Looking for advice on new PC please

[Kukicha]

Hello,

I'm looking to buy a new PC for general everyday use and for a bit of gaming and I have a budget of £600 ish. I was considering this build:

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
768MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Free Item
FREE H.A.W.X.2 Game (RRP: £39.99) with a qualifying GTS450/ GTX460 GPU!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI EXPRESS CARD (£19)
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
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
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 9 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £669.00 including VAT and delivery.

Its slightly more than what I was hoping to spend so I was wondering if anyone could suggest any areas where I can cut back on slightly.

I was thinking about downgrading the processor speed from 3.20ghz to 3.0 but I'm not sure if it will lead to a big performance decrease which outweighs the price cut.

And I was considering changing the motherboard from the M4A87TD/USB3 to the M4A78LT-M, but once again I'm unsure of the down sides to this.

Any advice would be welcomed and greatly appreciated!

 

[Sleinous]

Down side on mobo - no usb 3.0.

Cpu - youll be downgrading to a n Athlon X4, still a quad core, just a weaker cpu with less cache.

Rest of spec is perfect except, u dont need the pci express wlan card, go for the pci @ £3 less, they both perform identically theyre just a diff expansion type. It is best to fill up the older legacy pci slots on ur mobo first so u have room for pci express upgrades later on.

 

[Kukicha]

Thanks for looking over the build and the advice Sleinous. I'll change to the cheaper PCI card.

I have a few questions though (my knowledge about computers is very weak).

Is USB 3.0 worth the extra money? I'm not really sure of the benefits, I had a quick look online and saw data transfer speed being mentioned.

And will a downgrade from 3.20 ghz / 8MB cache to 3.0 ghz / 6MB cache show clear performance differences whilst gaming/general multi tasking?

 

[Sleinous]

No, its a quad core, so, it should make up for the clock speed loss, however the Athlon is based more on the budget side of things, can you factor in a Phenom Dual Core instead? That should be better than the Athlon Quad Core if you take a 3ghz+ CPU.

yes and no, USB 3.0 is not worth it for getting external HDDs as although they will perform slightly faster (USB 2.0w as limited to 480mbps) you still have to translate commands from SATA to USB and vica versa every time you access the disk so i cant see it being astronomically faster. However, USB3 may come in useful in the future for high-speed memory sticks or something. Depends on teh price diff between the two boards really, if its only £30 - £50 difference i'd go for it!

 

[Phoenix]

You'd be a lot better sticking with the phenom ii x4 955 and choosing a cheaper motherboard. I wouldn't recommend anyone who wants to play games a dual core CPU, currently 3 cores is the amount most games use but this value will continue to increase so having a quad core CPU is very important.

 

[Kukicha]

Ok thanks for the advice guys.

I'll stick with the AMD PHENOM II X4 955 and just downgrade with the motherboard

Will probably order it either later today or tomorrow.

 

[Sleinous]

Good choice, dont forget pics when it arrives!