11 replies to this topic

[UnknownSoldier]

So, I haven't really been following technology recently enough to make an informed decision on what components to choose, or even which ones to consider, therefore I have decided to post here.

Here is the questionnaire:

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Spec Me! Questionnaire
=============================================

1) What's your budget and in which Currency?
I shall be building a budget rig, which is in and around the £600 mark, however I'm willing to go with £750 as my absolute maximum.

2) When are you going to buy your PC?
I will be buying and building sometime this year. Hopefully before the summer.

3) What is your computer type?
a. Desktop
b. HTPC Media PC
c. Workstation
d. Server
e. Laptop
F. Net book
G. Tablet


4) What's the main purpose of the PC?
- If it's gaming, please indicate what resolution you're playing the games at and which games you want to play the most.
- If it isn't gaming, indicate other purposes.
It's gaming, with my TV being the monitor, I will post back with the resolution and specs if need be:
ArmA 2,
ArmA 3
BF3
SWTOR
Any of the Command and Conquer games
Age of Empires

5) When do you intend to upgrade your PC?
Whenever the computer feels a bit slow, or needs an upgrade for a certain game down the line.

6) Do you want to keep any component that you already own?
- If so, specify which component you have and ignore the question about it.
Keyboard, mouse, Monitor.

7) Do you prefer any brand or manufacturer (Intel/AMD, NVidia/ATI, Asus/Gigabyte,...)?
- If so, specify why.

Corsair power supplies for their decent warranty period.

8) Are you going to overclock?
If a time comes where that little bit of a push helps, then yes.

9) Where are you going to buy the components from? Do you have any preference over some store?
Scan.co.uk preferably. I can get discounted delivery.

10) Will you be assembling the system yourself or will it come pre-built?
I'm building it myself.

11) Do you have any configuration in mind?
- If so, specify your choices and explain them. You can then erase all the question below.
- If you don't, keep on.
None in mind/haven't kept up with technology to justify a decent rig.

12) Processor
a. Green Low Power
b. Price/Performance (Bang for the buck)
c. Performance
C.

13) Motherboard
a. ATX / mATX / ITX
b. Crossfire / SLI capability
ATX

14) Graphics card
a. On Board
b. Single card
c. Crossfire / SLI
d. Single card configurations but planning on Crossfire / SLI in the future
B with the possibility of D

15) Storage
a. 1 drive (Indicate capacity)
b. 2 drives (Indicate capacities)
c. RAID (Indicate which RAID array)
d. SSD
A 200gb

16) Optical Drives
a. DVD writer
b. Blu-ray player
c. Blu-ray writer
d. External optical device
A.

17) Power supply
a. Make sure it has the required wattage for your particular setup
b. Become future proof, if you're planning on upgrading your system, you may need a higher wattage PSU.
Corsair 600+ watt.

18) Computer case and cooling methods
a. Air cooling / water-cooling (which heatsink, fans or loop components are you looking forward to get)
c. Light and easy to carry case (optimal for LAN systems)
d. Stylish case (Indicate which style of cases you like the most)
Corsair H60, any case

19) Do you need any special connectivity?
a. Wireless
b. eSATA
c. FireWire
d. HDMI
e. Optical sound output
Nope.

20) Does the budget include any peripherals?
a. Monitor (Indicate the size, response time, resolution,...)
b. Keyboard (Specify if you want a gaming / home theater / normal one)
c. Mouse
d. Speakers / Headset
No peripherals are needed.

21) Do you need an operative system?
a. If so, which one?
b. No, you may already have one laying around (specify which one).
Yes and no. I can supply one if required, MSDNAA and all that.

=============================================
End
=============================================

Edited by WOLF_TEAM_LEADER, 19 January 2012 - 12:11 PM.

[UnknownSoldier]

Bump.

Would also like to amend the budget I have to £850 or there abouts.

[WOLF_TEAM_LEADER]

Most people will be reluctant to post spec me's if you plan to build the PC in Q2+ as this means a lot of hardware will be coming out and prices will be changing.
High-Mid Range HD 7xxx cards, Ivy-Bridge CPUs and boards, Nvidia Kepler GPUs etc.
I am not to sure about Pounds and what have you but I guess your budget falls into a HD 7950/7870 with an Ivy Bridge i5.
Resolution is very important however one would guess it's 1080P.
If you can get by with what you have right now you will reap the rewards in the near future imo.

If you have to build fairly soon then I can spec you up.

Edited by WOLF_TEAM_LEADER, 19 January 2012 - 12:10 PM.

[UnknownSoldier]

Want to reply to this topic with two reasons in mind:

• Want to see if I can build a semi-decent computer with the knowledge that I have currently. Please note that this list was put together qucikly, so please excuse any mistakes.
  
• The wanting to build a computer within the next month.

I couldn't beat the £850 budget that I had set myself though.

Picture form:


Text form:

• http://www.scan.co.u...l-dvi-i-dvi-hdm
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...b-cache-95w-oem
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...0-%28x16%29-atx
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...s-9-9-9-24-150v
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...-w-o-psu-hi-end
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...366-am2-and-am3
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...2v-fan-atx-v291
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...stem-single-oem
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...-sata-black-oem
  
• http://www.scan.co.u...h-ecoseek-ps-3-

[Derbixrace]

i'd go with something like this

[Viral]

Very good build Derbix.. But a 550w?

[Derbixrace]

Viral, on 28 January 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

Very good build Derbix.. But a 550w?

easily enough http://www.guru3d.co...tx-570-review/8

[Derbixrace]

found an antec 620w modular for the same price as the 550w one so its a better buy http://www.scan.co.u...tx-scan-exclusi

[dirtylarryuk]

Derbixrace, on 28 January 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

found an antec 620w modular for the same price as the 550w one so its a better buy http://www.scan.co.u...tx-scan-exclusi

personally I would recommend Scans Value or Overclock bundles (mobo+ram+psu all built and tested with heatsink) then add the other bits as needed. if you can hang on for the 28nm mid-budget GPUs you'll be very happy.

So Scan do either a Hex core AMD bulldozer or 2500k from around £330 all built and tested, throw in a PSU and case +win7 and you have budget left for a decent 28nm GPU in a few months or a pretty decent 40nm now.

http://www.scan.co.u...clocked-bundles (choose your mobo CPU RAM and cooler)

Then add a PSU and GPU and if you can sqeeze it in a 60 GB + SSD (OCZ agil 2 are great performance and value). if you go i5 you can always use the intel GPU for media and web while you wait for a killer budget 7870 or any 28nm GPU! (I5-7 inbuilt GPUs are very good for media web, aweful for games though).

I would 100% recommend a AMD bulldozer 6 core or I5 2500 at 4GHZ+ as your CPU choice 4GB RAM and at least a 6950-560 Ti for the games you like BF3 eats GPU's and Arma does a bit as well. Good news is 28nm arrive soon so the current 40nm will go down in price even more 2500k is cheap thanks to Bulldozer.

Couple of money saving tips:

Try and reuse your old PC case. (you can save up and buy a better case and move the bits later!)

Use an Intel IGP for GPU if you buy 2500k till 28nm budget cards arrive (from march) and or resuse your current GPU for another couple of months.

Arma and MMO's stream data adding a 60GB SSD for OS and fav apps games will make the machine better reuse your old HDD to save money as storage.

If you dont plan on SLi or CF all you may need is a decent 550-650W PSU and they won't break the bank.

TIP: a high end CPU OC'ed to 4-5 GHZ can double it's power use or rated TDP so 100w becomes 200w quite often at load!, when at max load most mid range GPUs (560ti-6950-570 etc) will use 150-220w. So if you don't OC the CPU a 550w is fine! if you do OC a 2500k etc then a 650w may be safer if you add a GPU like 6950 570 and also OC it. The perfect PSU is using 80% of its rated load max. So when you OC I5 I7 and bulldozer you often talking a max 190-230 watts for OC'ed CPU and around a max 200-250w for the gpu with sensible OC! So with a few other bits like fans and lights and optical drives and HDD your talking a max real use of 500w so a 650w is around the 80% peak. A 500-550w is close to load and may fail faster (but if you don't OC the CPU and GPU even a 500w is fine these days!).

So although very rare when gaming your OC'ed CPu and GPU will be at max load it will a happen time to time (lik on start of a level load) and thats when a bad PSU spikes and cuts out.

Edited by dirtylarryuk, 28 January 2012 - 09:06 PM.

[shalomyo]

wait ppl actually spend money on OS?

(TRUBRITAR UNAPPROVED)

Edited by WOLF_TEAM_LEADER, 29 January 2012 - 04:03 AM.

[WOLF_TEAM_LEADER]

shalomyo, on 28 January 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

wait ppl actually spend money on OS?

Unless you are trying to be an advocate for linux on a gaming rig I would suggest not to leave comments that have no value and are in violation of the forum rules
found here: http://www.trubritar...35-forum-rules/

[dirtylarryuk]

WOLF_TEAM_LEADER, on 29 January 2012 - 03:57 AM, said:

Unless you are trying to be an advocate for linux on a gaming rig I would suggest not to leave comments that have no value and are in violation of the forum rules
found here: http://www.trubritar...35-forum-rules/

I advocate it, not because I like Microsoft (or Apple) I loathe both. And Linnux is free but runs less games than MAc OS. But because with a legal disk to install from and reinstall from you can be 100% sure you did not install malware inside the OS which is something you can be almost 100% sure of these days when you torrent a OS in any manner. The amount of idiots I have heard on this forum and others claiming that torrented copies of OS's are safe is always funny.

These also tend to be the exact same people who's rig never work and are always having issues.

So although I think MS overcharge for Win7 and it should never cost anymore than a premium game (e.g. £30-40). Buying OEM (£70), installing from that and having that disk for reinstall is a smart move!

Some poeple are so stupid they use pirate versions of AV from torrents on pirate versions of Win7 and then when the hacked-cracked version of the AV says they have no malware they believe it!!!

So do spend £70 on OEM win7 and avoid losing your ID-passwords-bank account-games logins-photo's-documents-data etc with malware built into a crack-hacked OS that even a legal paid for AV could never spot.