Moving from the "Mac"

[Hayden]

Hi all @ OC3D

hope this is the right place to be posting this? Looking at building my 1st pc after years with mac but can no longer justify the cost of the upgrade

Off the bat I'll say have little to know experience building pc's but have done some (read allot) of reading and watching of how to's

Here's what i'm looking to purchase with a budget of about £850 (inc win 7 64-bit)

Case

Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case or Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower - Red Dragon Windowed Edition

CPU

Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156)

Mobo

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard

GPU

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Memory

Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

PSU

Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply

HDD

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA

CPU Cooler

Noctua NH-D14

Disk Drive

Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter

so that's what i hope to get was pretty set on the Antec 902 as it seemed to offer great cooling but after watching the vid on the lancool my mind is changing, so do any of u know how they compare to my mind the Lancool wins hands down on looks but the Antec is no slouch so i guess cooling is the decider.

also this build is based on a mobo with a 1156 socket is it worth holding out for the 1155 sockets and appropriate chipsets?

lastly will the dominator ram allow me the Magic 4ghz overclock i want to achieve or shall i save and go with something like Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000C9 2000MHz?

Thanks in advance and props on the amazing site

P.s. great vids youtube best i've seen and that's been loads

 

[thestepster]

Case

Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case or Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower - Red Dragon Windowed Edition - avoid the antec at all costs they are utter poo cases

CPU

Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) thats a nice cpu should do 4ghz

Mobo

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard - not sure p55 wise whats the best to go for

GPU

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - you can see if 2 x 460 768mb's only only a little bit more pricey and go for them they will utterly blow all ati cards bar the 5970 or spend £200 on a properly cooled nvidia gtx470

Memory

Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - mushkin redline/radioactive ram mate spanks everything

PSU

Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply - check corsairs mate

HDD

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA - 1tb Samsung f3 £40 at scan

CPU Cooler

Noctua NH-D14 - nothing to say here u got this one perfect

Disk Drive

Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter - and again its a dvdrw should be fine

 

[killablade]

Antecs aren't that bad steppy. Atleast the 902 isn't. Apart from accessing the dust filters which can be a bit of a pain to access I haven't really noticed anything bad. Definitely not "Utter poo." The Lancool is better though. It's got lots of nice features including toolless design on almost everything.

CPU is fine, and motherboard.. not sure. Gigabyte don't often make bad motherboards so it should be fine, but I haven't read up on P55 motherboards lately. I've got some experience with the MSI P55 GD65 and I must say those are really good motherboards, but they aren't that new anymore so there's probably better boards out there now.

The 6870 is a nice GPU, but as steppy says 2xGTX460 768MB will only cost you a bit more and will blow the 6870 away.

Corsair Dominator is good memory. Mushkin spanks everything? Well Mushkin ram is nice, but clocks wise it's mostly luck of the draw really, unless you buy high end kits that are rated at like 2000+ mhz or something

They are a bit more practical though, since the Dominators have those fins on top of em which might mean you'll have to remove those to fit the NH-D14. Got friends running 1600mhz dominators and they overclock pretty well.

PSU-wise I too would go Corsair, but I think I read a review on an Antec TruePower New and I beleive it fared pretty well, but I'm not sure.

HDD... definitely Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB mate, great value, and they beat almost every hard drive out there really. I've got two of them in RAID0 and I love them

As for the disk drive anything will do.

 

[thestepster]

the muskin 1600 mhz beats the doms at 1600 and 2000

 

[alienware]

Don't worry mate. We will get out the holy water and perform the cermony when you're ready.

Get behind me Satan !

 

[alienware]

you can see if 2 x 460 768mb's only only a little bit more pricey and go for them they will utterly blow all ati cards bar the 5970 or spend £200 on a properly cooled nvidia gtx470

I would go with one faster card in that board.

 

[Hayden]

Thanks to u all for your advice regarding my build.I've changed HDD to the Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB i chose the previous HDD because i thought the larger cache of 64mb would give better read and write times.

This setup is aimed mostly at getting best performance for playing WoW and as i understand it for the most part a very cpu intensive game engine and does not get the most out of SLI or Crossfire dual GPU setups. so my thinking was to go for the best single gpu at this price point (£200-250) though i admit i may be mistaken.

Have used some of the online PSU calculators after reading your suggestions on this thread and agree corsair is the way to go with that in mind do u thing the HX or TX 750 would give me enough headroom should i wish to go SLI or Crossfire X?

u seem to be keeping quite in the 1155 or 1156 question i don't want anyone to feel they are braking NDA simply want to know whether in your opinion it is worth waiting for the newer 1155 socket, since as i understand 1156 will receive little to no R&D from now on?

 

[thestepster]

well mate a 470's gonna be utter overkill for a woose graphically intensive game like WOW but its better to have more grunt

its not quiet there isnt much details out there and what are ppl like tom are under NDA's performance wise and that and it will be released in jan? and the 1156 is a dead socket but that by no means says its not a great platform to run from, even 1366 is going to be replaced be it in a while

a 750 will be more than u need mate i have triple 460's on an 850