New Build - mid range home PC

[gambleroni]

I'm looking to build a mid range PC for my brother for multitasking but not for high end gaming/video editing etc.

I have found the following bundle on Scan for £528:

LN42410 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64mb Cache 8ms NCQ OEM
LN28585 750W PSU, Antec True Power New Modular Hybrid, 80 PLUS Bronze 120mm Quiet Fan SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V ATX v2.3
LN39754 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black LP, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V
LN42733 Antec 100% Natural Wipes 20 pack Travel Size (not covered by Scansure)
LN22762 Antec 300 Three Hundred, Black Mid Tower Ultimate Gaming Case w/o PSU (New Version)
LN44182 Asus P8Z77-V PRO, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, D-Sub (VGA)/ DisplayPort/ DVI-I/ HDMI, ATX
LN42829 Intel Core i5 3570K,1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 5 GT/s DMI, 650MHz GPU, 6MB Smart Cache, 34x Ratio, 77W, Retail

As the MoBo has a VGA and DVI will it handle dual screens or do we need a separate video card?

He also wants to add in a Solid State HDD, would 60GB be enough?
60GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s, SandForce 2281, Read 525MB/s, Write 475MB/s, 80K IOPS £55


Many thanks in advance

[Phage]

Hmmmm. Dual screens will need a video card.
What's the total budget, he won't be able to play anything much on the standard IGP.

[gambleroni]

Hmmmm. Dual screens will need a video card.
What's the total budget, he won't be able to play anything much on the standard IGP.

Ah, he is keen on the dual screen, so it looks like this bundle is out then.

His budget is about £500-£600 excluding peripherals.

[gambleroni]

How does this look for the build?


LN39245 60GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s, SandForce 2281, Read 525MB/s, Write 475MB/s, 80K IOPS (£55)

LN41326 Sony AD-5280S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 SATA, Black, OEM (£14)

LN29534 AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, S AM3, 3.4GHz, 8MB Cache, 125W, Retail (£86)

LN40264 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair XMS DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.5V (£33)

LN44997 550W OCZ OCZ550FTY-UK Fatal1ty Series PSU, 82% Eff, 80PLUS, 135mm Fan (£57)

LN28936 Antec Two-Hundred V2 Value Gaming Case Hot Swap SATA HDD Bay inc 10 drive bays 140mm+120mm fans w/o PSU (£41)

LN40846 500GB Seagate ST500DM002 Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5ms, NCQ (£55)

LN40000 Gigabyte GA-970A-D3, AMD 970, S AM3+, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), ATX (£72)

LN41695 1GB MSI HD 6570, 1800MHz GDDR3, GPU 650MHz, 480 Cores, D-Sub/ HDMI/ DVI-D, Low Profile (£46)



Total comes to about £470

[Rookie1986]

Just had a quick look on Scan myself and came up with this, its not the best system by a long way but its nice for sub-£600 and you can always play about with a few of the parts to better suit your needs (Drop the SSD & get a better GPU or more RAM etc etc).

Antec 300 Three Hundred (New Version) - £39.95
Pioneer DVD-RW - £16.88

3XS Edge - AMD FX 4100 Black – Overclocked Bundle - £425.38
1GB XFX Radeon HD 7770 DD Core Edition
CORSAIR 600W PSU
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black
AMD FX 4100 Black Edition, Orochi Core, S AM3+, 3.6GHz OC @ 4.4Ghz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler
Asus M5A99X EVO

500GB Seagate ST500DM002 Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm - £55.18
64GB Crucial RealSSD M4, 2.5" SSD - £59.94

Sub Total (inc VAT): £597.33

Also are you going to need new monitors? Windows 7? because both of these will soon make a £600 build in to a £1000 one and then you still have keyboard, mouse, speakers and any other “extras” that you might want//need.

Good luck with your build,
Rookie

[Phage]

The 965 is a better build. I'd get an M4 rather than the OCZ but that's a personal thing. If he wants to play any games then a 6850/70 would be my vote.http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...2x-dvi-hdmi-dp

[gambleroni]

Thanks Rookie
He doesn't want to have OC'ing on the CPU, just something low temp, stable and out of the box - so I was buying your suggested build separately and was going to add some of the £29.21 savings to the increasing the RAM from 4Gb to 8Gb.

He has already got windows 7 and re-using he old peripherals (may get these updated later)

The 965 is a better build.

Phage
Is that because it is better bang for the buck?

Video Card
The requirements of the video card are pretty basic, just needs to handle dual screens and, on occasion, be able to play games like Quake live/portal 2. Feels like the video cards that have been mentioned (by others and myself) may be overkill, would spending about £50 be sufficient?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would suggest you look at this build I did last year:

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...ml#post2214293

My mate is a researcher and he wanted a cheap rig to do some of his work on, and for general multi-tasking under Windows and Linux and some light gaming. He also runs two widescreen monitors(I think a 20" and a 22") off the HD4670 fine.

Edit!!

My mate does run some newer games like Skyrim and Civ5 though. Hence for games like TF2 and Quake it wll be more than enough IMHO. A Phenom II X4 965 or Core i3 will probably be better for a dedicated gaming rig with something like a £200 graphics card though.

[gambleroni]

The 965 is a better build. I'd get an M4 rather than the OCZ but that's a personal thing. If he wants to play any games then a 6850/70 would be my vote.http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...2x-dvi-hdmi-dp

Just had a look at the M4 on Scan and it says the write speed is 95MB/s. this looks a lot slower other SSD. Could it just an error on Scan or does the write speed not matter that much when used for the OS only?

Link

[Rookie1986]

Just had a look at the M4 on Scan and it says the write speed is 95MB/s. this looks a lot slower other SSD. Could it just an error on Scan or does the write speed not matter that much when used for the OS only?

Link

The write speeds of the M4 are a little slower then some of the other SSD out there but the M4 are possibly the most stable SSD and really good value for money. Also if he intends the SSD to be his windows boot drive and for a few other things like office, anti-virus etc then the slower write speed won't be all that important because once he has installed windows he is only interested in the read speed anyway. I use a Crucial 64GB M4 as my main boot drive and my new rig boots in under 20 seconds and all programs (Office, IE etc open instantly after the boot up).

Rookie

[gambleroni]

The write speeds of the M4 are a little slower then some of the other SSD out there but the M4 are possibly the most stable SSD and really good value for money. Also if he intends the SSD to be his windows boot drive and for a few other things like office, anti-virus etc then the slower write speed won't be all that important because once he has installed windows he is only interested in the read speed anyway. I use a Crucial 64GB M4 as my main boot drive and my new rig boots in under 20 seconds and all programs (Office, IE etc open instantly after the boot up).

Rookie

He will be using it for the OS and programs, stability is the key with hard drives .

How much space would you expect Win 7 64bit + Office 2010 + AV + chrome to take up? is the 64GB comfortable for this?

[Rookie1986]

On my 64GB M4 drive I have:

Windows 7 64 Home
Microsoft Office 2010
Malware Bytes
All my Hardware and Software Drivers
Adobe Software
Power-2-Go Blu-ray//Dvd software

I'm sure theres a few other bits but I have around 30GB left on the SSD so 64GB "should" be enough for the OS plus a few bits of standard software.

Rookie

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The following build uses parts from Scan.



The total comes to around £570 if you are using free postage. If you want to go for a cheaper card you can get a GTS450 for around £65 from Ebuyer and I would check the Today Only webpage for any special offers.

You can also get this bus powered HD6670 GDDR5 for around £54:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-ATI-Ra...item519f4327d0

Going from my experience with an HD5670 GDDR5, Quake Live and Portal 2 will run fine on an HD6670 GDDR5.

Edit!!

You also need this adaptor for the SSD too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/akasa...5-pc-drive-bay

You could also spend a few quid as the 95W TDP Phenom II coolers are noisy.

However,the case does have sound proofing and the motherboard has USD3.0 and SATA3.0 ports too.

[gambleroni]

How long do you think it will take for the out of stock MoBo to arrive?

I have no experience in buying out of stock items on Scan

[Rookie1986]

How long do you think it will take for the out of stock MoBo to arrive?

I have no experience in buying out of stock items on Scan

Best bet would be to phone/email Scan support in the morning and ask them m8