Cheaper alternative for PSU and Mobo?

[J-Man86]

Hi folks im a first time builder on a pretty tight budget. Having to cut corners somewhere so would value your input.

Currently running a Core 2 Quad Q8300 (bought in 2007 as a prebuild) but planning to sell this on as I will have no use for it.

This is intended as a gamer (although not hardcore as the budget cant really stretch to the i5 2500 and beyond)


Would appreciate your help in seeing if theres any cheaper alternative that are still as good. Planning on running an i3 2100

PSU - Corsair 600w CX Series V2 (£50) For a future graphics card to save rebuying. The GTX 560 im thinking of requires at least 500w

MoBo - Asus P8Z68-V LX

RAM - Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4gb) (Already bought for £37)

Ive decided to do away with the Arctic cool freezer 7 in order to save a few quid and ill use the stock cooler instead.

So if you could lend a guy a hand and know of a cheaper alternative please let me know!

Thanks guys

 

[diddle283]

You won't get better than the Asus board for that price and fifty quid for the 600w corsair is real good, you might save a fiver or so dropping to a 500 or 550w but for the difference you may as well keep where you are

 

[J-Man86]

Diddle, thanks a lot for your help. Will stick with what ive planned on then. The corsair 550w was like £80-85! I was originally going for a 430W corsair but after seeing the GTX 560 graphics card minimum wattage i thought hmm, it may be worth planning in advance.

 

[Raiddinn]

If you can get an XFX 550w or 650w instead of the Corsair 600w, I would do it.

Also, you may want to consider getting an H61 board instead of a Z68. They should be significantly cheaper and you may not notice the difference.

 

[J-Man86]

Thanks Raiddinn, I will have a look at those PSU's, is there any reason why i should go for the XFX? Would a 550w be sufficient for some of the highest graphics cards?

Did briefly have a look at a H61 at first with a pc tech at the repair shop i volunteer at and when i told him about me preparing the board for the future he recommended the Z68 within the budget i had.

I'll have a look into it and see what i'd be losing from the Z68. Mainly interested in the RAM slots and would prefer 4.

 

[J-Man86]

Also would the XFX 550W be enough for the top end graphics cards?

 

[geofelt]

Also would the XFX 550W be enough for the top end graphics cards?

It depends on what top end card.
550w will today support a GTX570.
But, the new 28nm AMD cards take less power.
The 7970 is supposed to run on a 500w psu:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7970/Pages/radeon-7970.aspx#/2
I expect kepler to be similar.

Whatever you do, stick with a quality psu brand. Antec, XFX, Corsair, Seasonic, and PC P&C are all good. Stick with one of those.

I don't think H61 will support ivy bridge, but Z68, P67 and H67 should.
It might be prudent to look at those.

If you want to save on motherboard, see if you can find a Micro-ATX motherboard. They are a bit smaller and usually cheaper.

 

[J-Man86]

Hi geofelt and thanks. I guess ill plump for the 550w xfx in that case

I never pay for the brand new cards as simply I couldnt afford it and prefer to wait until they take a dive in price but its nice to have a heads up as I'll be heading down that street eventually in the future.

Ive been reading all about PSU's as hardware isnt my strong point and it makes me so glad i didnt buy the Ace/Alpine range of 650w and 800w for ah heck all as you apparently get what you pay for.

I do have an ATX case..but if a mATX is cheaper and would still fit fine without losing much or anything at all other than the dimensions then I would consider that.

 

[Raiddinn]

I would stick with a regular ATX case. I would suggest HAF 912. You never know if your next motherboard will be a micro board in the future. If you just get a regular ATX now you don't have to worry about being forced to pick a micro board based on size concerns later.

If you already own a regular ATX case, just keep that.

Everything I have read says that H61 should be fine for Ivy Bridge with a BIOS update, but then again everything will probably need a BIOS update to work with Ivy Bridge regardless of what board it is.

Here is an MSI webpage

http://www.eteknix.com/news/all-msi-z68-and-h61-boards-to-support-ivy-bridge/

and an AsRock webpage

http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news-asrocks-h61-motherboards-support-ivy-bridge-cpus-after-bios-update

saying their H61 boards will work after BIOS updates.

Other manufacturers would be pretty stupid not to follow suit, I think.

Anyway, if you go with H61 you probably won't have nifty things like UEFI, but it still holds the same chip and gives the same processing power.

I haven't looked at the H61 market lately, but I don't see any good reason why 4 RAM slots shouldn't be possible.

Not that more than 2 is needed anyway, since it is really hard to use up 2x 4GBs as it is. 4x 4GBs is overkill for pretty much everybody.