£600 multimedia/light gaming rig

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oliverjd

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Aug 22, 2010
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Hi guys. First time building a PC, been looking over Tom's for a while choosing components. Would just like some quick advice regarding everything being compatible with everything else. Thanks very much in advance.

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: this week

BUDGET RANGE: Around £600

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Multimedia, gaming, work, just general medium-to-heavy usage.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: scan.co.uk

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK

PARTS PREFERENCES: preferably Intel CPU and ATI gfx card

OVERCLOCKING: Yep

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080 + 1280x1024

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Just looking for a check that everything in my parts list will work together so I don't have to return anything.

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Parts:

Case - Antec 300
CPU - Intel Core i3 530
Cooler - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2
RAM - 2x2GB Corsair 1333MHz
PSU - 500W Silverstone Strider
Mobo - Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H
Optical - Samsung SH-S223C Combi Drive
Graphics - 512MB XFX HD 5670
HDD - 1TB Samsung Spinpoint SATA 7200rpm
Wireless card - Edimax EW-7727In
OS - Windows 7 64 bit

Sorry for no links, in a rush ATM, will add links to parts when I can. Again, thanks very much for any help I can get on this matter.
 
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Silvune

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Oct 17, 2009
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Yes it is all compatible. Altho a 5670 (especially a 512MB edition) isn't going to be that strong for gaming with two displays, at the very least you should up it to a 1GB version imo.

The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 is one of the poorer performers (except in an acoustical sense) on 95W+ processors. I don't know how they perform on 65W processors tho, perhaps they are perfectly adequate. I guess it probably depends on how much you are going to overclock your i3.

Depending on how much your willing to go over your £600 budget I think it would be worth getting a more powerful GPU - this probably depends on how much gaming you do and how important max settings are to you - and a stronger heatsink. This is the heatsink I would suggest: Thermalright MUX-120 £33 Whereas this is one of the best performing heatsinks as shown in this review: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/lga-1156-heatsink,review-31796.html
 
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oliverjd

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Aug 22, 2010
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Thanks v/much to both of you for your advice.

Silvune -

I won't use both displays for gaming, just the widescreen one. I can also live quite happily on medium settings at a lower resolution e.g. 1680*1050 if required. I won't be playing too many taxing games, MW2 and TF2 for example. Will the 5670 be enough for this?

I have changed to the cooler you suggested and am also considering changing the dual core i3 to a quad core i5-750 which should last much longer and give even better speeds when o/c'ing.
 
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oliverjd

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Aug 22, 2010
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Ok, I reckon the following looks like a good compromise, for a grand total of £612 including shipping, a copy of 7 and a few cables/adapters for my monitors. Quite pleased.

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Thanks again all, if anyone has any more recommendations I would be happy to hear.

EDIT: Oh also, is 500w going to be comfortably enough for this lot?

EDIT 2: @Silvune, does your cooler come with thermal paste preapplied?
 
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Silvune

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Oct 17, 2009
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Yes that PSU will be plenty for your system.

It doesn't have paste preapplied, but according to their website a little tube is included: http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_page/cpu/mux-120/product_cpu_cooler_mux-120.html
 
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oliverjd

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Aug 22, 2010
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Excellent, cheers. Will be ordering this sometime soon.
 
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