First build!

Charlie Sheen

1. What is your budget? €700 (I can go a bit higher if I have to)

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Music Production (Google has told me that an i7 and 8GB of ram are necessary for this), and I'll be getting Skyrim too. I'd like to play it on a fairly decent setting.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? I might be able to take the DVD drive out. I'll have a look later.

5. Do you need a monitor? Not right now. I plan on getting a second one in the future though.



6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Wireless card. (I can get this later if I need to.)

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Laser/CC

9. When are you purchasing? Hopefully over the next month.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? I hope to be able to build it myself.

Thanks. I get a little overwhelmed trying to pick out parts.

Monotype

Music production usually demands a lot of hard drive space and HDD prices are very high at the moment due floods.
I would normally advise against this since newer ones are faster, but have you got any older drives that you could use for now?

You could install your OS to an SSD for the moment and add in new drives when they come down in price. Otherwise, grab an external drive from HMV if there's any left (see bargain alerts discussion thread).

Charlie Sheen

Thanks for the tip. I actually have an external HD with everything I need on it, so that's a pretty good idea.

deconduo

I would go for something like this:

Item|Price
Total build cost: £626.89 (inc Delivery £13.98 and VAT £104.49)
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-10600 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V|£38.16
Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sndy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail|£169.75
1GB XFX HD 6870 Double D cooling, 4200MHz GDDR5, GPU 900MHz, 1120 Stream Processors, 2x DVI/ HDMI/ 2x mini DisplayPort|£137.62
MSI P67A-G45 (B3), Intel P67, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 2.0 (x16), ATX|£83.60
550W PSU, XFX Core Edition P1-550S-XXB9, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX|£49.91
64GB Crucial RealSSD M4, 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, MLC-Flash, Read 500MB/s, Write 95MB/s *New Version*|£83.57
LG GH22NS70 22x DVD±R, 16xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA, Black, OEM|£14.75
Xigmatek Asgard III Black Mid Tower Case with Side Window w/o PSU|£32.75


I know you said you weren't willing to overclock, but with the newer SandyBridge chips its basically a huge boost in performance for very little effort. If you still don't want to give it a go, you'd want to change the CPU to an i7-2600 and the motherboard to a cheap H61 board.

Hardwareversand is the site most people would order from as they have the best prices, but they only take payment via bank transfer. Scan are a bit more expensive, but they take credit cards. If you have internet banking its pretty straightforward to pay for the HWVS stuff, so I could draw up another build for you if thats the case.

Charlie Sheen

deconduo wrote: »

I know you said you weren't willing to overclock, but with the newer SandyBridge chips its basically a huge boost in performance for very little effort. If you still don't want to give it a go, you'd want to change the CPU to an i7-2600 and the motherboard to a cheap H61 board.

Hardwareversand is the site most people would order from as they have the best prices, but they only take payment via bank transfer. Scan are a bit more expensive, but they take credit cards. If you have internet banking its pretty straightforward to pay for the HWVS stuff, so I could draw up another build for you if thats the case.

Thank you very much! I'm about to set up an Ulster Bank account, and internet banking, so it looks like I'll have every payment option available over the next few weeks. Could you make me a Hardwareversand build?

deconduo

Charlie Sheen wrote: »

Thank you very much! I'm about to set up an Ulster Bank account, and internet banking, so it looks like I'll have every payment option available over the next few weeks. Could you make me a Hardwareversand build?

For the same build:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €649.69 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€186.75
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX|€84.65
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€34.61
Crucial M4 64GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€90.50
Xigmatek Asgard III Midi Tower - black, ohne Netzteil|€32.63
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€16.68
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W|€52.02
Club 3D Radeon 6870 1024MB, AMD Radeon HD 6870, PCI-Express|€151.85


If you wanted, you could go a small bit over budget and get this graphics card instead:

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=43704&agid=1004

Charlie Sheen

Thanks. Would it be worth upgrading the CPU to an i7? They're recommended quite a lot on some of the music production forums I use.

EDIT: Just had another look at the differences, and no, it probably wouldn't be better. I'll probably also give overclocking a try.