New build - any advice appreciated

Defiler Of The Coffin

Hello guys,

I have been toying with the notion of building a new machine for a while now. Machine-wise all I have to my name is a netbook and a 6-year old laptop! Time seems right for putting together a serious build now.

1. What is your budget? In and around £1000

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, development, general-usage really. I am not as big a gamer as I used to be but would like to be able to play Battlefield 3 at a reasonable level.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 24" would be nice

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Will require new keyboard and mouse. Not sure what speaker setup I want yet.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Not bothered at the moment but may be willing to try in future.

8. How can you pay? Any method will be fine.

9. When are you purchasing? Would like to have this ordered within the next week.

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

Here is a shopping basket I put together on Dabs.com:

Asus Intel Ultimate Bundle (Includes P8P67 Motherboard, Intel Core i5-2500K & 8GB DDR3 Memory) - £329.98
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 CPU Cooler - £14.98
Akasa Genesis Tower ATX Case (Gloss Black) - £23.98
Corsair Memory 600W Builder Series CX V2 ATX PSU - £49.99
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 900MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI SuperClocked - £169.99
Samsung 2TB SpinPoint EcoGreen F4EG SATA3 32MB Hard Drive - £119.98
Iiyama Pro Lite 24" E2409HDS Widescreen 1920 x 1080 2MS DVI HDMI Monitor - £140.59

Total - £849.49

To be honest I wouldn't be hugely up-to-date on what parts give the best bang for buck these days. From what I read the Core i5 2500k is a good option for performance. I went for one of the Dabs bundles with the CPU, Motherboard and 8GB of RAM. Do ye think it offers good value?

I'm not really that sure about how good or bad that graphics card is either.

Do you guys think the PSU is overkill or just enough?

I will more than likely be speccing up a similar build on Hardwareversand to see how it compares in price.

Thanks for reading this far and for any advice!

Serephucus

http://i.imgur.com/M7d47.png

Specced the components for the bundle manually, and gave you a Z68 motherboard (more up-to-date than P67), as well as cheaper memory.
Gave you a much better CPU cooler, to allow you to overclock, and to keep things quieter.
Stuck with the same GPU, as it's pretty good value at its price-point.
Gave you the same 2TB drive, and threw in an SSD, as booting from a green drive is likely going to be slow as hell.
Gave you a much better case, with front panel USB 3.0, and sound dampening, again for quietness.
Swapped the PSU for one that's more likely to handle beefy components better.
Gave you the same monitor, as that's a personal thing.

I seem to have gone over budget, considering you still have to buy peripherals, but these additions - the CPU cooler, case, and SSD in particular - are well worth it.


(Edit: first time I've had to use imgur in quite a while; PITA :P)

Defiler Of The Coffin

Thanks very much for your efforts Serephucus. I took your suggestions and changed the basket. Including a DVD-RW and peripherals the total cost is now £1,018.78. Does this sound like a good deal to you?

Serephucus

Is there any reason you're using Dabs.co.uk instead of Dabs.ie? I'd look at trying to build the same rig at Hardwareversand.de. They're a German site, usually considerably cheaper than most others. They offer a flat-rate €30 shipping to Ireland as well, so it's great for complete builds.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €1,065.22 + €30 shipping (£910 approx.)
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€195.88
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 CL9|€35.49
ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€103.01
Cooler Master Silent Pro Series - 500 Watt|€75.18
Noctua NH-UB9 SE2, AM2/AM3/775/1366/1156|€44.99
Club 3D GeForce GTX 560 Green Edition, 1GB GDDR5|€154.76
Samsung EcoGreen F4 2000GB, SATA II (HD204UI) 8,9cm (3,5")|€109.90
Iiyama ProLite E2409HDS-B1|€155.63
Crucial M4 64GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€98.69
FRACTAL DESIGN Gehäuse DEFINE R3 Titanium Grey|€91.69


Swapped out a couple of components, just the motherboard (ASRock seem to have the best 1155 boards at the moment) and the PSU (I have the same one, and it's bloody quiet, and very clean power, can't say anything about the ZS). Just something to think about.

Defiler Of The Coffin

Using dabs.co.uk as I am located in Belfast.

I will check out hardwareversand tomorrow, too tired to go digging around it now! No use rushing into anything yet. Thanks again.