Sandy Bridge Build

[Teh_Winneh]

Hello everyone! I thought I would share the build that I am thinking of putting together with you all at the forums for your input and advice!

Well, to start with my budget is just under the £1000 mark, but closer to £950 and the computer will be used for gaming. The components I'm thinking of getting are:

Case = NZXT Phantom (White)

Motherboard = Asus P8P67 Pro

CPU = Intel i5 2500K

CPU Cooler = Noctua NH-D14

RAM = Corsair XMS3 Classic (I know the XMS3 series varies a lot, so the link to the exact model is here --> www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-(2x2gb)-corsair-xms3-classic-ddr3-pc3-12800-(1600)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-9-9-9-24-15v)

GPU = MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti

PSU = Corsair HX850W

Optical Drive = Not too sure really - Should I go for a Blu-Ray ROM and DVD RW Combo, or just the DVD RW?

Hard Drives = Going to start with my old computer hard drive - just a cheap 500GB one.

Excluding the optical drive, this adds up to about £905 including shipping (and also including ScanSure - basically peace of mind for the noobies,

).

What do you think? Are the components compatible, what Optical Drive do you recommend, and should I change any bits in particular?

Thanks in advance!

-Winneh

 

[SieB]

Good choices they will all fit together nicely, I don't know how that RAM performs but it's corsiair so it should be fine

As for the optical drive it depends what you use your PC for, if you watch movies then a Bluray drive would probably be a good idea but if you need one just for software and burning CDs then a normal £15 Sony or other good brand DVD RW should do fine. Personally I haven't needed to use a optical drive for two years because I just buy digital downloads for everything.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

No problemo. Just make sure it's not a last gen sandy bridge board with the decaying sata controller crap

 

[bradley914]

yea nice mate looks good but before you get it just find out if the mother board has the original p67 chipset or the new one. if its the old one you will have to just use your 2 sata 3 ports for the time being because the sata 2 will degrade over time but no worries when the new p67 chipset is done you can get it replaced and all sata ports should be fine mate.

 

[adamjamesroe]

Looks pretty good. if you have that extra cash spare, you should consider a 2600K or a GTX 570 instead perhaps, Scan do some decent optical drives, you can get a Samsung super write master for like £15 i have one. its brilliant.

 

[Teh_Winneh]

Thanks for all the replies!

To start with, I think that the motherboard MAY be a faulty chipset one, but on the basis that it will have 4 SATA 6GB/S ports (and at maximum I'll be using 3 of them) I will be happy using it until I do a 'swap out'.

Finally, with that extra cash I decided to purchase a new hard drive as I like to start systems 'fresh' as it were

- If anyone's interested, it's the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB.

With regards to the optical drives, I've decided to go for a £15 DVD RW drive. I tried looking for the Samsung Super Write but couldn't find drives with that name. The Pioneer DVD RW drive has got a lot of good reviews, so I went with that one

Thank you for all your feedback! It's really helped me

-Winneh.

 

[Stryker64]

A sorta bias suggestion here, but have you looked at Mushkin?

 

[Teh_Winneh]

A sorta bias suggestion here, but have you looked at Mushkin?

I did look at the Mushkin modules but unfortunately, Scan do not supply them. The modules that are within my price range if I were to go Mushkin would be the Silverline range. I compared the 4GB (2X2) sets with eachother (the Corsair XMS3 Classic & the Mushkin Silverline) and the specs are identical. The same CAS timings, memory speed and voltage.

Therefore, I assume that they will perform pretty much the same?

-Winneh

 

[Stryker64]

Not really, like Mushkin has some memory sticks that even when running at a slower speed than Corsair perform better, it has to do with the design of the actual RAM, I'm not an expert, but the difference will be fairly small I would think.

But you also have to consider the overclocking headroom. I know for a fact that Mushkins overclock extremely well, not sure about value Corsair sticks though.

 

[Teh_Winneh]

The Corsair sticks I'm getting are at 1.5V, which shouldn't be too bad.

Also, I think that I'll be getting the Corsair sticks at the moment because of the fact that I don't want to buy different parts from different places.

I will definitely make a mental note to check out Mushkin ram in the future, however