New PC - any thoughts on changes?

[philsi]

Hi,

I've put together the below spec to replace my aging machine, and am pondering buying the below.

I do a fair bit of web development, so do a lot of multi-tasking (hello Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, iTunes, Word, Excel, and Access all running at much the same time), big image editing and occasionally a bit of audio editing.

Any suggestions on what you might suggest changing on the below spec? I was hoping to keep it under £700, but the below comes out at £793.00 with VAT. Can go to £800 if really needed.

Regarding SSDs - I know they're rather expensive still, but if I have Windows booting from it, am I right in saying it will be rather quicker / quieter than if I used a standard 7200rpm drive? I've used an AMD base as I've always found them cheaper, but if anyone has better ideas for an Intel base I'm all ears.

Thanks

Phil

Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD BULLDOZER SIX CORE FX-6100 (3.30GHz/6MB CACHE/AM3)

Motherboard
ASUS® M5A97: AM3+ PLATFORM, DUAL DDR3, SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD6450 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£42)

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)

Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

[Wozza365]

Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD BULLDOZER QUAD CORE FX-4100 (3.60GHz/6MB CACHE/AM3)

Motherboard
ASUS® M5A78L-M/USB3: M-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)

Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 550 Ti - DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
80GB INTEL® 320 SERIES SSD, SATA 3 Gb/s (upto 270MB/sR | 90MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£42)

Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)

Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days

managed to get you an SSD in this still and better in most ways for £729

[philsi]

Oh wow, thanks for the speedy reply.

Some (probably) dumb questions:

1) With the SSD - the one you've changed it to is about half the speed - will this be noticeable?
2) Graphics cards - any noticeable difference between NVidea Geforce and AMD Radeon? I'd been going by the "AMD chipset and AMD graphics would work better together" theory (dumb probably, but thought I'd ask)

Thanks

[Wozza365]

yeh the SSD is slower, but you wont really notice the difference other than that, the one i chose should also have a 7yr warranty with it, i have the next size up to the one i selected and its great

no real difference with them both being AMD

the 550Ti is probably about 10x better and you can easily play games on probably medium-high

if you are using photoshop for your editing, i know that ps can also take advantage of nvidia CUDA cores, which AMD doesnt use

[philsi]

Wow, thanks Wozza for the suggestions, very much appreciated

[Talandra]

Get the 2 TB harddrive instead of the same maker, as its cheaper than the 1 TB version, with the exact stats otherwise :P.

And yes, Intel's SSD's have GREAT stability, and are really built for longer lasting machines, rather than straight performance.

Choosing the other harddrive might even bring it as low as 700£, meaning you're free to spend that on whatever you want, like perhaps a 650W PSU if you ever feel like upgrading in the future. Would also recommend getting some decent anti-virus software for the rest, like Kaspersky, BitDefender or Norton (though Norton is the bane of gamers as it STILL hogs a lot of CPU power).

[Wozza365]

the caviar green 2TB is not cheaper, and the 2TB is 3gb/s which is slower, and you might as well make use of one of the 6gb/s ports now

[Talandra]

Ah right. Thought it was a Caviar Black not Green :P. Must have misread that, so yeah you're right and its a very good point.