Entirely new computer - rate the components?

[Deleted]

Hey all, I've come into a bit of cash recently and I've been looking to fully upgrade my PC for a long time now, here's what I've gotten so far:

1		LG DVD Writer, GH22NS50, SATA, Black, OEM	 £ 14.93	
1		1TB Samsung HD103SJ SpinPoint F3 SATA-II 3.5" Hard Drive	 £ 39.05	
1		Microsoft Sidewinder X4 USB Gaming Keyboard - Black (JQD-00006)	 £ 36.23	
1		SPEEDLINK Vivo 2.1 Subwoofer System	 £ 28.37	
1		Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail	 £ 159.59	
1		be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler	 £ 39.95	
1		800W Mushkin Enhanced Joule ATX2.3 Power Supply	 £ 79.99	
1		ASUS P8P67 Pro Intel P67 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard	 £ 120.55	
1		Coolermaster Storm Enforcer Gaming Midi Chassis	 £ 71.99	
1		Gainward GeForce GTX 570 PHANTOM Ed. 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card	 £ 275.94	
1		8GB Corsair Vengeance Blue LP (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - CML8GX3M2A1600C9B	 £ 46.5	
1		Mushkin Chronos 120GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive	 £ 129.95	
1		22" LG IPS226V-PN Widescreen IPS LED Monitor	 £ 131	
 	Total: £1174.03

I'm using AriaPC's website (a UK company, I can't link yet on here, but please use that site if you want to change anything.)

EDIT: As the thread has progressed, I've updated this post to make it easier to see what my current build, based on advice, is.

EDIT: I can post links now. https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/-XBzFUh0adjym-Wlr67nJQ,,

[taekvideo]

imo with a budget like that you should look into either a 6990/590 card or going crossfire/sli with 560ti/6950/570/6970 cards
some easy places you could shave some cost off to afford it:
get rid of the blue ray drive... everyone I know with one never uses it... who wants to watch blu-ray on a 22" computer monitor anyways?
1600mhz ram should be cheaper, and there won't be any difference in gaming
ssd's don't improve performance, just loading times, so ask yourself if you'd prefer better framerates / higher settings whenever you're playing or have 5 less seconds on the load screen.
cheaper case maybe? any mid tower with a couple case fans will work fine.. unless you are really picky about making it look good
hyper212+ cooler... noctua is better, but the hyper212+ can take you to around 4.5ghz.

Also get a samsung spinpoint f3 hdd instead if you can, they're faster than caviar blue and should be about the same price.

edit: sata III has twice the transfer rate of sata II. It doesn't make a difference at all though except for high end ssd's, since nothing else comes close to sata II transfer rates.

[taekvideo]

You listed two different graphics cards... huh?

he did say in his post why..

[Uggorthaholy]

As said above

Either a Samsung Spinpoint F3 or Caviar Black HDD. (I would even say get 2, why not?)

Get 1600 mhz ram. Anything higher is not really recommended.

Now, my own input

Get a GTX 580. Gives you an option to get a second one next year and SLi them. Best performing SLi combo available, especially at the price.

[Rixis]

i'd like to argue the point made above about ssds improving load pages by about 5 seconds

i have an ssd .. it's a hell of a lot more than 5 seconds, 30, 40, 60 seconds, and with relogging toons, hopping around between continents etc (and if you run your OS on it as you should, then windows loads a lot quicker too)

it's about how much you value that speed of course, but 5 seconds seems to be the standard completely exaggerated number people give out for no real reason

[Deleted]

imo with a budget like that you should look into either a 6990/590 card or going crossfire/sli with 560ti/6950/570/6970 cards
some easy places you could shave some cost off to afford it:

Those kind of cards have crossed my mind, but pushing money to the £600 mark like with the 590, is really difficult for me to do, is it really worth it? At the cost of losing system power elsewhere?

get rid of the blue ray drive... everyone I know with one never uses it... who wants to watch blu-ray on a 22" computer monitor anyways?

That's definitely true, to be honest we don't even buy Blu-Rays, I just thought I'd go with the crowd. :>

1600mhz ram should be cheaper, and there won't be any difference in gaming

Sure that sounds fair; can you help me out here? My knowledge is pretty limited when it comes to this kind of thing. If you could use the AriaPC website, that'd be handy, I plan on ordering it all from there.

ssd's don't improve performance, just loading times, so ask yourself if you'd prefer better framerates / higher settings whenever you're playing or have 5 less seconds on the load screen.

I'm thinking this is something I won't budge on; it's been something I've been after for a long while now. Although the main focus of the PC will be for gaming, I'm going to University next year, so I'll be using the PC for other things, so the faster loading times will apply elsewhere too. I think it's a vanity thing but I've wanted it for too long. :>

cheaper case maybe? any mid tower with a couple case fans will work fine.. unless you are really picky about making it look good

Another vanity thing really, but if I can get something that will function just as well and will save me a few £, I'd be good with that. Any suggestions?

hyper212+ cooler... noctua is better, but the hyper212+ can take you to around 4.5ghz.

I'll check it out.

Also get a samsung spinpoint f3 hdd instead if you can, they're faster than caviar blue and should be about the same price.

Same as above.


Thanks a lot for your reply.

[BicycleMafioso]

Get a GTX 580. Gives you an option to get a second one next year and SLi them. Best performing SLi combo available, especially at the price.

I'm a bit confused by this. :P
Are you saying that two GTX 580s are the best performing SLI-combo for its price? Because the GTX460 and GT"X"550 Ti both would then like a word with you! :P
In the future, when the GTX580 will have dropped in price (say, two years? It will not cost as much in the light of a potential 680, but, it will not drop to half-price which it needs to, to be considered in this way) it will then not be the best performing SLI-combo, obviously, nor for the price either. D:


Yeaa, I'm tired.

EDIT: Oh, and SSDs make my wow-loadingscreens 6~seconds. Make of that what you will.

[Asmekiel]

SATA2 has a bandwith limit of 3Gb/s, SATA3 has a limit of 6Gb/s. Normal HDD's have a hard time filling up the SATA1 bandwith of 1.5Gb/s.
All SATA ports are fully backwards compatible. So you can use a SATA device on a SATA3 port and vice versa. If you plug a SATA3 SSD into a SATA/SATA2 port however, it won't be able to use it's full potential.

Change RAM to http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=46060 or any other 8GB DDR3 1600MHz version. This is just the RAM most people use these days. Just make sure you get 1.5V or less RAM.

For the videocard, both are solid choices. The 570 is better than the 6950 and in my eyes definitely worth the £30 extra.

I've never heard about that PSU's made by Mushkin, looking at the specs it appears to be good enough, but I prefer Corsair/Seasonic over that. Unless you go SLI anything over 500W is actually more than enough.

Also never heard of Mushkin making SSD's, so I won't start about this.

-edit- O, wow, a whole list of suggestions already made... damn I'm slow...

[Deleted]

Just a little update, I can post links now, so my original post is a bit more user-friendly now.

[Rixis]

Originally Posted by taekvideo
hyper212+ cooler... noctua is better, but the hyper212+ can take you to around 4.5ghz.

I'll check it out.

as you're in the uk you can check out the darkrock be quiet too, they cost more than the 212, but less than the noctua, and you can get some fair whack out of them, i had my cpu up to 5.04 ghz at about 78 degrees, dropped down to 4.8 ghz for now at 67 degrees full load (folding with boinc)

[BicycleMafioso]

All SATA ports are fully backwards compatible. So you can use a SATA device on a SATA3 port and vice versa. If you plug a SATA3 SSD into a SATA/SATA2 port however, it won't be able to use it's full potential.

To a degree, yes. But s-ATA 1.5Gbps interfaces and cables lack the clips that s-ATA3.0Gbps and 6.0Gbps have. It would be possible to connect them across generations, but not adviced.

Why do I always nitpick when tired? D:

[taekvideo]

i'd like to argue the point made above about ssds improving load pages by about 5 seconds

i have an ssd .. it's a hell of a lot more than 5 seconds, 30, 40, 60 seconds, and with relogging toons, hopping around between continents etc (and if you run your OS on it as you should, then windows loads a lot quicker too)

it's about how much you value that speed of course, but 5 seconds seems to be the standard completely exaggerated number people give out for no real reason

considering my laptop with a 5400rpm hdd takes less than 30 seconds to load/login to wow, the ssd would have to be well into the negative seconds to give that kind of performance boost.

[Asmekiel]

as you're in the uk you can check out the darkrock be quiet too, they cost more than the 212, but less than the noctua, and you can get some fair whack out of them, i had my cpu up to 5.04 ghz at about 78 degrees, dropped down to 4.8 ghz for now at 67 degrees full load (folding with boinc)

Be Quiet! didn't take this name for no reason. Their stuff really is quiet. (If you care about noise coming from your PC this is a solid choice)
The Dark Rock Pro is a little better than the Advanced, but isn't in stock now.

[Rixis]

it's not just the progress bar screen, it's things like loading all the models in the world etc once your into it, and even at a 30 second load screen, you could be saving up to 25 or so seconds per screen, which for some people can be quite a few screens and quite a lot of time over a session

and you must have a relatively decent laptop, i just replaced a decent laptop (ran ultra everything with 50+fps) and was getting load screens (by estimation) closer to 60-90 seconds most of the time

edit: and yes, the be quiet is silent, basically the only part of my pc i can hear is the psu (though i play with headphones on so i don't even hear that)

[Deleted]

SATA2 has a bandwith limit of 3Gb/s, SATA3 has a limit of 6Gb/s. Normal HDD's have a hard time filling up the SATA1 bandwith of 1.5Gb/s.
All SATA ports are fully backwards compatible. So you can use a SATA device on a SATA3 port and vice versa. If you plug a SATA3 SSD into a SATA/SATA2 port however, it won't be able to use it's full potential.

Ah, cheers for clearing that up; so would you say it's worth just going with a SATA2 HDD rather than a more expensive SATA3 one with the same capacity?

Change RAM to http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=46060 or any other 8GB DDR3 1600MHz version. This is just the RAM most people use these days. Just make sure you get 1.5V or less RAM.

Thanks again, I'll browse the site a little, but that looks like a solid choice to me.

For the videocard, both are solid choices. The 570 is better than the 6950 and in my eyes definitely worth the £30 extra.

Edging towards the 570 currently then.

I've never heard about that PSU's made by Mushkin, looking at the specs it appears to be good enough, but I prefer Corsair/Seasonic over that. Unless you go SLI anything over 500W is actually more than enough.

Also never heard of Mushkin making SSD's, so I won't start about this.

A friend and I were a little aprehensive of Mushkin too, but we took a plunge and bought parts for his PC, and they've been great thus far.

---------- Post added 2011-08-26 at 03:31 AM ----------

as you're in the uk you can check out the darkrock be quiet too, they cost more than the 212, but less than the noctua, and you can get some fair whack out of them, i had my cpu up to 5.04 ghz at about 78 degrees, dropped down to 4.8 ghz for now at 67 degrees full load (folding with boinc)

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products?searc...&searchCat=927

Which one are we looking at? That's a pretty hefty overclock by my standards~

[Uggorthaholy]

I'm a bit confused by this. :P
Are you saying that two GTX 580s are the best performing SLI-combo for its price? Because the GTX460 and GT"X"550 Ti both would then like a word with you! :P
In the future, when the GTX580 will have dropped in price (say, two years? It will not cost as much in the light of a potential 680, but, it will not drop to half-price which it needs to, to be considered in this way) it will then not be the best performing SLI-combo, obviously, nor for the price either. D:


Yeaa, I'm tired.

EDIT: Oh, and SSDs make my wow-loadingscreens 6~seconds. Make of that what you will.

the 580 is the best performing single card on the market, not necessarily price--->performance
the 580 in SLi is the best performing dual-single-card setup (not counting dual GPU cards, hence the weird terming). not meaning price---> performance, just pure performance.

I don't like the 590s, myself. And also, will prevent huge spending ona single 600 series card to beat it. Toss in an extra 580 and be good to go.

[Rixis]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products?searc...&searchCat=927

Which one are we looking at? That's a pretty hefty overclock by my standards~

i'm only using the advanced

[Deleted]

the 580 is the best performing single card on the market, not necessarily price--->performance
the 580 in SLi is the best performing dual-single-card setup (not counting dual GPU cards, hence the weird terming). not meaning price---> performance, just pure performance.

I don't like the 590s, myself. And also, will prevent huge spending ona single 600 series card to beat it. Toss in an extra 580 and be good to go.

If it's definitely worth the extra cost, could you help me pick one out?

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...TX+580+Series/

[BicycleMafioso]

If it's definitely worth the extra cost, could you help me pick one out?

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...TX+580+Series/

It's not. The price-difference from the GTX570 does not translate in an equal percentage in gained performance, which is actually quite small in comparison.
It is the most powerful GPU availible at this time, but you also pay a price-premium for that fact alone.
But if you insist, the top ASUS one, the Gainward, and the MSI TwinFrozr II are all great choices.

[Deleted]

It's not. The price-difference from the GTX570 does not translate in an equal percentage in gained performance, which is actually quite small in comparison.
It is the most powerful GPU availible at this time, but you also pay a price-premium for that fact alone.
But if you insist, the top ASUS one, the Gainward, and the MSI TwinFrozr II are all great choices.

I don't insist, saving money would be great really, so if the performance increase is not worth the extra £100, I'll stay away. Would you say the 570 is the way to go then?

Here's Aria's range on those: https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...TX+570+Series/