New ~ £700 Rig!

[The Orange One]

Good Morning you OC3Drz,
To cut a long story Short, My Old rig (2500k,560Ti,8Gb RAM) had to be sold due to money problems. Because of this, I Have had to use a 4yr old OEM Packard Bell PC

(Specs :
CPU - AMD Athlon II X3 425
GPU - Nvidia GeForce 9200
RAM - 3GB
HDD - 300Gb)​

Now, I have finally got some more spare money and want to build myself a rig again.
Main Uses of this rig :

• Gaming
• Light Video Editing
• Photoshop work

My budget for this is £700, although if it appears like a really good move, I Could possibly go a little higher!

Thanks in Advance,
The Orange One!

 

[Bang]

3570k
MSI Z77A-GD65
8GB of 1866mhz DDR3
Samsung 128GB ssd
WD Caviar, black blue or green HDD as storage.

comes to about $650aud, so youll still have a few hundred pounds to pick a case, psu and gpu.

 

[The Orange One]

Cheers Mate! I'll look into it now then!

 

[Bang]

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z77A-GD65.html#/?div=Detail

I just wish I knew the conversion rate to pounds Still, ram is really cheap right now. As long as you stick to a middle of the road case, psu, and gpu you should easily come in under budget. The good thing is that even if you dont get the case you really want, or maybe gpu or psu, you can always upgrade down the road after the system is up and running.

I just recommend you get the cpu and mobo you want as they are too expensive to swap out every month. The rest are all replacable.

 

[Feronix]

I'd suggest a Bitfenix Shinobi. Over where I live this one gives you a lot more case/options/customizabilty than other brands like cooler master. It's like 40-50 quid. Just get yourself a decent 550-650 Watt PSU, which are 60-70 quid and you can have yourself a case + PSU for 120-130 pounds

 

[The Orange One]

Bang, Thanks for your help dude!

Feronix, Never really thought about the shinobi, but I Will look at it!

 

[Bang]

No Worries mate I love that mobo and have no problems telling people its a great board, because its true. In the Cost vs Features vs Performance contest its next to impossible to beat in its price class.

MSI should give me 1c for every time I link that board They would owe me 8c already LOL

 

[Feronix]

The new Corsair 200R is not very different from the Shinobi as far as lay-out goes but I personally prefer that customizability that the Shinobi has (Got a white one with green mesh here)

Also, if you're not an overclocker you could go with an i5 3450 over the 3570k. It's not unlocked but it would save you 20 quid on Scan.

 

[The Orange One]

I Did overclock my 2500k to 4.7 Ghz, So I will definitely go for the 3570k. Which UK E-tailer would you reccomend? (Scan, Aria or Overclockers Uk)

 

[dragoonk]

MD CPU's if you're on a tight budget. The fx-8320 is a good CPU, and with a good 990fx board you will save a few pounds over the Intels. Just a friendly advice...

BTW, the Athlon rig you just described is fairly similar to mine Except my Athlon is a 450, I got a 3870x2, 4 gigs of RAM but only 160 gigs on my hard drive hehe... that's the best I could afford.
Anyway, good luck in picking your new rig components

 

[Bang]

I honestly know nothing about UK etailers: I'm in Australia I'll have to start paying a bit more attention to the sites people link for parts.

dragoonk, the problem with AMD processors is their memory controller is poo poo. I just got off the AMD bandwagon and i have to say I love my 3570k. I didnt even get the top of the line intel chip, but now that I've seen how great the 3570k is, I would have no problem upgrading to the 3770k. In fact, I've been thinking bout it and Ive only had this one for 2 weeks.

I've always bought middle of the road stuff because I have a hard time justifying the cost of the top stuff, when typically the top stuff is middle of the road six months after release. I know the 3770k is far superior to anything AMD makes and for once it would be nice, and affordable, to have the top LGA1155 cpu made.
I wouldnt seriously consider upgrading until I have the rest of my system exactly the way I want it, which wont be until March at the earliest.

Who knows. I might build a dedicated folding machine.

 

[Feronix]

I personally don't know a lot about UK retailers either, I'm from the Netherlands.
What I usually do is get my entire shopping list and see where I can get what the cheapest. I then spread my entire purchase over usually 2 or 3 shops. Even with shipping costs (which are usually fairly low) it saves me at least €20,-

I personally would go Intel as well. They offer a lot more performance per core and you'll always have the ability to upgrade to an i7. With that AMD you pretty much already have one of their best CPUs and there's not much to upgrade on those.

 

[dragoonk]

I was just throwing out a viable thought/option. I know about the AMD strugling to compete with Intel. The truth is that the FX-8350 is kinda bitter sweet. It keeps up with the 3570k but it sucks much more power, and the memory performance is slower than the Pentium CPU's. I was thinking that AMD builds cheap CPU's because that's where they think their place in the market is... well ... it seems to me that they are there because their CPU's are... bad. I'm not a fan boy, I use AMD cause I can't afford anything else, but if I could, then... 3570k is surely is! But I would give AMD a second chance, cause that's how I am... I want them to compete, just like they compete with nvidia for the GPU's, I want them to do better, and I am positive I'm not alone on that one.

 

[Bang]

Very true mate. The power consumption and heat are very important factors, which is a key reason I went with Intel for the first time ever. The Athlon X2 I had was enough to keep my room warm on all but the coldest of nights. I turned my heater on 3 times this winter as the CPU was usually more than enough.

Having only done my build two weeks ago and AMD releasing Piledriver back in October, I couldnt justify going with the 8350 when the 3570k was only $8 more and its much more efficient. Ive been super impressed with its performance and how much cooler my room is.

Honestly though, it saddens me deeply to say "In order for me to ever buy another AMD cpu, they are going to have to really impress me with a new release." because as it stands Intel pretty much stomps all over anything AMD.

This could easily change if they fix their memory controller, which seems to be the heart of their problem.

 

[Lavi]

Back on topic.

I agree, go with the 3570k, but I'd go Gigabyte for the motherboard, a GA-Z77X-D3H because its the cheapest motherboard that does everything you need and isn't :cussing: brown (though go for the UD3H if you think it will get you better clocks) and I'd only get 2x4GB of 1600 ram since higher ram speed seem to be mattering less and less for the hassle they can be.
You should be able to fit a 120GB SSD into the budget if you reuse your current HDD, if not grab a 2TB 7200RPM drive.
I'd go for the 660 or the 7870 for the graphics.
I'm a big fan of BeQuiet!'s semi-modular PSUs, their 630W Pure Power would be enough to run two cards down the line and it actually has the PCIe connectors for it.

By my reckoning that leaves £100 for the case and the cooler.

Here it all is up on a price comparison site really handy and all the guys it links to are at least reputable if not recommended.

 

[The Orange One]

Thanks Lavi! After Christmas, I Think I Will be placing my Order

 

[WillSK]

I agree regarding the Msi boards a lot of people here love them and they've gained a great rep. To save some money maybe the g55 instead of the g65?

 

[garih]

i would recommend taking a look at this
this is a compo to win a 7770. but take a look at the systems people have specced. the budget was £750 without a gpu. but it will give you a very good idea what the folks of this forum would suggest.

 

[WillSK]

i would recommend taking a look at this
this is a compo to win a 7770. but take a look at the systems people have specced. the budget was £750 without a gpu. but it will give you a very good idea what the folks of this forum would suggest.

I'm embarrassed I didn't suggest this. Great idea Garih!

 

[garih]

I'm embarrassed I didn't suggest this. Great idea Garih!

thanks