Revorocks Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 (edited) Building a computer for my brother as his Christmas/Birthday present. He wants to play games like BF3, Minecraft, Crysis, Gmod etc Now, the £500 budget is just for the computer, not the extras like mouse and keyboard, screen etc. So far I've chosen this, it's £1 over budget but should be pretty future proof, and yes he will upgrade the GPU one day, it's just for now for £44 you won't get better performance... Given him my old 4850 512mb (deducted £44 from budget) so £456 remains. Does anyone have any suggestions of changes I should make? And before anyone starts talking about the Scan.co.uk overclocked bundles I have looked at them, but they are £30 more than to buy the parts alone. Also, I know they are cherry picked CPU's, but to be honest you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get a 2500k that doesn't overclock well... Edited October 8, 2011 by revorocks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
revo madnesss Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 there is a really sweet deal right now going on scan http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx#1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 8, 2011 Author Share Posted October 8, 2011 (edited) there is a really sweet deal right now going on scan http://www.scan.co.u...ly/index.aspx#1 That is a good deal, but it's nearly £60 over budget. A 2600k would be nice though... But thinking about the extra cost it isn't worth it. It's only going to be used for gaming and stuff, no rendering. To be honest It's hard to weigh up what's better. Going for intel, good CPU and ram route, or going for an AMD build and getting a better GPU. I think the AMD route would be better in the short term, but long term when he upgrades the GPU he will be better off with a 2500k... Edited October 8, 2011 by revorocks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cerbrus2 Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 Building a computer for my brother as his Christmas/Birthday present. He wants to play games like BF3, Minecraft, Crysis, Gmod etc Now, the £500 budget is just for the computer, not the extras like mouse and keyboard, screen etc. So far I've chosen this, it's £1 over budget but should be pretty future proof, and yes he will upgrade the GPU one day, it's just for now for £44 you won't get better performance... Given him my old 4850 512mb (deducted £44 from budget) so £456 remains. Does anyone have any suggestions of changes I should make? And before anyone starts talking about the Scan.co.uk overclocked bundles I have looked at them, but they are £30 more than to buy the parts alone. Also, I know they are cherry picked CPU's, but to be honest you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get a 2500k that doesn't overclock well... looks ok m8. the gpus is the onyl thing that will let it down. but as long as you play all the games in DX9 then it will run them nicely anyway. as for the 2500k overclocking. most of them dont go above 4.5ghz. witch is more than enough to be honest withyou. But not with that cooler you have selected. if you want to go above 4.2ghz with the 2500k then you need to up the voltage. and that cooler wont handle the extraheat to well. so maybe keep the 2500k stock for a wile untill you can afford a decent cooler. and also paying £30 for them to overclock the nudle for you is not a bad price at all. As they will keep changing the chips untill they get one that overclocks well. and they will alsomake sure it overclocks stable. The 2500k seems easy to overclock at first. but to get it past the typical 4.2 4.5 freshhold their is alot of items that need to be turned off or changed in the bios. Also save some money of the CPU and get the non retail boxed version. it just means it doesnt come with the stock cooler. and instead comes in a tiny little box with only the cpu in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 8, 2011 Author Share Posted October 8, 2011 looks ok m8. the gpus is the onyl thing that will let it down. but as long as you play all the games in DX9 then it will run them nicely anyway. as for the 2500k overclocking. most of them dont go above 4.5ghz. witch is more than enough to be honest withyou. But not with that cooler you have selected. if you want to go above 4.2ghz with the 2500k then you need to up the voltage. and that cooler wont handle the extraheat to well. so maybe keep the 2500k stock for a wile untill you can afford a decent cooler. and also paying £30 for them to overclock the nudle for you is not a bad price at all. As they will keep changing the chips untill they get one that overclocks well. and they will alsomake sure it overclocks stable. The 2500k seems easy to overclock at first. but to get it past the typical 4.2 4.5 freshhold their is alot of items that need to be turned off or changed in the bios. Also save some money of the CPU and get the non retail boxed version. it just means it doesnt come with the stock cooler. and instead comes in a tiny little box with only the cpu in it. I did look for OEM versions but Ebuyer havn't got any in stock at the moment. I wasn't planning on overclocking it much to be honest, as it needs to last a good while. And yes I know that cooler isn't very good, infact I might change it for a Hype 212 as they are good for the money. If I was going to overclock more then obviously I would invest in a better cooling solution, but for now it will do As for having Scan overclock it I would, but it's out of budget unfortunately by about £40 when you include postage, and £500 is the absolute max. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cerbrus2 Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 also keep an eye on aria pc. as everyday they do loads of items at 1 off stupidly low prices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
revo madnesss Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 cerb, is there any site where you can pick up just i5 2500k's which have been hand picked? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aterlatus Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 Wireless...... Gaming....... Just, no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 8, 2011 Author Share Posted October 8, 2011 Wireless...... Gaming....... Just, no. You can say that again, but I don't have a choice at the moment. I asked my dad to lay CAT5 cable down before he put the floor down but he forgot, and he refuses have run cables through the house. And yes, it sucks. Only way we can go wired is to drill holes in the wall, and run the cable outside the house, into the loft and drop down into my room. I've also tried those Powerline adapters, but they don't work as my computer is too far from the router. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aterlatus Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 The powerline things are temperamental at best, and running cat 5 outdoors isn't really recommended as a long term solution either. Parents eh? The day my lad tells me he wants to rip our house to pieces to lay down cat 6 I'm gonna be so proud.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 8, 2011 Author Share Posted October 8, 2011 The powerline things are temperamental at best, and running cat 5 outdoors isn't really recommended as a long term solution either. Parents eh? The day my lad tells me he wants to rip our house to pieces to lay down cat 6 I'm gonna be so proud.... mmm, bit if a dilemma really. I've made do with it for the past 4 years, so I imagine one or two more won't hurt, maybe even less.... The current wireless adapter I'm using isn't too bad, works better than the PCI card lol. I took the casing off and strapped a heatsink to it so it no longer overheats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HUNTER.P Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 why cant you run cat 5 outside? my home pc's cable has run outside for the best part of 3 years now not had a problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fastman Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Building a computer for my brother as his Christmas/Birthday present. He wants to play games like BF3, Minecraft, Crysis, Gmod etc Now, the £500 budget is just for the computer, not the extras like mouse and keyboard, screen etc. So far I've chosen this, it's £1 over budget but should be pretty future proof, and yes he will upgrade the GPU one day, it's just for now for £44 you won't get better performance... Given him my old 4850 512mb (deducted £44 from budget) so £456 remains. Does anyone have any suggestions of changes I should make? And before anyone starts talking about the Scan.co.uk overclocked bundles I have looked at them, but they are £30 more than to buy the parts alone. Also, I know they are cherry picked CPU's, but to be honest you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get a 2500k that doesn't overclock well... go for the i5 2700k, really good cpu and its bang on the money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willb Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'll throw in my 2 pence/advice here. I'd look for the newer Z68 chipset motherboard personally. Reason being it's more future proof for upgrades. So if you decided to go the SSD HDD route (solid state hard drive) it has many functions that allow you to setup your computer in different ways. You can use the SSD as a cache for example for the normal drives so they can load faster. Also the Z68s have the graphics switching to save power. So, when your just faffing in Windows you'll use the onboard graphics and it'll route that through to your main GPU. When gaming, you'll utilise the GPU power rather than the onboard. Change the SATA II for a SATA III. Not a huge amount of performance gain but still enough. The 2500K i5 is more than good enough. I just built a system with one and it runs a treat. On the stock cooler you can easily clock it to 4GHz without worrying. The Asus motherboard you selected is good, just swap it for the Z68 chipset version (I run one and it's spot on). I'd maybe up the power supply to a 750W. I bought an Xclio 750W from Scan for less than £70. Nice and quiet and also modular which helps keep the air flow good with less cables. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 11, 2011 Author Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'll throw in my 2 pence/advice here. I'd look for the newer Z68 chipset motherboard personally. Reason being it's more future proof for upgrades. So if you decided to go the SSD HDD route (solid state hard drive) it has many functions that allow you to setup your computer in different ways. You can use the SSD as a cache for example for the normal drives so they can load faster. Also the Z68s have the graphics switching to save power. So, when your just faffing in Windows you'll use the onboard graphics and it'll route that through to your main GPU. When gaming, you'll utilise the GPU power rather than the onboard. Change the SATA II for a SATA III. Not a huge amount of performance gain but still enough. The 2500K i5 is more than good enough. I just built a system with one and it runs a treat. On the stock cooler you can easily clock it to 4GHz without worrying. The Asus motherboard you selected is good, just swap it for the Z68 chipset version (I run one and it's spot on). I'd maybe up the power supply to a 750W. I bought an Xclio 750W from Scan for less than £70. Nice and quiet and also modular which helps keep the air flow good with less cables. Swapped motherboard for Gigabyte GA-Z68P-DS3 The one I had in the basket went out of stock anyway lol. Powersaving features do sound good, and it's only £1 more. Looking at Sata III HDD's, can't afford an SSD or and SSD/HDD hybrid at the moment. I have an SSD myself though and they are brilliant I know it's 5400rpm and is a green one, but I've read the performance is still really good. Cheaper than the 500GB and more space too http://www.ebuyer.com/270738-wd-750gb-caviar-green-3-5-sata-iii-hard-drive-5400rpm-64mb-cache-wd7500aarx PSU wise, it's the best one you can get for the money, and I'd rather stick to good brands such as Antec, OCZ or Corsair. If I didn't get the aftermarket cooler and kept it stock intel, I could afford to beef up the PSU a bit. Probably more benificial as you it's cheaper to buy a CPU cooler when you need it, rather than a PSU. Ok ditching the cooler leaves an extra £22, meaning PSU can be up to £66ish Chose this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/257232 I know it's only an extra 50W, but it's higher efficiency too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willb Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Xclio were developed with Scan so they're pretty good. All the reviews are good and so far I've not had any problems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 11, 2011 Author Share Posted October 11, 2011 (edited) Xclio were developed with Scan so they're pretty good. All the reviews are good and so far I've not had any problems Was it this you bought? http://www.scan.co.u...v-quiet-fan-atx Looks good for the money, although I don't know about that module system. Never seen that before. Also, it's the same price as the Corsair, yet is modular and an extra 100W. Surely that extra spec has come from the quality of the PSU. I'm sure it's a good PSU, and won't blow up on me but I just want to go for Corsair. Forgive me for being sceptical, but I just like to buy from brands I know, and I know that Corsair make very nice PSU's. Edited October 11, 2011 by revorocks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willb Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Yep, that's the one exactly. I did a lot of reading up and took a slight gamble but as all the reviews are good I went for it. Liked the modular box too. I'm with you all the way though, I don't buy dodgy brands either. All the systems we build at work use Antec. The stock PSUs that come with cases end up in the skip! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revorocks Posted October 13, 2011 Author Share Posted October 13, 2011 Right, ordered it. Will get some pics when it arrives Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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