new spec advice

a123b

New member
I have previously bough Dell computers but the price quoted this time seemed a bit OTT so I thought I would try here. I want it for games (but not primary role and could not strech to the cost of high end gaming), photo and video editing, home entertainment (e.g. HD movies) and multitasking. I want it to be future proof (don’t want to start adding bits for many years) and quiet. Not sue I have the memory and graphic cards optimised to the CPU (I just kept adding things till I got to the price I was going to pay with Dell). Any advice welcome as never really considered what went in the desktop before just ordered future proof high spec previously.



Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-870 Quad Core (2.93GHz, 8MB Cache) + Turbo Boost
Motherboard
ASUS® P7P55D-E PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX™ / SLI SUPPORT
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 6870 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
2nd Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 6870 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD20EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
10x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£88)
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling
CORSAIR 750W PSU (TX750) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£88)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£59)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium PCI Express (£59)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI EXPRESS CARD (£19)
USB Options
4 PORT USB 2.0 INTERNAL PCI CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2010 (Incl Disc & 1 License for 3 devices) (£85)
Anti-Virus
NORTON ANTI-VIRUS 2011 - 1 Year Licence for 1 PC (£12)
Monitor
IIYAMA E2472HD 24" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D FULL HD 1920x1080 (£179)
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables
1 x 2 METRE GOLD PLATED V1.4 HDMI CABLE (£8)
Keyboard & Mouse
Logitech® Cordless Desktop Wave™ Laser Mouse & Keyboard Combo (£48)
Speakers
LOGITECH Z-2300 2.1 Extreme THX®-certified 2.1 performance (£139)
Webcam
Logitech® Webcam Pro 9000 - 2.0Mp, AutoFocus and Carl Zeiss Optics (£59)
Surge Protection
6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector + Auto Power Off Function (£18)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
SATURDAY DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (BEFORE 12 NOON) (£19)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Miscellaneous
FREE MAFIA II Game (RRP: £34.99) with a qualifying GTX 4xx Series GPU!
Quantity
1

Price: £2,048.00 including VAT and delivery.
 

Sleinous

Author Level
OK firstly for photo and video editing you want an Nvidia GPU as they have CUDA cores that software such as Photoshop fully supports for way faster rendering etc.

Secondly id avoid a crossfire / sli config if you dont plan on playing high end gaming, as this spec would absolutely obliterate every game out today, so, bit pointless if this isnt what you want.

Everything else is fine but liquid cooling is only really beneficial for overclocking. I'd spec an i7 950 instead of that cheaper i7 870 (completely different socket) so will make this purchase way way more future-proofed as the LGA 1366 socket will accomodate up to and including the i7 980X cpu.

I'd also strongly recommend going for the DVI cable as opposed to the HDMI, in my opinion better suited for desktops. Often expereinced weird resolution issues and stuff with HDMI :/ I know this is a monitor for PC and not TV, and that HDMI carries audio, but DVI does too. Your choice really :) + The iiyama monitor comes with a DVI cable already so you dont needta buy it, why not wait and see, then if you decide you want that HDMI, buy it afterwards.

Also: Choose the PCI card over the PCI express card, its £3 cheaper BUT performs identically, it is just based on an older expansion slot, which is BETTER to fill up now on your motherboard to leave the PCIe x1 slots FREE for other upgrades. This is because PCI devices are gradually going out of fashion. BUT the two cards perform exactly the same.

Now my spec: A tiny bit more: and Ive included all teh stuffyou did, including soundcard that I personally wouldnt bother with as onboard is really good anyways.

Note: I included a HX100W PSu so you can add a second GTX 480 to this awesome rig later on if you so wish, and thsoe 2 in SLI WILL thrash teh 2x 6870s and increase future-proofness of rig.

Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-950 (3.06GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM)
6GB SAMSUNG DDR3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz (3 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1536MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX480 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11 + MAFIA II
Free Item
FREE MAFIA II Game (RRP: £34.99) with a qualifying GTX 4xx Series GPU!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD20EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
10x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£88)
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling
CORSAIR 1000W MODULAR PSU (HX1000) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£169)
Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Gamer (£59)
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
Firewire & Video Editing
1 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORT ONBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2010 (Incl Disc & 1 License for 3 devices) (£85)
Anti-Virus
NORTON ANTI-VIRUS 2011 - 1 Year Licence for 1 PC (£12)
Monitor
IIYAMA E2472HD 24" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D FULL HD 1920x1080 (£179)
Keyboard & Mouse
Logitech® Cordless Desktop Wave™ Laser Mouse & Keyboard Combo (£48)
Speakers
LOGITECH Z-2300 2.1 Extreme THX®-certified 2.1 performance (£139)
Webcam
Logitech® Webcam Pro 9000 - 2.0Mp, AutoFocus and Carl Zeiss Optics (£59)
Surge Protection
6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector + Auto Power Off Function (£18)
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: £2,044.00 including VAT and delivery.


Lastly, please note I still had to chose the PCI express WLAN card BECAUSE the soundcard has taken up that PCI slot I talked about, if you get rid of teh soundcard, change the WLAN card to the PCI one @ £16
 
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PCS

Administrator
Staff member
Great spec put together there be Sleinous! I would recommend this because it's very well balanced and will be great for gaming on max settings and pretty much anything else you can throw at it! :)

Your spec was good, but you don't need Crossfire and the i7-950 processor is better then the i7-870.
 

Sleinous

Author Level
One last important thing I forgot to add, see the 6GB of RAM? this is running in tri-channel on the X58 chipset that this computer is based on. The spec you put together has 8GB running in dual-channel mode (I.e. two sets of RAM run together in pairs). But my spec has 3 sets of RAM running in triplets, as this motherboard supports Tri-channel. This also means you can have a maximum of 24GB of RAM inserted into thsi motherboard. Note Windows 7 Home Prem only recognises up to 16GB, but Pro and Ultimate recognise teh full amount.

So.. to sum it all up... even though there is 2GB less RAM, it shall perform just as well, besides 6GB is more than enough in today's age for a computer AND with the upcoming release of 8GB memory modules soon, 4Gb and 2GB memory kits will fall a bit in price, so, if you wanted to buy another set fo 3x2GB memory modules to raise your RAM to 12GB for e.g, it would cost way way less in a few months time than now :)
 

Sleinous

Author Level
hehe, let me guess, noise and heat? No no no, gain, reviweres have to find a negative, and, its not a noisy card unless you pump the fan up to full RPM lol...

I have the GTX 470, the little brother, it idles at 45deg, when folding@home for a few hours, its at 65deg, it does NOT make any audible noise simply because the OTHER components in teh computer iwll be noisier, e.g. chassis fans etc etc etc :) Also you choise the Sileo I believe, and that will disguise much of teh noise produced by the CPU and GPU. Rest assured, they arent noisy buggers, theyre docile monsters :)
 

BIGZIPZ

Member
It's crazy really, I think sometimes you pay for "brand". I rigged up a quote for a beast of a machine and then found something comparable over at the Alienware site and you are paying hundreds of quid more for the same thing but without a sticker on the case.
 

Sleinous

Author Level
Yup, this is what I find shocking, its like at PC World, I was shown a PC for £899, that I speced on here for £650... (IDENTICAL spec except for CPU which was infact one level HIGHER because PCS dont even stock the one they had put in teh spec @ PC World).

Not to mention the lame GPU they put in there that they claimed to be a *gaming* PC...
 

Phoenix

Prolific Poster
You could always go with the GTX465 if you're worried about the heat + noise of the higher end Nvidia cards.

Oh and I found this in a PCWorld earlier:
IMG_0293.JPG

AMD should sue them for claiming that the Radeon 5750 is their newest graphics card!
 
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Sleinous

Author Level
You could always go with the GTX465 if you're worried about the heat + noise of the higher end Nvidia cards.

Oh and I found this in a PCWorld earlier:
View attachment 133

AMD should sue them for claiming that the Radeon 5750 is their newest graphics card!

or a GTX 470, that I can 100% GUARANTEE is quiet and cool contrary to popular belief :)

Ye, theyre real con artists...
 
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