New build, thoughts? Around £800 to spend

[Jtl2877]

Hi All

Been looking at a new build, I do have some parts so wouldn't need all the below right away.

• 8GB Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Low Profile Cerulean Blue PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 10-10-10-27, XMP, 1.5V
  600W Corsair CXM Builder Series, Hybrid Modular, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Fan, ATX
  Intel Intel Core i5 4670, S 1150, Haswell, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo, 1200MHz GPU, 34x Ratio, 84W, Retail
  Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 RAM Dual Layer SATA BLACK OEM
  120GB Samsung 840 EVO Desktop Kit 7mm SATA 3 3core MEX Controller Read 540MB/s Write 410MB/s 256MB Cache 94K IOPS
  1TB Seagate ST1000DX001 SSHD Hybrid HDD 3.5" SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache <8ms OEM NCQ
  Corsair Graphite Series 230T Compact Mid Tower LED Windowed Gaming Case Orange on Black with ORANGE LED
  Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1 Operating System Single OEI DVD
  2GB MSI GTX 750Ti Gaming Twin FrozrIV/OC, PCIe 3.0, 5400MHz GDDR5, GPU 1085MHz, Boost 1163MHz, Cores 640, DPort/DVI/HDMI
  Asus Z97-K, Intel Z97, S 1150, DDR3, SATA III 6Gb/s, RAID, PCIe 3.0 (x16), D-Sub/DVI/HDMI, ATX

Also been thinking about going with an AMD FX-8350 build, is it worth it, would save a little bit of money but for £30 or so is it best to get the i5?

I also have an AMD GFX card, the HD 7790, am I best keeping this? I also have some Corsair DDR3 1866 8gb, so wouldn't really need the ram.

Also got a corsair CX430 psu, would this power all this with ease, or is it best to get a new one?

Again, case wise also been looking at the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2, the 230T looks really nice, love the colour and the fan LEDs on it. The R2 though has slightly better features, the dust filters I like, but I think the case is a little plain to look at.

Just want some thoughts and ideas from others on the build.

Main use will be for gaming.

Thank you in advance

[mikeo01]

RAM: You've got some I wouldn't bother buying more. Also the CAS latency on that Vengeance is pretty loose so pointless.
PSU: Corsair CX isn't very good and I don't believe CXM is either. It would power a lower end system fine though. Depends how old it is?
CPU: For a tad more you could get a Xeon 1230V3 and ditch the Z97 chipset and downgrade to H87 or B85 (not H81). Z97 is mainly for overclocking.
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO is OK, but if I recall it is a SandForce based drive. You could get a 256GB drive for pennies, Crucial M500 or SanDisk Ultra Plus. 120-128GB SSDs save you around £30 which in my opinion is pointless, may as well go for a larger capacity drive.
HDD: 1TB drive are ridiculously cheap, so in my opinion get rid of the SSHD and use the money on a 250-256GB SSD your bog standard Seagate 1TB drives or WD Blue drives are around £40.
Case: Your call its always preference.
OS: Definitely skip this and go straight to Windows 8.1, it is cheaper. Not really sure why you'd pay more for a soon to be forgotten OS
GPU: Your HD 7790 is fine, the 750 Ti is over praised. It does have lower power consumption but in all seriousness you'd be wasting your money. The minimum I'd consider over that is the R9 270X (can be had for around £150 over at Scan).
MB: Again I'd consider ditching the Z97 as it seems you won't be overclocking. I'd consider a lower end H87/B85 chipset and go for a locked chip. Money saved from ditching the Z97 chipset can be spent on a higher end Xeon 1230V3).

A quality 450W PSU will power a rig fine, I am running an R9 280X on one and power consumption tops 370W (CPU+GPU Prime/Furmark). So it would have no trouble powering any lower end graphics card

I'd personally skip the FX consideration due to the fact that it will require more umf in terms of your PSU choice which will raise the price up to not much more than you could get from the Intel build.


In my opinion

[Jtl2877]

Are the xeons better than the i5? Are they not a server based CPU?

In my current system the CPU is a bottleneck i think.

I've been thinking about just building it around an itx mb and keeping my prodigy case.

Just unsure what to do

[Jtl2877]

The psu is around 12 months old, it hasn't had a lot of load through it either.

Looking at the ssd, is it worth getting a larger one? As it would only be used for the os and maybe ms office. I read that for gaming an ssd doesn't make much difference?

Windows, I have heard 8.1 is meant to be good and worth it if you haven't got 7,'I do have a copy 7 but would be willing to get 8.1.

[mikeo01]

Not necessarily better but the fact that games are becoming more multithreaded only the Xeon 1230V3 and higher has hyperthreading. It is essentially an I7-4770 with the IGP disabled. Most boards support them out of the box.


Well if you are interested in ITX take a look at these two, MSI B85i Gaming and MSI B85i. I did a review and build around it recently

One thing to note with ITX is there will be no crossfire support nor will you have the option of upgrading your sound card internally. If you have the Prodigy now how come you want to change it? ITX is nice form factor.


SSD wise mainly because you can get a 250-256GB SSD drive now for the price of what would give you 120-128GB a year back. They don't make a difference for gaming no. Games that continuously read from the HDD will benefit however (games that pick out objects and render in real time from the HDD). But basically the price of one you may as well as you'll find you will fill up a 120-128GB quite quickly even without many games installed on there.

I thought you meant you'll be buying Windows, if you've got a copy then that is fine no point buying any other Windows

[Jtl2877]

Just been reading about the Xeon since you mentioned it, I think it's been compared to a i7 4770? Without the k and a slightly lower speed and no IGP, they perform about the same. For £180 @ Scan that's a good performance per £ spent.

The reason for the change from the Prodigy was because I was looking at the AMD FX series and they don't support ITX. The only issue I have with the Prodigy is the amount of dust it seems to gather and lack of a real filter. But overall I rate the case highly, it is a little larger than I thought it would be, could easily fit an MATX in it (as proven with the Prodigy M and the Aerocool one, that's almost a Prodigy!)

Like both those motherboards, seem decent for the Xeon.

SSD have come down in price so much over the last 12 months, get the right one and your paying about £0.40/50 per gb which is very good value for SSD. So I guess it is worth it for the larger ones.

[mikeo01]

If you want to save some money: I7-4770. It is used so probably no heatsink however. Could query to see however.
Yep the only real difference is that it has a 100Mhz lower base and turbo speed and no integrated graphics (but you'll be gaming so you won't need it too).

Unfortunately I doubt FX will ever have ITX as the power delivery requires a larger VRM. Although FX isn't a bad choice at all if you are contemplating ITX there are some real nice choices on the 1150 side.

Case wise you could always buy some dust filters and do the Prodigy up.

SSDs at the moment are great value. I paid £84 for my 128GB half a year ago! That'll buy you a larger drive right now. It does fill up quick. But it is also nice to have without the seek noise of the hard drive and the heat to be honest

[Jtl2877]

So much choice! Haha

I'm leaning more and more to the Xeon now though, the more I look at it the more I like it.

Motherboards, I like both you posted, like the look of the 'gaming' motherboards, but are they really worth the extra £ over the non gaming version?

[mikeo01]

Yeah it is difficult when there is so much choice

Only reason I got the Xeon is for the reasons I mentioned, 8 threads so it performs very well for not much more than a top of the line I5.

I opted for the gaming board of MSI for the Sound Blaster Cinema, the decent heatsinks on the MOSFETs and better built.

Honestly I couldn't go back to plain Realtek codecs, the Creative SB Cinema makes a world of difference to the audio, clearer sounds, and gives a feature the Recon3D has, making footsteps louder and voices louder rather than having everything on the same audio level (dull sounding).

Plus they look very nice indeed. I personally recon it was worth the extra over the bog standard B85i


But this is only in regards to the MSI boards I posted.

[dacads]

The main question here is what will the build be used for? If gaming don't expect wonders with the 750 Ti, I would go down the AMD route consisting of an FX-6300 CPU and R9 270X GPU. As for SSD the Samsung Evo is probably the best bang for buck SSD around and is very reliable, no it doesn't use the sand force controller.

[Jtl2877]

It will mainly be used for gaming, would the FX-6300 and R9 270x be a decent combo?

[MrRockliffe]

840 EVO definitely isn't sandforce. For gaming, I'd go with a mid range i5 (maybe even an FX 6300/8320?) and a good graphics card such as 760, R9 280. On my phone at the moment and will update with parts I'd buy

[dacads]

It will mainly be used for gaming, would the FX-6300 and R9 270x be a decent combo?

Yep it will you can see how the 750 Ti and 270X compare here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1130?vs=1043

Maybe you can even stretch to an R9 280!

[tamzzy]

i did a spec over at ocuk forums, of course ocuk are not renowned to be competitively priced, so i'd say shop around and get parts where they are cheaper
just showing what you can get for your budget
YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £229.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £173.99
1 x Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (CT240M500SSD1) £85.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £69.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Zalman Z3-Plus Midi-Tower - White £39.95
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £11.99
Total : £828.24 (includes shipping : £17.85).




what you get with this spec is:
i5k + z97 board so you can overclock if you want
280x gpu
240gb ssd, but i've not added a hdd to keep the budget in check, if you *need* one from the outset then of course compromises can be made elsewhere
8gb of fast ram
heatsink to overclock right from the bat
550w gold rated psu that will power any single card gpu system. the z97 board specced doesnt support sli, so 550w psu is more than sufficient

[mikeo01]

Truthfully (in regards to the above setup) if you want to go down that route (overclocking) I'd seriously consider spending the extra £6 for a used i7-4770K HERE.

[Jtl2877]

I do like the above setup, seems decent, though if I do go the 1150 route I think I would get a Xeon CPU as they do look really good.

With the hard drive I do have a Samsung Pro 128gb SSD, but as said elsewhere the price of SSDs at the moment it is worth picking up a larger one for a decent price.