Build me the best pc possible for £1100

jaysbarbq

New member
Folks,

spec together the best pc you can for £1100 (inc VAT). It will be used mainly for video editing and will work fine with SATA drives. I need 1GB of space for OS, programs and editing.

Good Luck!
 
Right, Jay, let's all start again. I really think that it is best. I will give you a spec that is the best for the money.

 
I would argue whether the extra £80 for a Q9450 over a Q6600 is really worth it? Specially as you can get them to 3.6 ghz on air without trying.
 
Small problem with lambomans suggestion. You cant use 4 Reaper HPC modules at once, they interfere.

I'd reccomend looking at some crucial ballistix or ocz ram with the smaller heatspreaders.
 
Hi Jeddy,

I think the version that Lamboman suggests should be ok as the heat pipe is rasied and flat as per this link:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_8500_reaper_hpc_edition

But I can fully understand that 4 of these ReaperX modules would cause the issue you mention:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_pc3_10666_reaperx_hpc_enhanced_bandwidth

Here is the Reaper memory installed on a board - reckon we can get 4 of these mothers on a board?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?src=/images/memory/ocz-reaper/reaper-4.jpg&1=1

Also, is the Crucial chepaer and still 1066Mhz?
 
name='Nick R' said:
I would argue whether the extra £80 for a Q9450 over a Q6600 is really worth it? Specially as you can get them to 3.6 ghz on air without trying.

That is a point that we debated earlier. I was saying exactly what you are saying; the Q6600 is a better value chip. But, considering the budget is high enough, a Q9450 will be fine. After all, even though I have not tried to cut down the price much in this spec, it still is the quickest system that you can build for this price, and is well under the budget.

Jeddy, I actually thought that you couldn't use four Reapers. Turns out, you actually can. Learn something new everyday :D Besides, the Ballistix chips will die anyway. Looking at the picture, four Reapers should be an easy fit.

Jay, that spec really is better than the last one we did, and comes out much cheaper, mainly because the motherboard is much cheaper. The drives are faster and larger, the case is better (though you can still get a Tempest, they are still decent).

Overall, I doubt that you will be able to find a build better than that. Note that you can cut a lot of money off that build as well. I just went for the best stuff in each category (the TRUE could come down to a nearly as good OCZ Vendetta 2, for example).
 
Just so everyone on this thread knows what I have put together (spec wise) to order tomorrow - open to debate which is why I raised this question on this thread :)

2 x 4 GB OCZ Reaper 1066 KIT – 79.25 each + vat

1 x SATA Sony DRU-190S 20x DVDRW Black & Silver Bezel Retail – 14.10 +

1 x SATA LiteOn 20x Int. L/S DVDRW LS-20A1L-14C – 15.50

1 x Intel core 2 quad Q9450 2,66GHZ 1333FSB – 175 +

1 x Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB CACHE – 45+

2 x Seagate ST3500320AS 32MB cache - 44.65 each + vat

1 x ATI 4850HD - circa £100 +

1 x Asus Rampage Formula board - £155 +

1 x Antex Nine Hundred 900 case - £67

1 x Corsair 750w TX PSU - £65 +

1 x Toshiba external 320 drive - £59 +

1 x Waicom Bamboo pad - £43 +

1 x Logitech keyborad & mouse S510 - £28 +

1 x Thermalright Ultra-120 EXTREME CPU Heatpipe Heatsink - £29 +

1 x Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan - 3&4pin connection - £4 +

1 x external USB floppy -£15 +

Total = £1063 + VAT = £1249 Inc
 
There isn't really anything wroing with your build, just that the money spent on the motherboard could be spent on the faster and quieter WD6400AAKS hard drives. It really is up to you. The RF is a great board, no doubt, and I would recommend it. But I would still suggest the P45 boards over it, mainly because of price. If you don't want to go with those boards, fair enough.
 
Hard drive wise the only alternative set-up I am considering (until I order tomorrow!) Is either my 4 x 500Gb setup or just going for 2 x 1TB. If I go with 2 x 1TB in RAID 1, I would partition as follows:

50Gb for Win Vista Ultimate

10Gb for pagefile

440Gb for installed Apps

500Gb for my cd's/exe's which I keep copies of on a HD

Wiser to go with 2 x 1TB I guess as it means less power, heat and noise than 4 x 500GB?

Ideally I want 32MB cache drives. Looking at Toms Hardware it would appear that the Seagate and Samsung 1TB drives have great write transfer speeds? Although I have to say that I find Samsung drives unrelaiable, having had 2 fail on my within 12 months.
 
The new Samsung drives are fine, it was mainly the older ones that had the high failure rates. If you wanted to go with the 1TB drives, the Samsungs are the way to go. I would go with the two drive over the four drive setup because air flow is going to be blocked, and, as you have said, temperatures are going to be quite a bit higher. It would also be a little cheaper.
 
I hope Samsung only make 1 model of the 1TB - I am looking at the Samsung Spinpointr F1 1TB. I also hope that it matches the fantastic performace of my current WD 500GB.
 
name='jaysbarbq' said:
I hope Samsung only make 1 model of the 1TB - I am looking at the Samsung Spinpointr F1 1TB. I also hope that it matches the fantastic performace of my current WD 500GB.

That's the model you want :D It will be faster than your WD 500GB. In fact, most drives out there on the market will be faster than it.
 
Folks,

Is this ready to order tomorrow??? I removed the keyboard and mouse as my current Logitech is working perfect - so no need to change. Anything I've missed and need to add to the order??

2 x 4 GB OCZ Reaper 1066 KIT – 79.25 each + vat

1 x SATA Sony DRU-190S 20x DVDRW Black & Silver Bezel Retail – 14.10 +

1 x SATA LiteOn 20x Int. L/S DVDRW LS-20A1L-14C – 15.50

1 x Intel core 2 quad Q9450 2,66GHZ 1333FSB – 175 +

2 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache* £76

1 x Saphire or Powercolour ATI 4850HD - circa £100 +

1 x Asus Rampage Formula board - £155 +

1 x Antex Nine Hundred 900 case - £67

1 x Corsair 750w TX PSU - £65 +

1 x Toshiba external 320 drive - £59 +

1 x Trust 1200 V2 pad - £34 +

1 x Thermalright Ultra-120 EXTREME CPU Heatpipe Heatsink - £29 +

1 x Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan - 3&4pin connection - £4 +

1 x external USB floppy -£15 +

Total = £1043 + VAT = £1225 Inc
 
Yep, looks good. You might want to go with an internal floppy drive with a media card reader. With Vista installation, you won't need any floppies anyway, so I don't really know what uses you would have with floppies.
 
Indeed, these days I sport a bootable usb stick. Cheap as chips if u get a 1G/512m just for boot stuff. (use the HP usb format thing on it for bios flashing etc)
 
Can you actually boot off a USB stick???

My main reason for getting a floppy was incase my apps do not all work on Vista Ultimate, then I would switch to another O/S. If needed I could then install the SATA drives from a floppy... I think that method is the only way (apart from Slipstreaming which I do not want to do) to get the SATA drives talking to the windows install?
 
name='jaysbarbq' said:
Can you actually boot off a USB stick???

My main reason for getting a floppy was incase my apps do not all work on Vista Ultimate, then I would switch to another O/S. If needed I could then install the SATA drives from a floppy... I think that method is the only way (apart from Slipstreaming which I do not want to do) to get the SATA drives talking to the windows install?

Yep, you can. The chances of them NOT working is very small. But, getting an internal floppy/media card reader is a good idea.
 
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