Computer Specs

[MrIdontKnow]

How much would you be willing to spend?

And building a computer is easy mate, first one I ever built was 2 months ago, and I was handling £1200 of equipment, they're made to last just don't drop anything, keep static away by touching the metal case often.

Watch YouTube videos and its simple as pie.

 

[Rob]

I agree.

Start with 2 questions:
(1) What do you want to use the PC for?
(2) How much money do you want to spend in the first instance?

For CPUs, you've got Intel and AMD. For GPUs, you've got Nvidia and AMD/ATI. All have various good products at different price points. It *really* depends on how much you want to spend.

 

[MrIdontKnow]

Yeah, really the only thing you could do which would break mobo/CPU is put it in wrong way and clip it in, big no no haha.

And it's all personal preference, AMD/Intel, Nvidia/AMD or ATI, they all have pros and cons really.

What you need to do is say how much you'd like it to be, and how much you could go over if something that was 10x better was £40 more. When you've had a think of how much your willing to spend, post it here and I'll get you a build sorted from the pros that spec'd mine up.

I spent £1200(ish) on mine and it consisted of:

Case: Fractal Design R4
Mobo: Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3
CPU: Intel i5 3570k
CPU Cooler: H100i
GPU: MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP (2x8GB)
PSU: 750w Modular (Can't remember what make, good though)
HDD: 2TB Seagate Barracuda

Can't remember if I've missed anything?

I added a 120GB SSD for £65 to loads windows from, it loads before I have time to blink haha.
Got a free Bluray drive for Christmas as well!

I didn't have a optical drive at the start cause I just borrowed one.

 

[Cooper Holt]

As far as CPU goes it depends on what you're going to be doing. If you do a lot of encoding, video/graphic editing/rendering then I'd say get a quad-core Intel i7 (they have Hyper-Threading - these are virtual cores which basically makes each core act like two). Hyper-Threading is beneficial usually in applications which take advantage of multiple threads. Some games are starting to utilize more threads too. The Witcher 2 is a good example of this. It will use all 6 cores of my hexa-core processor. However, if you're wanting to save money then a quad-core Intel i5 processor will be fast too (these have no Hyper-Threading).

As far as GPUs go I wouldn't get anything less than an Nvidia GTX 660. This card will be able to run most any current game at high or max settings. If you were to buy a slower card I think you'd be disappointed when you had to upgrade it in a year or two when it started struggling to run games. I usually try and get a minimum of three years out of my GPU.

I just want to play Sui Generis and go on the internet (mostly videos).
Any specific suggestions for those? Because I'm making a list of what I need in my new desktop computer.
Also, what is a good amount of RAM?

 

[Komuflage]

I just want to play Sui Generis and go on the internet (mostly videos).
Any specific suggestions for those? Because I'm making a list of what I need in my new desktop computer.
Also, what is a good amount of RAM?

I still have 4gb of ram, and they are a few years old, they work perfect if I'm just playing a game and tab down to the browser from time to time, so it's enough if you ain't planning on doing any heavy work.
However I still recommend going with at least 8GB, the price difference wont be significant.
And if you feel yo got even a little bit of money to spare, go for 16gb. Ram is really cheap nowadays, so I would rather spend a little more, so I've enough to last for a while, rather than having to upgrade in a year)

 

[Tony]

If you're going to be playing Sui Generis and watching videos then an Intel i5 quad-core processor will be plenty fast. As far as RAM goes, like Komuflage said it is relatively cheap and more is always better. If you have Windows, a virus scanner, a game, a web browser and a music player running simultaneously you could easily use up 4 GB of RAM. I'd recommend a minimum of 8 GB though 16 GB isn't much more expensive and it would future-proof your PC. If you added in an Nvidia GTX 660 video card you'd have a system that could run any game smoothly for the next 3 years no problem And if you assembled the PC yourself it would be rather cheap too!

 

[Cooper Holt]

You'd have a system that could run any game smoothly for the next 3 years no problem

Sweet, thanks.
Now I know what I'm getting - I just don't know where to get it...

Also, sorry to bother you all again, but you've just been so helpful. What would you say the minimum hard drive would be for a computer like this? I don't think I'll need much space, and I don't want things to get too expensive.

 

[MrIdontKnow]

Could you just tell me how much you're willing to spend?

 

[Komuflage]

Sweet, thanks.
Now I know what I'm getting - I just don't know where to get it...

Also, sorry to bother you all again, but you've just been so helpful. What would you say the minimum hard drive would be for a computer like this? I don't think I'll need much space, and I don't want things to get too expensive.

I would go for one 1TB HDD, where I live, they cost as low as 50€/67$ and should give you enough space, if you fell you got a little bit more money to spare, I'd recommend to buy a 64/120GB SSD as well; install your OS and your favourite game, and you will forget what a loading screen is.

But as MIdontKnow says, it would really help if you could give an estimate of how much you're willing to spend.

 

[Cooper Holt]

I'm not sure how much I want to spend, all I know is that I don't want to over-spend.
I'll have to see how much it comes to.

 

[MrIdontKnow]

I'm not sure how much I want to spend, all I know is that I don't want to over-spend.
I'll have to see how much it comes to.

 

[Komuflage]

I'm not sure how much I want to spend, all I know is that I don't want to over-spend.
I'll have to see how much it comes to.

I just throw some components together to get an estimate price.
With a Intel I5 2,5K
8Gb 1600Mhz Ram
1TB HDD
660 TI
Quality, but bad looking chassi
And a motherboard that would be able to handle it.

Price: 680€

As I said, I just picked some components that are good and would work together, but ofc if you want to optimize the price might be a little different.
This is just an estimate, and the prices are from a swedish website (Some components might cost more/less in other countries)

 

[Cooper Holt]

ENORMOUS PICTURE

I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. It's not that confusing.

 

[Cooper Holt]

Price: 680€

As I said, I just picked some components that are good and would work together, but ofc if you want to optimize the price might be a little different.
This is just an estimate, and the prices are from a swedish website (Some components might cost more/less in other countries)

That sounds... reasonable.
I think I'll sell my other video games to get some money. With that and other sources of income combined, I'll probably have enough by September.

 

[Cooper Holt]

Thanks guys, you've been a huge help.

 

[Rob]

I just throw some components together to get an estimate price.
With a Intel I5 2,5K
8Gb 1600Mhz Ram
1TB HDD
660 TI
Quality, but bad looking chassi
And a motherboard that would be able to handle it.

Price: 680€

That's probably a reasonable price for the core components... there are lots of potential options, but Komuflage's suggestions look sensible.

But don't forget to factor in the other bits:
PSU +$100 (Don't get a chassis with an in-built PSU - you'd be asking for trouble. It's important to get a good reliable PSU. Be Quiet do the best price/performance ATM IMO across the wattage range)
DVD +$20
keyboard/mouse +$50
monitor +$300
windows7 +$100

(all approx figures, of course)

And I'll +1 to highly recommending getting a SSD for your boot partition. In this day and age, now that SSDs are finally sensibly priced, a SSD should be considered a necessity and not a luxury item for any new build. Modern games take up a lot of space, so 120GB is minimum, 240GB ideal. If you're not going to put games/anything on the SSD, then 60GB should be sufficient. I'd probably recommend something like a Samsung 830 series SSD.

In which case, if you've got a SSD as your primary, I'd consider getting a 2.5" 1TB HDD (usually used in laptops) instead of a 3.5" one (at the risk of causing an outcry!!!). Whilst 2.5" disks spin slower than 3.5" ones, they are much cooler and quieter, and IMO more reliable. In my PC, the 3.5" HDD is the loudest thing, and it drives me mad (it's not breaking or anything, just everything else is nice and quiet...). So it's all about balance and priorities. Just a thought.

 

[Komuflage]

That's probably a reasonable price for the core components... there are lots of potential options, but Komuflage's suggestions look sensible.

But don't forget to factor in the other bits:
PSU +$100 (Don't get a chassis with an in-built PSU - you'd be asking for trouble. It's important to get a good reliable PSU. Be Quiet do the best price/performance ATM IMO across the wattage range)
DVD +$20
keyboard/mouse +$50
monitor +$300
windows7 +$100

Ha, I know I forgot something
You can get a 750W Psu from Corsair for about 60€

A 24" screen from BenQ/Samsung for about 140€

I guess you already have a copy of windows?
A Dvd you can just take from an old PC if you have any

And you can get decent budget Keyboard+Mouse quite cheap as well.

 

[Rob]

Yeah, all depends on what you're going for. Depends whether you want budget - as cheap as possible - or whether you want to invest in something that's better quality that you'll be happier with and will last longer. If you want it to be reliable, quiet, good, etc. then you have to up the price a bit (although not too much...) and get better-quality components.

For example, the difference between a 60€ and a 80€ mobo can be astronomical in terms of quality/reliability, even if the features are practically identical.

Sometimes intuition can lead you astray too... For example, should you have a 550W gold-certified PSU or a 750W bronze-certified one, both of which come from the same manufacturer and are the same price? Surely a 750W one is better, right? Answer: no, not necessarily! Chances are you'd be better off with the 550W one (which would generally be cooler, quieter, and draw less power) unless you planned on having >1 GPU in future, or planned on doing some serious overvolting. All of these things have to be thought about when deciding which components to get (unless you don't care that much).

Depends what you want from your PC, and how much cash you're willing to throw at it. If you don't care about quality & noise then that will save you some pennies...

 

[Cooper Holt]

Noise isn't an issue, I already have a keyboard and mouse, and I'd like it to be as good as possible for as close to 1000$ Can.

 

[MrIdontKnow]

Noise isn't an issue, I already have a keyboard and mouse, and I'd like it to be as good as possible for as close to 1000$ Can.

So $1000 then yeah? excited, plus your quote of my picture 'ENORMOUS PICTURE' made me lol, thanks for the laugh!

This is a £500 (($784 from xe.com exchange rates)

This is a £700 (($1098 from xe.com exchange rates)

None of the builds include an OS.