Poll: I know nothing about PC specs and could do with some help
- Thread starter TheCheesy4
- Start date
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If you don't fancy building it yourself, I'd recommend a place like yoyotech. They're very reasonable with pricing. If you fancy getting your hands dirty, a fantastic place to order parts from is ebuyer.com. Extremely fast delivery, reasonable pricing, generally top notch service.
Here's my setup with a price breakdown:
GPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781 - ATI Radeon 5870 - £315
This thing is the definition of beast. It's the most expensive component in my rig and weighed in at half of my total budget, but fuck me was it worth it. I can't even begin to explain how beautiful this graphics card is. It's the fastest clocking card to date. Comes with a free complete copy of MW2. Aren't you the lucky one, eh?
CPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179842 - Intel Core 2 Quad 2.83GHz - £194
I didn't get this exact model, mine was a Quad Extreme with the same 2.83GHz speed. That's a little pricier than necessary, I actually got mine on ebay for about £140. You could go for a slightly cheaper one like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164520 if you can't find anything on ebay.
RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142399 - 2x2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM - £72
Some cheap 'n cheerful RAM. You could spend a bit more on it if you like, but premium quality RAM doesn't have that much of a boosting effect on gaming. The processor and graphics card are much more important than RAM for gaming, and you'd be rocking the best graphics card there is.
Motherboard: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152225 - Gigabyte - £30
Again, cheap 'n cheerful, but very solid. Gigabyte boards are very reliable.
PSU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176438 - Huntkey 500W power supply - £36
500W is enough to power all this stuff.
Hard drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158860 - 500GB 7200rpm Seagate - £35
I find that 500GB is enough for me. You might want to go for a 1TB one if you like, but we're doing this on a budget, right? Besides, you could just buy another 500GB one later and use 2 at once. 2 500GB drives running in parallel can load data faster than a single 1TB drive because there's twice as many actual needles doing the reading.
Disk drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176026 - 24x DVD/RW drive - £15
About as cheap as they get. A premium drive seriously isn't worth the money unless you plan on burning hundreds of disks. Nobody uses disks any more anyway. I didn't even bother buying one of these, I just ripped mine out of an old, broken PC.
Then it's just a few bits and pieces. You'll need some thermal paste: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410 which you smear on the processor when you put it in the PC. This stops it overheating and will set you back a whopping 6 quid.
Finally, you'll need yourself a case. As cheap or as expensive as you like, it's purely aesthetic. I paid £17 for mine and it looks pretty slick. They've got hundreds to choose from.
None of this includes a wifi card. I don't use wifi in my house, it's slower than using a cable. If you want a wifi card, it'll cost you about £10. I just wouldn't bother, personally.
TOTAL COST: £715
You could probably get it down closer to around £650 if you shop around for a better value processor.
Just to put this in perspective, if you use the PC-builder on the Alienware website to build something with equivalent components to these, you'll be looking at a price of around £1,400. Literally twice the price.
I know the prospect of building your own PC, particularly with absolutely no prior experience, can be a little bit daunting, but trust me, it's a relatively simple process made even easier by google. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to help. It's only once you've built your first baby on the cheap that you realise just how much of a disgusting ripoff places like PC World can be.
Oh, and you'll be able to play Crysis on full settings. Trust me, it's lovely.
Here's my setup with a price breakdown:
GPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781 - ATI Radeon 5870 - £315
This thing is the definition of beast. It's the most expensive component in my rig and weighed in at half of my total budget, but fuck me was it worth it. I can't even begin to explain how beautiful this graphics card is. It's the fastest clocking card to date. Comes with a free complete copy of MW2. Aren't you the lucky one, eh?
CPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179842 - Intel Core 2 Quad 2.83GHz - £194
I didn't get this exact model, mine was a Quad Extreme with the same 2.83GHz speed. That's a little pricier than necessary, I actually got mine on ebay for about £140. You could go for a slightly cheaper one like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164520 if you can't find anything on ebay.
RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142399 - 2x2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM - £72
Some cheap 'n cheerful RAM. You could spend a bit more on it if you like, but premium quality RAM doesn't have that much of a boosting effect on gaming. The processor and graphics card are much more important than RAM for gaming, and you'd be rocking the best graphics card there is.
Motherboard: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152225 - Gigabyte - £30
Again, cheap 'n cheerful, but very solid. Gigabyte boards are very reliable.
PSU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176438 - Huntkey 500W power supply - £36
500W is enough to power all this stuff.
Hard drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158860 - 500GB 7200rpm Seagate - £35
I find that 500GB is enough for me. You might want to go for a 1TB one if you like, but we're doing this on a budget, right? Besides, you could just buy another 500GB one later and use 2 at once. 2 500GB drives running in parallel can load data faster than a single 1TB drive because there's twice as many actual needles doing the reading.
Disk drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176026 - 24x DVD/RW drive - £15
About as cheap as they get. A premium drive seriously isn't worth the money unless you plan on burning hundreds of disks. Nobody uses disks any more anyway. I didn't even bother buying one of these, I just ripped mine out of an old, broken PC.
Then it's just a few bits and pieces. You'll need some thermal paste: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410 which you smear on the processor when you put it in the PC. This stops it overheating and will set you back a whopping 6 quid.
Finally, you'll need yourself a case. As cheap or as expensive as you like, it's purely aesthetic. I paid £17 for mine and it looks pretty slick. They've got hundreds to choose from.
None of this includes a wifi card. I don't use wifi in my house, it's slower than using a cable. If you want a wifi card, it'll cost you about £10. I just wouldn't bother, personally.
TOTAL COST: £715
You could probably get it down closer to around £650 if you shop around for a better value processor.
Just to put this in perspective, if you use the PC-builder on the Alienware website to build something with equivalent components to these, you'll be looking at a price of around £1,400. Literally twice the price.
I know the prospect of building your own PC, particularly with absolutely no prior experience, can be a little bit daunting, but trust me, it's a relatively simple process made even easier by google. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to help. It's only once you've built your first baby on the cheap that you realise just how much of a disgusting ripoff places like PC World can be.
Oh, and you'll be able to play Crysis on full settings. Trust me, it's lovely.
Yeah, I'll need a new motherboard when I eventually upgrade to an i7, but it's not really a priority for me right now and certainly wasn't at the time of purchase. I'm just listing my own parts exactly as I bought them. I understand your concern about the PSU but I have friends who do this for a living and they have no qualms with this particular model. I've had no problems with it myself.RAKtheUndead said:
Running a quad-core+5870 on a no-name 500w PSU is a Bad Idea.Eyhren said:
Stick with a Corsair, SeaSonic, PC Power and Cooling, Antec, or BFG model with an 80+ rating.
K all this tech lingo mumbo jumbo aside check this out. First off forget Alienware IMO they are wayy overpriced. Bare essentials....Get yourself a solid quadcore 2.6 or a lil more should be fine. 4gigs of ram. and choose a vid card idk give your self 300 dollars or so..take your pick. Some highend older cards can even out preform newer midgrade cards so do your homework. But really and truthfully and Good. store bpught packed rig with a nice quad 4 gigs of ram and get yoruself a nice video card and your pretty set.
MONSTER RIGS ARE NOT WORTH IT. Forget the tech junkies and "hardcores" your better off buying a new system every 2 or even 3 years then dropping 6 grand on something batman breaks into your house at night to "borrow". Sure it's not the cheapest way to go but it's the easiest, and if your not tech savy building your own can be a little tricky. IMO years ago there was a huge difference between building and buying a rig. Now ehh not as large of a gap difference in price. *Grabs fire proof shield*
MONSTER RIGS ARE NOT WORTH IT. Forget the tech junkies and "hardcores" your better off buying a new system every 2 or even 3 years then dropping 6 grand on something batman breaks into your house at night to "borrow". Sure it's not the cheapest way to go but it's the easiest, and if your not tech savy building your own can be a little tricky. IMO years ago there was a huge difference between building and buying a rig. Now ehh not as large of a gap difference in price. *Grabs fire proof shield*
Close to £200 for an outdated Core 2 Quad when you can pick up an I5 750 that will basically take that Quad 2 outside and beat it half to death for £160?? Not the greatest buying decision to be honest.
The boards too cheap, offers limited expandability. Primarily it only has two memory slots and only one x16 and one pci e x 16 slot. I am also willing to bet it ain't gonna be very feature rich when it comes to overclocking
For the price of the CPU and Motherboard above you could buy an I5 750 and an MSI P55 GD55 board. You'd have an out of the box faster system with more potential for future expansion and better overclocking options.
Never heard of them but five minutes research via google did show me that that PSU doesn't have a powerful enough +12v rail to power the ATI 5870. The card has a recommended current draw of 40A whilst that power supply has two 12V rails producing 15A and 18A for a total of 33A.
Go for the Samsung F3 at 1Tb, huge storage and about one the the fastest drives you can buy without paying the stupid cash asked for for the Raptors. Also two 500Gig drives will only run faster if you create a Raid 0 setup and that's something you can't just do later, not unless you want to reinstall your OS and start over.
Like I said, I just listed my exact parts as I bought them, which was around January this year. I know the PSU isn't the greatest thing ever but it's suited me fine.Laughing Man said:
The motherboard gives me the options to adjust the current and clocks for every single component I'm running, and it comes with a dual bios to backup stable settings should I fuck the clocks up.
I was indeed referring to Raid 0 for the hard drives. Reinstalling windows 7 only takes about half an hour and its no effort to backup documents and save files.
After reading these comments, I'm currently looking at something along the lines of this, but I have some questions (what else is new?):
Processor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755>Intel Core i5 750 (£165) Is this Quad Core? Is that even necessary? Is an i7 worth paying more?
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173104>Corsair 650W (£100)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315) Will I be able to use PhysX with this?
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158578>OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 (£130)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Disk Drive: Don't know yet. Ideally, I'd like one that reads and writes DVDs/CDs, and can play Blu-Rays. Can <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>this one (£65) play DVDs? It seems it would be silly not to, but I doesn't expressly state that, and I'd rather be safe then sorry.
Overall, it comes to £881 without <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>that drive, and £946 with it.
Finally, would I have to buy a seperate sound card and modem, or are they included in any of these products? If they aren't, can anyone recommend any good ones? I've had some good advice so far, so thanks. I love this website
EDIT: Is it possible to remove the poll? It's services are not longer required.
MOAR HOT JUICY EDIT: Forgot to ask about cases. I can just about fit a 60cm one under my desk, so any recommendations?
YET MOAR EDITY GOODNESS: What do I need in order for my computer to work with wireless?
Processor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755>Intel Core i5 750 (£165) Is this Quad Core? Is that even necessary? Is an i7 worth paying more?
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173104>Corsair 650W (£100)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315) Will I be able to use PhysX with this?
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158578>OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 (£130)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Disk Drive: Don't know yet. Ideally, I'd like one that reads and writes DVDs/CDs, and can play Blu-Rays. Can <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>this one (£65) play DVDs? It seems it would be silly not to, but I doesn't expressly state that, and I'd rather be safe then sorry.
Overall, it comes to £881 without <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>that drive, and £946 with it.
Finally, would I have to buy a seperate sound card and modem, or are they included in any of these products? If they aren't, can anyone recommend any good ones? I've had some good advice so far, so thanks. I love this website
EDIT: Is it possible to remove the poll? It's services are not longer required.
MOAR HOT JUICY EDIT: Forgot to ask about cases. I can just about fit a 60cm one under my desk, so any recommendations?
YET MOAR EDITY GOODNESS: What do I need in order for my computer to work with wireless?
CPU: The i5 750 is a quad-core, and there's no need for an i7 unless you're running multiple video cards (the i7 motherboards have better multi-GPU support).TheCheesy4 said:
Video: Hardware PhysX is controlled by nVidia, and they won't allow it to be enabled on any system with an ATI GPU. If you want it, you'll need to go with nVidia. IMO, it's not worth it.
Memory: Get an even number of RAM modules, they'll run faster in that board. A 4GB [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240] kit should be fine for now.
Blu-Ray: That drive will read DVDs, as will all Blu-Ray drives. Before you spring for a Blu-Ray drive, make sure that your monitor supports HDCP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection].
Wireless: You'll need either a wireless NIC [http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220221] or a wireless router in bridge mode, connected to your PC via ethernet cable.
Other stuff: all modern motherboards have built-in sound and network interfaces, you're good there.
Cases: Antec 300 or 900, Cooler Master Storm Scout of HAF 932 (check the height on that one, it's pretty big).
Processor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755>Intel Core i5 750 (£165)
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146722>Antec Signature Series 850W (£150)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315) Is there a nVIDIA card around the same price and power? PhysX intrigues me.
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240>Kingston 4GB DDR3 (£94)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Monitor: Can anyone recommend a HDCP monitor for around about £100-150?
Disk Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>Samsung SH-B083L (£65) Assuming I can find a HDCP monitor
Case: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/118268>Antec 900 (£70)
Internet-gubbins: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220221>Edimax Wireless-N150 (£18)
Overall: £1048
Is this everything I'd need for building a computer? No cables or adaptors or such malarkey?
Edit: Oops, forgot I'd need an operating system. <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791>Derp. (£80)
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146722>Antec Signature Series 850W (£150)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315) Is there a nVIDIA card around the same price and power? PhysX intrigues me.
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240>Kingston 4GB DDR3 (£94)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Monitor: Can anyone recommend a HDCP monitor for around about £100-150?
Disk Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>Samsung SH-B083L (£65) Assuming I can find a HDCP monitor
Case: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/118268>Antec 900 (£70)
Internet-gubbins: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220221>Edimax Wireless-N150 (£18)
Overall: £1048
Is this everything I'd need for building a computer? No cables or adaptors or such malarkey?
Edit: Oops, forgot I'd need an operating system. <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791>Derp. (£80)
Specs
Processor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755>Intel Core i5 750 (£165)
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146722>Antec Signature Series 850W (£150)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315)
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240>Kingston 4GB DDR3 (£94)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Monitor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/194604>LG 22" HD Monitor 1920x1080 (£130)
Disk Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>Samsung SH-B083L (£65)
Case: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/118268>Antec 900 (£70)
Internet-gubbins: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220221>Edimax Wireless-N150 (£18)
OS: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791>Windows 7 64-Bit OEM (£80)
Surge Protector: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/45265>Belkin SurgeMaster 4-Way Surge Protector (£6)
Overall: £1264
Processor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755>Intel Core i5 750 (£165)
PSU: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146722>Antec Signature Series 850W (£150)
Graphics Card: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199781>ATI Radeon 5970 (£315)
Memory: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169240>Kingston 4GB DDR3 (£94)
Hard Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804>Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB (£55)
Motherboard: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191224>MSI P55-GD55 (£110)
Thermal Paste: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126410>Arctic Silver (£6)
Monitor: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/194604>LG 22" HD Monitor 1920x1080 (£130)
Disk Drive: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191042>Samsung SH-B083L (£65)
Case: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/118268>Antec 900 (£70)
Internet-gubbins: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220221>Edimax Wireless-N150 (£18)
OS: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791>Windows 7 64-Bit OEM (£80)
Surge Protector: <a href=http://www.ebuyer.com/product/45265>Belkin SurgeMaster 4-Way Surge Protector (£6)
Overall: £1264
Does the MSI P55-GD55 come with a heatsink and everything else I'd need?Laughing Man said: