Help deciding which Pc to buy

[oldtoby]

Hey there, first post here, would like to get as much advice as possible before buying and seems to be quite a bit of knowledge round here.

Im currently running a quad core 2.4ghz, 3gb ddr2 1333mhz ram, 250gb hdd and radeon 4650 1gb graphics card.

I primarly use it for music production and am experiencing serious bottlenecks with the cpu and ram so tis time for an upgrade. I quite enjoy playing games but not so bothered bout the highest graphics, my current machine can run shogun 2 and borderlands 2 which are the games I play most so I guess any upgrade will make a difference really.

Ive got about £700 to spend on a new Pc, and dont really want to build myself but will depend on the difference in price.

Ive seen two pcs that ive customised slightly on the respective websites and think they are about similar performance wise as far as I cna make out from benchmarks but cant decide which.

The first spec is from Overclockersuk and is £677.92

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz
(Socket AM3+) Processor
Asus Sabertooth 990FX AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3
Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache -
OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD
Patriot Viper 3 "Venom Red" 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz
Single Module (P38G169UR)
Asus HD 7770 GHz TOP 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics
Card
BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black
Corsair 2013 Edition Gamer Series GS 600W '80 Plus Bronze'
Power Supply (CP-9020063-UK)

And the second spec is from cclonline and is £671.51

Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad Core Processor 8MB L3 Cache 5GT/s Bus Speed (Boxed)
Corsair Vengeance Memory Module 8GB (1x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz Unbuffered CL10
Asus P8H77-M Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda© SATA 6Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
Gainward GeForce GT 640 2GB Graphics Card PCI-E DVI HDMI VGA
CCL Choice 22x DVD+/-RW Drive
Fractal Design Core 1000 PC Case
CCL Choice 450W 80+ High Efficiency Power Supply
CarePack - 2 Year Return to Base
TP-Link TL-WN781ND 150Mbps Wireless Lite N PCI Express Adapter
60GB OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" Solid State Drive

Im just not sure which would be better for my needs and would be the easiest to upgrade in a year or so.

Cheers

[Konstantin1]

The second setup seems good, although I would save money and get i5-3570 instead. If you plan on overclocking then get the K version, but you will need to have the Z77 chipset motherboard.
With RAM, try and get a a pair of modules, it will run your RAM in dual channel mode then. For example 2x4Gb. It should be cheaper too.
I would also get a branded PSU, like Corsair or Seasonic, it could save you a lot of headache later on.
And lastly, I'd swap the OCZ vertex for an Intel 330 if you can. Reliability reputations of these two are like night and day.

Fractal Design cases are amazing, I just built a PC for my parents using Define Mini, quality and design are the best I've ever seen.