needed help, I assure you that is not the case (today). I've been a big reader of Hexus reviews more so the last couple of weeks because I'm getting a build together. The last PC I bought was an alienware, which was fun but I wasted a lot of money but I digress.
I'm getting a new sandy bridge build together and I wanted some opinions on brands or conflicts (if that's cool). The build looks like this so far:

Core i5 2500K (hopefully I will be overclocking)
Gigabyte P67 UD4
Akasa Venom cooler
4GB ram (not sure of a brand)
2GB ATI 6950
Corsair 650W modular PSU
Corsair 650D case or the white Silverstone Raven 2.
6gb/s 1TB HDD (any recommendations?)

My budget is around £900-ish

Thanks guys.

I'm going to leave the heavy stuff to people more versed in this sort of thing, but one thing I would say is that there's really no point getting a 6Gb/s hard drive.

They can't get anywhere close to 3Gb/s so it really doesn't make a difference what interface they have on them... the only change is in your pocket :)

If you can get a 6Gb/s for the same price as 3, then fair enough, go for it, but no point actively looking for it. Something like a Spinpoint F3 would be great (and, most importantly, cheap!)

Also, I don't know if you're aware, but if you make 20 constructive posts on Hexus you're eligible for free shipping at Scan, which can be very handy if you're buying a full PC.

Welcome to HeXus!

One thing to consider in chosing your hard drive is to be aware if you are buying a 4k or 512b sector drive. Partition alignment is important on a 4k drive, all new large capacity drives are all coming out as 4k versions, I expect all SATA3 ones are. Also personally I would try to buy the largest drive that is reasonably affordable as filling the ports on a machine with "smaller" drives is a wasted economy (*except), so would get a 2TB drive my brand of preference is (at the moment is Seagate). You need to consider do you want a "fast" drive or a "slow^H^H^H^H green" drive.

(*except) If you want a OS drive, then buy the smallest one you can get cheaply for example 26 quid for a 500Gb drive at that price you could buy two and mirror them for data safety. Having an OS drive is very useful, for example if you upgrade your system or want to do a reinstall, you remove the drive with all your data on it, so you can be 100% sure your reinstall will not wipe something important (which is not the case if you use a partition on a larger drive for the OS).

The parts you have picked out seem pretty decent. As snootyjim said about the SATA III hard drive ... not much point. Also as for memory unless you are planning some insane overclock I don't think brand matters too much ... most of the stuff is made my the same OEMs I believe. Often scan have corsair memory cheap on the todayonly section. Personally I get crucial because that is what I have always used (and never had ANY problems of ANY sort ... so why change!?) but I honestly don't think it matters.

The motherboard sounds decent (I googled it has good reviews), whether you go for ASUS or Gigabyte is usually brand preference, again I prefer ASUS but I have bought a Gigabyte board before and it was good although I missed the Q connector feature ASUS ones have because I am lazy!

I have heard the akasa Venom cooler is good. But I know if you can stretch to it the HUGE noctua cooler is suppose to be very good and quieter and if noise is not an issue then the FRIO is suppose to be good for overclocks but it is noisey. Again cooler shouldn't be too much of an issue because those sandy bridge processors do not get as hot as the nehalem ones do when overclocked.

Finally (sorry this is long). If you want to crossfire in the future (no idea why you would want to!) 650w is probably too little 750w is just enough so if you think you will want to then stretch for a 750w psu if not the 650w corsair modular one is great.

Finally finally pains me to say this (because I want one!) HD 5870s are incredibly cheap at the moment (scan was selling them for £138 the other day). The tech isn't really that much different to the HD 6xxx series. So unless you use a monitor over 1080p resolution you don't need the 2gb frame buffer on the 6950 unless you want to be future proof (there are 1gb versions of the HD 6950). If you went for the HD 5870 you could put the money towards a small previous gen SSD maybe for a boot drive.

The only real change I would make is getting the HD 5870 over the Hd 6950 and getting the larger noctua cooler for silence and maybe stretching to a boot drive SSD.

GL with it!

Not much point having a 2GB graphic card. get the 1GB version of HD6950 and save yourself some cash.
memory wise also no need to go above 1333/1600. Performance difference between 2133MHz and 1333MHz is neglectful on this platform but costs differ alot. you might better opt for a 8GB 1333 kit instead.
That would be my choice - bit higher on price but seems more balanced imho:

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2038/unledij.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

snootyjim:
Ah I didn't know that >_> I just assumed it would be better to get a 6gb/s HDD so I'll get to amending my build. Thanks for the advice. Hmm free shipping that does sound nice since I'm really running low on dosh.

oolon:
Damn I should have done more research into HDD tech before I made my choice... Thanks for the heads up. I thought spending about 60 quid on the HDD because I have a spare 500 Gig lying around. I was thinking about raid but I couldn't justify it, maybe later on I could do try it.

I know I want a fast HDD and I was thinking of raid 0 for my OS drive, just for extra speed since I have a religious back up ritual I do so I don't really keep anything of severe importance on my OS drive.

c.ruel:
I'm a bit of a corsair man at heart so I think I'll stick with them unless crucial throws out any nice offers. I've had one problem with my asus motherboard a while back but they were nice enough to fix it for me. I've decided to try gigabyte this time and see where it goes.

I'll look into the noctua cooler as I haven't heard of it before, thanks mate. I would prefer a quite pc to be perfectly honest. I don't think I'll ever go down the road of crossfire or sli for a while but I'm getting the modular 650 corsair regardless.

I'll rethink my GPU choice but I never ever want to get a 16:9 monitor ever. I have my eye on a 24" IPS display because of my photog and print work. I don't really know about an SSD and I'm very cautious about trying one. I was leaning toward one of the pci-e SSD but they're too expensive for me right now.

CooperXS:
One thing that really worries me is brand I don't know so I'm reluctant to try the scanFX GPU. That being said there's a difference of 3 quid between the 1gig sapphire HD and the 2gig asus 6950.

I think I'll take the jump from 4gig to 8gig of ram but I'm still unsure about a SSD. Thanks for your suggested build I'm starting to amend my own build and I'll post the changes if anyone still remembers Q_Q.

Brands are really irrelevant nowadays. Most regular price cards follow reference designs and are usually made by a big corp like Foxconn and then branded and distributed via related chain. There's just a few real manufacturers actually. Check the specs and warranty terms and if both satisfy yr needs - you good to go. Besides I doubt you could go wrong with Scan :)

EDIT

Going by the product code it appears to be a VTX brand which is a cheaper division of Powercolor/TUL.
The PCB most probably is bit simpler. Found some specs on other site (match the reference):

http://www.thetechypeople.co.uk/comp...6950-pci-e-2.0

Might give San a call to confirm these if you'd be interested in this one.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/noctu...iet-cpu-cooler

Here is the big noctua cooler it is pricey at £68 but does have very good reviews everywhere ... google it!

All-in-one water like the H50 might be a nice option if you want to keep weight off the motherboard

CooperXS:
Okay that's very interesting and the warranty is 2 years as well. Thanks for looking it up and linking me. I guess quite a bit to learn >_> I also found out that the Asus 6950 can be reflashed into a 6970, do you have any thoughts on that?

c.ruel:
Good god look at that thing but I'm not sure about the price, I'll try to move some money around and get it. Thanks for the suggestion mate.

snootyjim:
50 quid isn't bad for a water solution... I'll find some temp comparisons and make a decision. Thanks mate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by false emperor

CooperXS:
Okay that's very interesting and the warranty is 2 years as well. Thanks for looking it up and linking me. I guess quite a bit to learn >_> I also found out that the Asus 6950 can be reflashed into a 6970, do you have any thoughts on that?

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http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159
Probability of this trick being successful is quite high but this also voids the warranty ;)
Besides this only possible for reference design cards so the VXT option won't be the one to go with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CooperXS

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159
Probability of this trick being successful is quite high but this also voids the warranty ;)
Besides this only possible for reference design cards so the VXT option won't be the one to go with.

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Yeah I read that article but the real beauty of it is that if the card does mess up you can revert the firmware back and RMA the GPU. This is what I can gather by reading into quite a few articles about the process. Wish me luck :D

Sounds like a bit of fun, why the hell not!