600-800 GBP Budget, help!

[Rotted]

So I've recently come into a bit of cash and want to upgrade onto a desktop ready for university and any future work I'll need a computer for, thing is I don't have a clue whats compatible with what,

I want to spend around 600 GBP but I can go up to 800, maybe just over, primarily I need this desktop to be high powered for gaming, a decent machine for work in uni, as well as a decent system for messing around on CS5 and "movie nights"

Now heres the good bit, my friend (much older friend) owns and runs his own computer shop where he builds computers for people, its one of his main sources of income, sinces hes a close friend he's helping me build it, free of charge, it also means hes getting the components at trade price, however, he deals with company's who want work computers, not gaming machines, so hes not to sure whats good and what to avoid when it comes to gaming / home entertainment,

So can any one help me to design a beast of a machine?

Three points to remember

• There is no cost for labor
  Components are at Trade Price, not Standard prices you see online to buy themselves
  I only need a tower in the specs, Monitors keyboard mouse surround sound etc are coming separate

Cheers!

[Toffie]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£161.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£25.45 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£76.30 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£32.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£55.49 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card (£239.75 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case (£46.99 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£48.17 @ Aria PC)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.85 @ Aria PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.94 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £769.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-03 20:00 GMT+0000)

I'm not sure how much money your friend could end up saving by getting this build, if he does get a decent amount then get yourself an 128GB SSD like the m4/830/840pro.

[Rotted]

Great cheers, Ill pass this info on to him and see how much he can get the parts for!

[felros]

toffie was pretty spot on but he lacked something called style and fines
the corsair 200r is a good case but it looks ugly as shit to get the best of both worlds i would suggest a bitfenix prodigy( i think a side windowed version will be released soon ,finger crossed) the only con for this is its not big enough for crossfire and it needs all new fans(like most cases )......if you plan on a crossfire set up in the near future than a corsair 600 d is a beast looking case or the nzxt 630 but both are a 100 $ more than the bitfenix
if you were to go for the bitfenix (which i would i highly recommend) with it being a mini itx case you would also need to switch up the mobo for a mini itx mobo and considering your budget i think the Asus P8H77-I would be sufficient for the average persons needs and for the chery on the cake id get some nzxt leds maybe switch the psu for a corsair tx and if you have enough get a samsung ssd......um whats the situation whith the keyboard mouse and monitor......
i hope you have a happy building

[Idrinkwhiterussians]

toffie was pretty spot on but he lacked something called style and fines
the corsair 200r is a good case but it looks ugly as shit to get the best of both worlds i would suggest a bitfenix prodigy( i think a side windowed version will be released soon ,finger crossed) the only con for this is its not big enough for crossfire and it needs all new fans(like most cases )......if you plan on a crossfire set up in the near future than a corsair 600 d is a beast looking case or the nzxt 630 but both are a 100 $ more than the bitfenix
if you were to go for the bitfenix (which i would i highly recommend) with it being a mini itx case you would also need to switch up the mobo for a mini itx mobo and considering your budget i think the Asus P8H77-I would be sufficient for the average persons needs and for the chery on the cake id get some nzxt leds maybe switch the psu for a corsair tx and if you have enough get a samsung ssd......um whats the situation whith the keyboard mouse and monitor......
i hope you have a happy building

You are missing the point that Toffie's build also have the 3570K which allows for overclocking. The ITX build you are suggesting would disallow this.

I would stick with Toffie's build, possibly with one change.

The Sapphire 7870XT is ~£40 cheaper. It should perform nearly as well as the 7950 though. This again, is at retail so you might be able to fit a SSD with that change pretty easily.

[Drudgery]

Don't forget to add on around £15-£20 for shipping as well. Scan and Aria do not offer free delivery unfortunately. You can try Dabs and Ebuyer for cheaper/free delivery.

Okay Microsoft are also doing a deal on Windows 8. If you order it now you can have it shipped to you for free for £44.99.

It is an upgrade version, but I think chazus knows of a way to legitimately download Windows 7 and you can install that and then you can upgrade to Windows 8. It is the cheapest way atm to get a Windows OS.

[felros]

Sapphire 7870XT[/url] is ~£40 cheaper. It should perform nearly as well as the 7950 though. This again, is at retail so you might be able to fit a SSD with that change pretty easily.

yeah but if he got a 7950 saphire he could over clock that to near a 7970 lvl just get the 7950....

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 05:15 PM ----------

i never thought the cooler master haf 912 was so cheap.... it's 60 $ thats the case you should get sry

[Notarget]

Slight performance loss 5-10% on the GPU but similar priced system with an SSD and modular PSU, if you don't care about that save a little and go with the XFX 550 Toffie linked:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£161.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G43 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£68.99 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£32.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£56.50 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£74.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB Video Card (£171.62 @ Amazon UK)
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£39.95 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£67.28 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.85 @ Aria PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£68.30 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £780.45
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-06 16:17 GMT+0000)