looking to buy a PC thoughts & suggestions please! - Modern Warfare 2 Forum: Free Call of Duty MW2 Community

Tatemylightning · 07-30-2010, 12:18 PM

i'm after a new PC for gaming and pretty much everything else, music, editing etc.... so will my choices cut it?
will i be having compatability issues with any of this?

any information you can provide will be extremely helpfull

Case
STYLISH PIANO BLACK FUSION CASE inc. 2 FRONT USB

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-760 Quad Core (2.80GHz, 8MB Cache)

Motherboard
ASUS® P7H57D-V EVO: FULL ATX, TRUE USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0GB/s

Memory (RAM)
4GB CORSAIR XMS3 DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 2GB KIT)

Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5770 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Power Supply & Case Cooling
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£25)

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£62)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)

TV Card
PCTV SYSTEMS DVB-T DUAL TUNER DIGITAL FREEVIEW TV CARD

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

my quote for this is £917 which includes VAT and delivery. Is it worth it? or will i need to upgrade within a short amount of time?

thanks for taking the time to help me out in advance.

edit for ViS PCSPECIALIST.CO.UK - Intel Core i5 PC, Intel Core i5 Computers, Build Your Own Intel Core i5 PC it's lots of drop lists and pick and choose

Olaf Vikingsson · 07-30-2010, 12:20 PM

This post is useless without links.

**Dante** · 07-30-2010, 12:43 PM

Just after a quick glance over that i'd want to get a better PSU that the one you have listed, just in case.

Olaf Vikingsson · 07-30-2010, 12:56 PM

Components are suboptimal overall. I can get you similar performance at around at least £150 cheaper.

Tatemylightning · 07-30-2010, 01:10 PM

ok thanks for the input, i will do some more internet trawling and clue myself up a bit more. £150 is a nice chunk of money to drop. Do you have a decent performance website for components that you can link up?

MoleMania · 07-30-2010, 01:39 PM

Somebody's been on PCspecialist....

oneinchwunda · 07-30-2010, 04:20 PM

In the UK, Novatech are competitively priced and have good customer service.

PC Components, Desktop PCs, Laptops, LCD TVs & Computer Hardware

Building your own from scratch gives you the best possible components for your money, remember. Plenty of people here who can offer advice.

Start with your budget, and what you need.

**abc** · 07-30-2010, 04:22 PM

yeah first off as ViS says that's at least £150 overpriced. I mean, that's the sort of spec I'd aim for if I had £600 or so albeit that would be building it myself as opposed to buying everything ready made through yet another profit-making middle man.

The idea (I5 760, P55, 5770, 4GB XMS3) isn't a bad one at all but there are some needless parts (a USB3 and SATA3 motherboard is pointless atm) and some badly chosen parts (You're going to trust £900 of components with a £25 power supply? LOL)

As Dante says, you DEFINITELY need a better PSU. "better" means branded (read: corsair or OCZ) as opposed to "more watts" (because wattage is far less than half the story)

Also, if it's for gaming, more GFX card performance is never a bad thing. Games are so much more enjoyable when played in all their glory with all the sparkly effects etc turned on. But yeah, my point... HD5770 is ~£125. nVidia GeForce GTX 460 (786MB version) is only £150 and is definitely worth it - as a side note yes the HD5830 is virtually "as fast" as a GTX 460 on average but it's still £175 ish and loses in everything else e.g. power consumption, reliability etc) With a £900 budget you would be a bit mad to spend less than 15% of it on the GFX card which is afterall the component which has the biggest effect.

Ah, yeah also, what resolution is your monitor? This IS genuinly component-deciding. The more pixels per frame the faster your GFX card has to be to maintain X amount of FPS.

Tatemylightning · 08-03-2010, 04:14 AM

i haven't decided on a monitor as yet still looking around making price comparisons. thanks for the great information it's really helping me.

yes as you can probably tell i'm fairly rubbish when it comes to looking at all these components.

my budget is about £900 not including a Monitor and ideally i would like a PC that will not need upgrading for at least a year. a friend has a monitor for me so i will have to get him to wis over the specs for it to me at some point today. ideally i would like a decent HD monitor to show eerything as clear as day.

gonna be trawling the net today for more comparisons, so thank you guys for your helpful insights.

monitor resolution = 1920 x 1080 and i managed to find a link to it so here it is http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...22PUHKFEN.html (thanks for the novatech link)

**abc** · 08-03-2010, 07:09 AM

ah ok, if we're talking 1920x1080 it'd be a good idea to go for the GTX 460 (i.e. something quicker than the 5770) as, whether you realise it now or not, when you get a good gaming computer you will want to buy far cry 2, bad company 2, crysis 2 etc and a better GFX card now means it'll last longer before having to be upgraded.

A "one year upgrade" target is a very healthy one. Choosing components carefully is very important when it comes to upgrading for as cheap as possible. For example I've picked my parts so that I can get a better CPU or GFX card and my PSU is already powerful enough, the MOBO already has the right type of slots & the case is already big enough for a monster GFX card etc. Picking smartly means when you want to upgrade it only costs you "a graphics card" and not "a graphics card, a bigger case and a stronger PSU." Needless to say this means keeping your tech recent only costs £100, not £300.

I too shop at novatech and have never been disappointed. The prices are competitive on the majority of items but more importantly everything else: customer service, packing, dispatch times, delivery prices, stock-accuracy is A1.

I'll have a quick look and see what I'd do with £900.

Tatemylightning · 08-03-2010, 07:44 AM

crysis 2 is on my list, the others meh i have them on my ps3. more so getting ready for black ops and other titles coming out towards the end of the summer. just so you guys already on pc can woop my ass whilst i'm learning LOL.
my budget is based on being prepared i guess, rather have the space and not need it for the time being than use the space and then have issues at a later date and i'd rather just replace components every now and then rather than all at once for instance.

@MoleMania LOL yeah my BBC focus mag Pimps pc specialist alot.

**abc** · 08-03-2010, 08:23 AM

That's a very healthy budget. Here's a radical thought if you're not one for extreme overclocking:

Options:
I5 750 / P55 / 4GB of 1333MHz / case - £399 (if you're not going to OC there is no reason why a bog standard P55 & RAM isn't ok. And even on that you'll still be able to OC a bit)
nVidia GTX460 786MB - £150 (The best value for money GFX card in absolutely ages, sits between a HD5770 and a HD5850 perfectly in terms of performance but offers nVidia reliability and stability. Obviously this is an area to spend as much money on as possible tbh [don't worry, the I5 can definitely handle it])

Essentials:Corsair TX650 - ~~£85~~ £55? (rock solid PSU. 7 year warranty or something silly. Braided cables. More connectors than you'll ever need. Great efficiency. Cheap to run. Quiet. Stable for OC'ing. the PSU in the bundle may be ok for a while but it would be very sensible to replace it with this (see the "£900 of components and a £30 PSU" comment) Novatech being the nice people they are would more than likely swap the PSUs in their factory & charge the difference for you if you phoned them up and asked nicely)
Windows 7 retail - £120 (well, err you do need an OS. Use the 64bit disc)
Samsung F3 1TB - £45 (...for 1000GB of the fastest conventional HDD on the market is almost funny, but in a good way)
DVD+-RW - £14 (well, err, it's a DVD RW with all the features you need and Nero included. Win. I have a liteon drive, my only criticism is that it's a bit noisy when it spins up. I'd actually pay £1 or so more for a samsung.)

TOTAL ~£750.00

inc. VAT inc. Delivery

So, what do we have here? It will be much MUCH faster in gaming. The speed of RAM will make extraordinarily little difference (considering how much people pay for "better" RAM) The HDD is much quicker so it will turn on/off and load programs/games faster. The PSU is massively higher quality, this means less chance of crashes, freezes, BSODs, let's you install much faster GFX cards and OC the CPU etc. The CPU is the same - but that's not at all a bad thing. The case will most likely be much higher quality. I notice you slected the Asetek all-in-one liquid cooler (it's only £55 at nova if you wanted it) but this, along with better quality motherboards & RAM will only make a noticeable difference when OC'ing. Card readers are about £5 - £10 so you can add one if you want. Ah, finally the above suggestion comes with a retail copy of win 7, this means you can use it again on another computer in the future without getting into difficulty with liscenses etc (although I've used an OEM copy and all you have to do to switch PC is type your keycode in again and verify it, if that doesn't work you just phone an automated number for 2 minutes and get a new code - a method that has never failed me) End story is you could get the "OEM" version (exact same thing, still win 7 premium but the liscence is slightly different) and save yourself £40 there. Also, if you don't need 1000GB the 500GB version* is still very fast but £10 less Downgrading to a HD5770 would save £30, but I'd deffo stick with the GTX 460. Likewise if you really want a TV card then these are about £15 IIRC. Even by adding those two you still get a much faster PC for over £100 less!

*

Spoiler:

Tatemylightning · 08-04-2010, 06:31 AM

extremely helpfull, thank you ABC, i think i will be using pretty much everything you said. i will let you know when i get it all sorted.
yeah windows 7 64bit is what i am using for the minute.

all with a much healthier price band, thanks for all your help, hope you didn't spend hours trawling websites for this.

also would it be worth me using my SSD for the operating system, it's just holding junk at the minute, it's an internal drive slotted into a nice little box so it can be used externally.

i'm gonna hold off on the card readers and things as i have located my portable set, i knew it was hidden away somewhere.

**abc** · 08-04-2010, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tatemylightning

would it be worth me using my SSD for the operating system, it's just holding junk at the minute

Nah not really. LOL JK. YES YES YES YES. Why do you have an SSD holding junk as opposed to programs or an OS? Like, the whole point of an SSD at the moment is for the OS...

What SSD is it? is it one of those 8 - 64GB type affairs which come with laptops or was it purchased seperately?

Before you buy a case/CPU/mobo/RAM bundle it would probably be smart to price those bits up individually, just to double check. (I have double checked mentally, but not physically if that makes sense. I.e. assuming they've used the cheapest bits possible: £165 for CPU, £85 for RAM £85 for MOBO + £40 PSU + case tallies up fairly) A better mobo, more reliable RAM and nicer case with the same CPU comes to £390, so I guess you save ~£30. Given that you may try to swap that PSU out anyway... phone em and ask if they'd swap the PSU for a corsair unit and how much they'd charge.

Also, consider the future & upgrades. How much you'll spend each year/2 years/3 years. Do you mind if you have to play future titles on mid/high not maxed settings etc. Will you upgrade monitor soon etc.

Once you get the hang of it speccing comps is easy. With PSUs for example until something better comes along corsair is the way to go if you need between 400 and 1200 watts (i.e. 99% of people) If you want to save a bit of money and aren't as "enthusiastic" an OCZ "stealthxStream" is the best of the rest. With GFX cards the GTX 460 is the best card for £150, so just pick the cheapest one which is from a good brand, or comes with a free game, or a better cooler etc.

Tatemylightning · 08-05-2010, 06:45 AM

lol sounds good to me.

the reason my SSD is just holding junk is that with my current home pc being quite old now i didn't quite see the point in changing anything in it as everything else was seriously out of date.
it did have a good graphics card and stuff at the time but that stuff is really old school now.
i lucked out with it to be honest it was a coorperate gift through one of the former clients of mine in asia, we got three in total but as we only needed 2 i took one home (with permission of course).

**abc** · 08-05-2010, 07:35 AM

Actually, old hard drives are extremely slow, and even a modern hard drive is still the slowest component in your system by a long shot, so yeah... it would have made a big difference lol xD

Back to new stuff. If you fancy SLI then you'll need to look for an "SLI liscenced" P55 or X58 (they all however are capable of Crossfire) Likewise if you fancy 6 or 12GB of RAM at any point an LGA1366 MOBO & a core I7 9xx would be neccessary. 8GB of RAM on an LGA1156 MOBO (i.e. with a core I3 xxx, I5 xxx or I7 8xx) would be pushing it a bit - i.e. you won't be able to overclock as far. Also, reputedly (this is only 2nd hand info) LGA1156 (core I5 socket) is being replaced in Q1 2011 by LGA1155, whereas the high end LGA1366 will live on for a little bit more. An LGA1336 X58 MOBO is obviously a lot more expensive now, as is the CPU, but it means you probably won't need a new MOBO for 2 years (I figure it's already 1 year old, and as the 1 year old LGA1156 socket is already due for replacement I'd be suprised if 1366 lasted 5+ years like the LGA775 socket did) However it ties you to very high end CPUs, typically £200~ at launch.

Fandom Ruck · 08-05-2010, 09:31 AM

I think I should point out that overclocking isn't necessary unless you do rendering. For gaming alone it isn't practical.

**abc** · 08-05-2010, 09:37 AM

You need a GTX285 to even bother a triple core phenom II, so I've no idea what you need in order to bottleneck an I5, letalone if OC'd (which, given they'll do 4GHz, would let it hang on for ageeesssssssss when it comes to more GFX performance)

I5 is definitely a better decision NOW, it's more performance than anyone needs AND it's affordable. That's why you should go for an I5. The I7 platform offers more reliable crossfire/SLI at any res, more convinient RAM support, better upgradability when needed even if it is comparatively expensive - for these reasons it's entirely pluasible that the I7 is a much better prospect for the future.

However IMO (and semi OT) the I5 will roughly hang onto an I7 for as long as the I5/I7 can hang onto the latest releases. Proccessor architecture becomes more efficient to the point that no amount of current "features" (hyperthreading (remember the pentium 4 HT...) turbo boost etc) are overshadowed by the newer more performance-per-GHz efficient architecture. But then we know this, just as we know we can't predict tommorow's computing needs and solutions.