Need advice on a first build please.

fonzy1

Hi folks,

With my museum worthy laptop nearing the end i'm looking into building rather than buying my next computer.

Uses: Video and photo editing, web brousing etc, possibly a bit of gaming depending on what spec i can get for the money.
I suppose a jack of all trades if you will.

I intend to use my TV as a monitor as it will be close to where the computer will sit.
So aside from the monitor i'll have to get everything else, keyboard, mouse and OS.

Now the big question is budget, this being my first attempt into the whole build your own pc, am i better off putting together something on a serious budget, learning more about the components and the actual building side of things, and then building a "proper" system in a year's time??

Or, do i spend a little more and get a bit more bang for my buck??

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance.:)

IrishMetalhead

well depends on what this tight budget of yours is tbh
€650 upwards is the ideal budget for a gamnig\workstation desktop
but you can get a a good set-up for €450 up also that'll be capable of doing all you want it for including gaming

murphthesmurf

What games are you looking into playing? Also is your tv full 1080p hd ?
If it was me, i'd build a decent one now. Otherwise the money you spend on a lower one will be lost when you come to sell it in order to build a better one.
Whats the limit you can stretch to?

fonzy1

I'm looking into playing some battlefield 3 when it comes out as well as some current FPS's Black Ops, crysis 2 etc..
I've never done any pc gaming, so i want to see what all the fuss is about:D

How far would a 500E build get me?? I could push it up to 600E if there would be a noticable step up in performance i guess.
Almost forgot, the tv i intend to double up as a monitor is full 1080p HD

IrishMetalhead

your better off pushing it to €600 because it would be a massive change in performance

murphthesmurf

You wont regret trying pc gaming, and you've picked what'll prob be the best game for a long time in Battlefield 3.
The downside is that BF3 will be quite a demanding game, but luckilly not too excessive, you'll still be able to build a pc that'll play it nice and smooth and with all the grphical goodies from dx11 etc.
You'll def want either a GTX 560 (pref the MSI twin frozer I linked to earlier, this card comes pre-overclocked so you'll get more oomph for your money than a standard card), the alternative is the ATI 6950, which if your brave enough to flash the BIOS (which isn't as hard as it sounds) you can turn into a 6970, if not i'd stick to the GTX 560.
You'll want a cpu with some decent horsepower too, i'd def recommend this -
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i5-2500k-unlocked-1155-sandy-bridge-quad-core-33ghz-gpu-850mhz-6mb-cache-95w-oem
Its one of the new Intel sandybridge.
I've copied,edited, and pasted this from Bit-Tech, this is their recommended gaming rig -
Product UK Price
CPU 3.3GHz Intel Core i5-2500K £161
Motherboard Asus P8P67 £103
Memory 4GB 1,600MHz DDR3 £40
Graphics Card MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC £203
PSU Antec TruePower New 650W £70
Arctic cooling Freezer 7 pro £15
Antec one hundred case £40
Optical drive SATA DVD-RW £15
Storage (HDD) 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 £40
Overall Price: £677

This is all in sterling, roughly converted its 780 euro. Which is a 'little' over your budget. I'll do a little more looking round for you when I get chance for a cheaper option. But the CPU and Graphics card are ideal. This cpu will overclock to around 4.8GHZ when your feeling more confident and had a little experience.

Effluo

Firstly, the op has expressed an interest in doing a little bit of pc gaming and although the games he's picked out are some of the most demanding graphically he is on a budget and the gaming aspect may only be a passing interest.

You don't need to have all the eyecandy turned up to the max to enjoy the game. No matter what it'll still kick the ps3's ass
And that's all that really matters xD

jk


But seriously you can get a perfectly able gaming machine within your budget and that same pc will do your video editing great too. I've been out of the game for a bit, so I can't help you with your specific hardware. But I'm sure you could get a fine pc for that price.

Just one other thing, do you need to buy a copy of Windows with this or not? That's rather important

fonzy1

Thanks for the advice and the build info people.

I'll have a good look through that suggested build, i think it's a little beyond my budget so i may have to compromise in places. Thanks for the advice.

Monotype

Effluo wrote: »

Just one other thing, do you need to buy a copy of Windows with this or not? That's rather important

fonzy1 wrote: »

So aside from the monitor i'll have to get everything else, keyboard, mouse and OS.

For €600, you'd be looking into quad core AMDs. Here's a recent build from IrishMetalhead for around that. I'll have a look tomorrow to see what can be tweaked for the new best value since then.

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 - €85.05
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=37141&agid=1242

Motherboard: ASRock M3A770DE - €54.29
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29282&agid=1232

RAM: 4GB Mushkin Silverline Stiletto PC3-10667U CL9-9-9-24 - €38.65
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=33951&agid=1192

Graphics Card: 1GB XFX Radeon HD 6850 - €144.47
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=39466&agid=1004

CPU Cooler: Artic Cooling Freezer 7 - €15.37
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28345&agid=669

HDD: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 - €46.57
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30028&agid=1284

Disc Drive: Samsung SH-223C DVD+RW - €17.08
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29466&agid=699

Case: Xigmatek Asgard - €30.44
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28607&agid=631

PSU: Super-Flower Amazon 550W - €52.29
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30069&agid=1628

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit - €87.96
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29181&agid=185

Shipping - €30

Total - €602.17

murphthesmurf

Just swap and change a few bits to suit your budget. The graphics card is the most important component in gaming. If you can its always best to try and future proof it as much as poss by building the best system you can.
Have a read here - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2011/03/10/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-march-2011/1

They do a buyers guide, you could maybe build there 'budget alrounder', and if you can afford it put in a better card than what they suggest.
I spent around 650 sterling building mine over 2 or 3 yrs ago and its still going strong and will still be able to play BF3 no problem.

IrishMetalhead

if you could possibly push your budget to €650 you could get a phenom cpu and a 6870 instead and maybe a better budget for a case.
I'll come up with a new build for beings that the prices on hwvs is constantly changing

IrishMetalhead

Yeah read CustomPC by bit-tech myself excelent magazine to keep up to date with everything but i have found they've been up intel's, nvidia's and scan's arse alot lately =/
not to say those 3 are bad or anything but there reviews when it comes to them often seems somewhat bias

Monotype

AMD Athlon II X4 640 Box AM3 - 83,96 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=37141

ASRock 770 Extreme3, Sockel AM3, ATX - 64,13 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=34992

4GB-Kit Corsair Valueselect DDR3-1333 CL9 - 36,40 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=38051

XFX RADEON HD 6850 - 145,14 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=39466

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 - Pro PWM Rev.2 - 15,63 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28345

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) - 46,75 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28152

Xigmatek Asgard, ATX, ohne Netzteil, schwarz - 31,51 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28607

LG GH22NS50 bare schwarz - 17,35 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=27402

Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W - 52,32 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30069

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch - 84,20 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29181

Delivery = €30
______________________________________________________

Total = €607.39

You could save up to €5 by going with some of the other brands (club3d, msi, powercolor) of 6850, but you'd have to check out which are the best warranties/cooling.

I've allocated an extra €10 towards a better board, but if it was me, I would allocate a further €10 to get something like...

ASRock 870 Extreme3, AM3, ATX - 75,21 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=36056

You could save a couple of euro by going with an X3 processor...

AMD Athlon II X3 445 "Boxed" 95W, Sockel AM3 - 62,32 €
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=37139

With your decent heatsink, you could squeeze a bit more with overclocking and if you are lucky, it might unlock to a quad core. You wouldn't notice that much difference in most games and it could be upgraded up to an X6 in the future.

murphthesmurf

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

Yeah read CustomPC by bit-tech myself excelent magazine to keep up to date with everything but i have found they've been up intel's, nvidia's and scan's arse alot lately =/
not to say those 3 are bad or anything but there reviews when it comes to them often seems somewhat bias

I've not found it that way myself. As things stand Intel has the best cpu's by far, nothing AMD currently has can match them, things may change when the Bulldozer chips are released, I hope so as its not good for any of us when 1 company dominates. They do link a lot of their prices etc with Scan, I just put their prices for speed. When you decide what components it is you wanna get, then shop around for best price.
In its price range the GTX560 is the best alround card, especially the MSI Twin Frozer. But if you confident enough then flashing the BIOS of the ATI 6950 will give you a better card.
To keep the ops price down though, there are some good cheaper AMD cpu's.
Take a look at Xbit or Tomshardware or Guru3d websites too for reviews of individual components.
Do as much homework as you can now, and you'll end up with the best PC you can get for your money, that'll last you some time before it needs upgrading. Once you start playing a 'few' games, you'll be addicted, and prob divorced