JCs new Desktop

Agent J

After nearly 6 years of service my faithful computer Ziggy died. *sniff*


1. What is your budget?

900 Euro. Could push to 1,000 max

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer?

Offically its academic.. really. I swear

Gaming. Starcraft 2, Starwars MMO (Kinda hoping for Battlefield 3, MW3 whenever i get time..)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows?

Yes. Had a copy of ultimate which i got for gratis but the disk was only 32bit and gods know where it is now. Trying to figure out should i bother with professional or home. Also going to need a copy of MS office but i can take the cost of that out of a seperate budget.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [Hard drive/DVD Drive/Case/PSU/etc.]

Ziggys processor died so all the other parts are up for grabs. Graphics card was only replaced a year ago so I have a new graphics card but the rest of it is pretty old (5/6years old)

Graphics card768MB PoV GT460.

2 DVD RW Drives,

3 HD ( 2GB, 1TB, 500GB)

3 X 1GB DDR1 400mhz -

DLink Network card

PSU is a 500W Seasonic. After 6 years i'm thinking it should be replaced



5. Do you need a monitor?

No.

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [1920x1080/1440x900/etc.]

I've got 2 1920X1080 of slightly different size. Monitors are fine. Might look at the graphics card in 6/12 months but no real plans to further upgrade


6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/etc.]

Not really. Might consider upgrading the wireless card & getting a card reader but I have everything else

7. Are you willing to try overclocking?

No. Don't know enough and no time to research.

8. How can you pay? [Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser]

All of the above

9. When are you purchasing?

Hoping order to be made by end of this week(Maybe midweek) with hope to have it by xmas. Won't be the end of world if i don't. I have a decent, recent laptop which will keep me covered.


10. If you need help building it, where are you based?

I should be fine but im in Maynooth. Havent fully decided if i'm building or ordering to spec.




General thoughts

Just a couple of notes. The regular version of the motherboard isnt in stock so i went with the next version up. I havent much of a clue on cooling or the PSU so any pointers particularly there. I have multiple hard drives at the moment so strongly considering an SSD. Would like to leave myself the option to future proof so would prefer the i7 over the i5 (Even given the arguments i read on this forum for that).


I did a quick configuration on Hardwareversand


Total build cost: €935.45 + €30 shipping
Corsair Hydro Series H70 (Sockel 775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3 +/FM1) €68.75
Cooler Master GX Series PSU, 80Plus Bronze - 750 Watt €80.70
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch €84.94
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL8 €60.17
Intel Core i7-2600K Box, LGA1155 €269.99
Arctic Silver V, Wärmeleitpaste 1ml €4.99
OCZ SSD Vertex 2 90GB 8,9cm (3,5") €123.17
Antec Six Hundred V2, ATX, ohne Netzteil €73.43
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, Sockel 1155, ATX, DDR3 €169.31


Any thoughts, suggestions or recommendations would be welcome .

deconduo

I would change most of that around :P

Item|Price
Total build cost: €942.01 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€194.87
ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€98.93
Sapphire HD 6950 Dirt3, 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express|€231.64
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€28.55
Crucial M4 64GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€95.54
Corsair Carbide Series 500R schwarz, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€103.01
Scythe Mugen 3, für alle Sockel geeignet|€32.59
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch|€84.94
XFX PRO650W Core Edition Full Wired Power Supply|€71.94


-First I'm gonna pretend you said yes to overclocking. The basic stuff is literally press a button -> CPU is now faster. If you want to tweak stuff later its not very difficult or time consuming.

-Getting a 2600k is a waste of money on your budget, there are much better ways to future proof.

-Watercooling is a waste of money unless you are going for some extreme overclocking.

-Vengence RAM is overpriced and those heatspreaders are a pain to deal with. Cheap RAM is just a good

-The M4 is a much more reliable SSD, and a small bit faster too.

-Antec 600 is a bad case :P

-If you want good gaming at 1080p, sell your GTX 460 and get a 6950 instead. You should be able to get €100 or so for it.

-Cheaper motherboard with similar specs.

-Cheaper, better PSU.

Agent J

Fair enough deconduo . It helps to have input because i really havent done my homework. I havent needed to look at specs in years so i am well out of practice.

I missed that SSD. I just went for the the one with least capacity. 64 GB would be plenty for an OS drive right?

As for the graphics. I dont understand why the change?
How much would just keeping the 460 affect things? I'd be inclined to do that just to save the hassle of selling it.

As for the processor. I've been bottlenecked for years because changing my processor wasnt possible. Granted thats down to the motherboard ( Asus a832nsli ) and it having an obselete pin config. Maybe my thinking is flawed but i always thought that its the best motherboard & processor you can buy now and upgrade everything else later.

Again cheers for the input deconduo.

Agent J

*reads the i5 spec properly*

Oh. I thought i5s were dual cores & i7s were quad cores.

D'oh. I didnt realise there were i5 Quad cores

<edit> Thats because i was thinking of mobile versions of those processors<edit> .

Skerries

I still think that a 120gb SSD is the only way to go
I have one and if I had a 64gb i would be moving stuff across all the time
You would just get Win 7 and Office and maybe a game on that 64gb before you ran out of space, and considering some programs won't let you install to another drive than C: and also all the windows updates a 64gb will fill very fast

Agent J

I think i'm going to go with Deconduo spec. Well most of it

- The CPU cooler.

Turns out i had similar on my old desktop. It definatly does its job but it was a bit of a pain to install and god help you if you need to replace a ram chip beside it.

- Graphics card

I think i'll keep the 460 for now and look to upgrade in 6 months time. Reasoning being is i wont have a lot of time for gaming over the next while anyway but i need a new desktop asap. i'll live with meduim settings for a while
Unless there is a very good reason why i shouldnt that is.


I can put more into an SSD and go for 128GB

deconduo

Agent J wrote: »

*reads the i5 spec properly*

Oh. I thought i5s were dual cores & i7s were quad cores.

D'oh. I didnt realise there were i5 Quad cores

<edit> Thats because i was thinking of mobile versions of those processors<edit> .

Yep, the i5 is a quad, the i7 is pretty much the same chip with a bit more cache and hyperthreading. However hyperthreading doesn't help in games at all so there's no point getting it.

Oh change the motherboard in that build to this one:
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=50900&agid=1601

The site has the wrong specs up so I thought it was better than it actually is.

Agent J

Cheers. Was looking at that one earlier and meant to ask what the diff was..

deconduo

Agent J wrote: »

I think i'm going to go with Deconduo spec. Well most of it

- The CPU cooler.

Turns out i had similar on my old desktop. It definatly does its job but it was a bit of a pain to install and god help you if you need to replace a ram chip beside it.

- Graphics card

I think i'll keep the 460 for now and look to upgrade in 6 months time. Reasoning being is i wont have a lot of time for gaming over the next while anyway but i need a new desktop asap. i'll live with meduim settings for a while
Unless there is a very good reason why i shouldnt that is.


I can put more into an SSD and go for 128GB

Yeah, the coolers can be difficult to install but they do the job well. The RAM I picked hasn't any heatspreaders so you'll be fine.

Here's the 128GB version of the SSD:
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=46110&agid=1145

Agent J

I can't get that SDD added to the pc configurator tool on the site for some reason.

Any guesses why?

Considering doubling to the 256gb SDD model. I figure i divert everything from the graphics card to the SSD.

Also considering doubling up on the ram. Is 16 GB just being gratious?

Should bring me in just under budget including delivery.

ShadowHearth

16gb ram will be overkill. Even 8gb is not needed, but it is so cheap these days, it would be a sin not to pick it up.

16gb ram will eat up some of your ssd space too as it will make a virtual copy 16gb ram on ssd (hybermation I think it's called). It was not noticeable when you had 500gb+++ hdds, but wen you work with smaller ssds it becomes pain in a hole. I had to turn it off in my pc as my ssd is only 60gb

Serephucus

Skerries wrote: »

I still think that a 120gb SSD is the only way to go
I have one and if I had a 64gb i would be moving stuff across all the time
You would just get Win 7 and Office and maybe a game on that 64gb before you ran out of space, and considering some programs won't let you install to another drive than C: and also all the windows updates a 64gb will fill very fast

Nope. I have a 32GB drive, and at the moment, I have Win7 Ultimate, Firefox, Opera, Winamp, and MS Office installed, as well as a couple of small games (~3GB total), and have... 6.41GB free. 64GB is plenty for an OS drive, and any other bits and pieces.

Yes, it will fill up if you put games on it, but anything else is fine.

@Agent J, you can add all the parts to your cart separately, then chuck this in as well, and they'll build it for you before shipping.

As ShadowHearth has stated, unless you're doing a lot of very heavy video editing, 16GB is overkill. 8GB is beyond plenty for 99% of things.

Agent J

@Serephucus

What would you recommend for an SSD size?

Serephucus

What are you thinking you'll have on it?

Agent J

My previous Desktop primary drive was 500gb.
I moved all my media/games/audio etc to secondary drives

Main OS, MS office... You know im actually struggling to remember was was on it.

I imagine i'd throw on Starcraft 2, SWTOR and a few other games on it. Main steam client would probablt have to go on secondary drive.

I dont think i can justify anything over 120gb tbh.

Serephucus

If it's just two or three games, you should be fine with 64GB. You can do with 128GB if you want (I'll be upgrading to 128 at some point, and I plan to put everything but games on it (so all of my other applications) and I should still have a lot of room left) - I only have about 40GB of non-game apps.

Bloodwing

I just put a 128GB SSD into my build and I've only used up 36.5gb of it and thats with:

Windows 7 home premium.
Nortan 360.
All my Motherboard and GPU drivers.
Photoshop.
Various browsers(Google Chrome, Firefox etc)
Various media players.
and a few other small bits.

The biggest file is windows at 13.9GB.

I originally had Steam on it but then i discovered that all steam games have to be on the same drive as the steam client so that would have filled it up fairly quick. Steam is now on a HDD and its plenty fast for the games I'm playing.

ShadowHearth

128gb should do.

I got 60gb and I honestly would love it to be bigger.

I got

windows
Browsers
Drivers
Media players
BF3 - 15gb alone!!!

Keep in mind system restore and hybernation, which will eat up good few GB too.

With hybernation turned off I sill got 17gb free, but I can't install steam on it now for same reason mentioned here before.

128gb will give you lots of breathing space. Later on I will buy second ssd just for games.

Serephucus

ShadowHearth wrote: »

128gb should do.

I got 60gb and I honestly would love it to be bigger.

I got

windows
Browsers
Drivers
Media players
BF3 - 15gb alone!!!

Keep in mind system restore and hybernation, which will eat up good few GB too.

With hybernation turned off I sill got 17gb free, but I can't install steam on it now for same reason mentioned here before.

128gb will give you lots of breathing space. Later on I will buy second ssd just for games.

Hibernation should be disabled on an SSD!

Agent J

Order placed at 00:30hrs 15/12/11
Payment made at 08:30hrs
Reciept of payment acknowledged at 09:30hrs.
Dispatched at 17:00hrs

Now we place the waiting game...

ShadowHearth

Agent J wrote: »

Order placed at 00:30hrs 15/12/11
Payment made at 08:30hrs
Reciept of payment acknowledged at 09:30hrs.
Dispatched at 17:00hrs

Now we place the waiting game...

i hate that game.. i needed to wait less then 2 days, and those were very very long days

Agent J

Posting from my new rig.


Looking at 7.5 on the windows scale.

Had a minor minor issue with not realising they have changed all DVD drives to sata these days. Thank feck for friends with external DVD drives.

Will post pics later!

ShadowHearth

Agent J wrote: »

Posting from my new rig.


Looking at 7.5 on the windows scale.

Had a minor minor issue with not realising they have changed all DVD drives to sata these days. Thank feck for friends with external DVD drives.

Will post pics later!

gratz m8. your quest is over, now you can enjoy your rig!