Building Computer (Approx £1500)

[Chippiewill]

I'm in the mood for building a computer, don't want water cooling because I'm lazy and I like *ambient* noise. I want advice for parts because I'm normally terrible at picking them myself.

Rough spec I want:

CPU: Sandybridge ~3.3Ghz
HDD: 3x 1TB 7200rpm to be RAIDed
SSD: 120 GB (With nice read writes)
RAM: 16 GB (4x4GB)
Graphics: Something around £20, don't mind which brand
Motherboard: Needs to be sandybridge (Obviously), handle six drives and RAID 5 for at least three drives.
Case: EATX for convenience, pretty much settled on http://www.ebuyer.com/product/240814
Optical Drive: Any DVD drive really, I'd prefer a known good brand so it works well
Keyboard: Wired, no need to be special but I like ergonomic and prettyness, I like the razer one
Additional Case fans: 2x 200mm to fill up the remaining fan slots on the case, because why the hell not
Power supply: Enough to support this and future expansions (I guesstimated 850w but it's probably lower, known brands only because I don't want to fry my parts)
W7 HP OEM 64bit: Not much choice here... http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791

What I built as a quick price guesstimation:


The Sennheisers are there because I need a decent headset and for listening to music, they make decent headphones therefore by process of elimination they make good headsets (At least for listening, I don't care how good I sound).

[AgnesIO]

Having a look for better stuff for you. Also you could probably save money buying some parts at eBuyer and some elsewhere. I recommend Overclockers UK - really good website.

16GB RAM seems overkill - massive overkill. So does 3000gb hdd space.

Take a look at SSD's - perhaps one to put your OS and core programs on. Also for that sort of money, personally I would expect a bluray drive.

[Recursion]

1. 620w PSU will be more than enough
2. Why skimp out on the graphics card?
3. What kinda RAID?
4. 16GB RAM is massive overkill, what on earth do you plan on doing with it? A £20 graphics card is going to bottleneck the whole system
5. You say you like ambient noise, ditch the 2 200mm fans
6. Why the i5 2500k? You could easily get a i7 2600k (?)

[Chippiewill]

16GB RAM seems overkill - massive overkill.

8GB seemed underkill :/

So does 3000gb hdd space.

It's 2TB with RAID 5, most of it will be HD quality video, I already have 500GB accumulated over two years, planning for the future.

Take a look at SSD's - perhaps one to put your OS and core programs on.

I have one on the test build and in my desired specs list, I thought about the 500mbps read/write version but I thought that was a bit much, but only £80 for x2 speed over the one I picked... hmmm.

Also for that sort of money, personally I would expect a bluray drive.

It's a gaming PC, not a media PC though. Besides, no ones gets physical media any-more and I have a PS3 next to my desktop, if I did get some actual BluRay films. It just still seems like a waste of money too me.

I recommend Overclockers UK - really good website.

Yeah, I went for just ebuyer because it was easier to do quickly. I might look at different sites if there's any significant price drop.

1. 620w PSU will be more than enough
2. Why skimp out on the graphics card?
3. What kinda RAID?
4. 16GB RAM is massive overkill, what on earth do you plan on doing with it? A £20 graphics card is going to bottleneck the whole system
5. You say you like ambient noise, ditch the 2 200mm fans
6. Why the i5 2500k? You could easily get a i7 2600k (?)

1) Thought so :/
2) Well, I don't mind going for more, I'm just really out of the loop at the moment in terms of graphics cards
3) RAID 5, I don't want to lose 2tb of data at any point really.
4) No idea seemed a good idea at the time, perhaps I'll run vista with it's recommended spec? You're right, I'll dump the cash into graphics instead, I was being dumb.
5) Why? It makes the case cooler, all the reviews I've read say so.
6) I think it was like £60 more or something for just 0.1Ghz and hyperthreading, if you think it's worth it then sure.

[AgnesIO]

8GB seemed underkill :/


It's 2TB with RAID 5, most of it will be HD quality video, I already have 500GB accumulated over two years, planning for the future.


I have one on the test build and in my desired specs list, I thought about the 500mbps read/write version but I thought that was a bit much, but only £80 for x2 speed over the one I picked... hmmm.


It's a gaming PC, not a media PC though. Besides, no ones gets physical media any-more and I have a PS3 next to my desktop, if I did get some actual BluRay films. It just still seems like a waste of money too me.


Yeah, I went for just ebuyer because it was easier to do quickly. I might look at different sites if there's any significant price drop.



1) Thought so :/
2) Well, I don't mind going for more, I'm just really out of the loop at the moment in terms of graphics cards
3) RAID 5
4) No idea seemed a good idea at the time, perhaps I'll run vista with it's recommended spec? You're right, I'll dump the cash into graphics instead, I was being dumb.
5) Why? It makes the case cooler, all the reviews I've read say so.
6) I think it was like £60 more or something for just 0.1Ghz and hyperthreading, if you think it's worth it then sure.

6GB would be fine, 8GB is the most you realistically should consider.

[Chippiewill]

6GB would be fine, 8GB is the most you realistically should consider.

Thing is, recently on my 6GB I have now I've started edging out to 5GB used when I've got multiple games running.

[AgnesIO]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...39&subcat=1801

Still 4gb more ram in

---------- Post added 27-05-2011 at 10:14 PM ----------

Thing is, recently on my 6GB I have now I've started edging out to 5GB used when I've got multiple games running.

Because you play multiple games at once.

[Chippiewill]

Oh, that's pretty nice. I also don't have to OC it myself. It's still about £50 more for what I have now (With less RAM) though and the mobo on that is overkill, ASUS deluxe editions are complete ripoffs.

Because you play multiple games at once.

I kind of have too, since at one time I'll be running EVE and mining, sorting some stuff on my garrysmod servers (Involving having gmod open and remote desktop open) and then I might also be playing a youtube video or a casual game at the same time (Like Terraria or minecraft).

[Recursion]

The P8P67 motherboards are good boards, but they've had a lot of issues, so I'd look around overclock.net or something to make sure they've been sorted.

On a gaming PC I'd expect to pay between £150 - £250 for a graphics card, personally, which would easily max out today's games.

[AgnesIO]

Oh, that's pretty nice. I also don't have to OC it myself. It's still about £50 more for what I have now (With less RAM) though and the mobo on that is overkill, ASUS deluxe editions are complete ripoffs.

The CPU is more what I was looking at - I believe they overclock CPU's by themselves too - which is good