How good is my PC?

[reubenno]

Hi everyone, This is my Pc spec that I'm gonna build. I was wondering how good it will be and if I need to change any parts
My Pc
i5 2500K 3.3 ghz processor
8GB DDR3 RAM
Motherboard- Gigabyte H61M (The motherboard, processor and RAM come as a Bundle) £256
Radeon HD 6950 £130
Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD £60
LiteOnIHas 124-9C CD Drive £15
Cit Vantage case £30
Power supply- XFX Pro Series Core Edition P1-550S-UKB9 550W £50

I can build this Pc for about £541 and I dont have enough money to expand on that budget but if there are any components that cost the same but are better, any help would be gratefully received
Thanks. Also if you guys could tell me how well I would be able to run the latest games like BattleField 3 and Crysis 2 that would be appreciated.
Cheers

 

[g-unit1111]

Pay a bit more for the case - those cheap cases are not very solidly built. Get something from Cooler Master, Corsair, or Antec.

And then it's completely pointless to pair a 2500K with H61 because you lose access to the multiplier. And a Radeon 7850 is a better GPU than the 6950 is.

In fact I'd scrap that whole build and get something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3450 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor (£142.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£72.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£41.90 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£64.80 @ Novatech)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card (£154.79 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case (£37.72 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair 600W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£52.92 @ Ebuyer)
Optical Drive: Lite-On DS-8A8SH DVD/CD Writer (£20.87 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £588.97
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-07 18:07 BST+0100)

 

[jtenorj]

Well, with a h61 mobo you can't OC the i5 2500k, but you didn't include an aftermarket
heatsink/fan, so I guess you'll run it on the intel cooler and enjoy stock speeds. Hard
to beat that combo of parts for the price in the UK.

HD 6950 seems like a steal at that price.

Decent hdd. You could maybe save a few pounds at that capacity, but not much.

Same goes for optical. You could switch brands/vendors and save a couple pounds.

The power supply is pretty great for the price. Not sure you need that much, though.

Can you post one or more links to pics of the inside of that case? I'm wondering how well
an HD6950 would fit. Most of those are fairly long cards.(tryed google image search. Nada)

Editg-unit1111: The OP is already at max budget and would like to either spend less
or get better parts at the same price if possible. Also, the cx600 v2 is worse than the
xfx pro 550w. cx600 has only 44A on the +12v rail while the xfx has 44A. The cx600
has a quieter but shorter life sleeve bearing fan while the xfx has a slightly louder but
longer living ball bearing fan. And the xfx is a few pounds cheaper.

EditOP: Sorry, forgot. These should run BF3 and Crysis 2 quite well at 1080p or lower.
Not sure about a higher res monitior, though.

 

[Onus]

Yeah, it's kind of a shame to pair an unlocked CPU on a mobo that can't use it. I know it's part of the combo, but it would be worth having only 4GB of RAM if you can get a Z68 or Z77 mobo able to overclock that CPU. Or, is there a similar, possibly cheaper combo available with a locked CPU, like an i5-2400 or i5-3450?
I'd take that Seasonic-built XFX PSU over the CWT-built Corsair Builder any day.
If you can, get a WD Black drive instead. They still have five year warranties. The Seagate will have one or two.
Regardless, that's still a strong build for games, and I'm sure you'd be happy with its performance.

 

[g-unit1111]

Editg-unit1111: The OP is already at max budget and would like to either spend less
or get better parts at the same price if possible. Also, the cx600 v2 is worse than the
xfx pro 550w. cx600 has only 44A on the +12v rail while the xfx has 44A. The cx600
has a quieter but shorter life sleeve bearing fan while the xfx has a slightly louder but
longer living ball bearing fan. And the xfx is a few pounds cheaper.

I've heard that about the CX600. The only reason it goes over budget is because of the use of the i5-3450 - if you want to stay in budget either go with the i3-2120 or Phenom II 965.

 

[jtenorj]

@jtt283:Yeah, combo is bittersweet(good price/perf., but clipping the 2500k's wings).
The gpu won't be bottlenecked in games with 2500k at stock, though.

Unless reubenno says otherwise we should stick to 8GB of ram.

reubenno, what do you want to do with this PC? If we know your intentions with it we may
be able to suggest cuts in spots to either save money or allocate more funds to parts that
will better serve your purpose. If gaming, what games? On what res screen? Do you want
to max stuff out with aa too? What about other uses? Heavy multithreaded workloads?

Edit: reubenno I guess your initial post implies the primary focus is gaming. I need to
learn to read a little more carefully.

 

[jtenorj]

I never considered the i3 and never would since it is too much lower than i5 in games that
take advantage of multithreading(not many and not what reubenno is playing now, but
people don't play the same games forever do they?). I thought about Phenom II x4 965BE
because you can get it cheap in the US(not sure about UK tho) but if you bump it up 3 bins
matching 980BE it only trades blows with i5 2300 at 2.8 ghz. Even if ruebenno got a good
cooler and exceeded 4ghz it wouldn't be as fast as i5 2500k at stock. Plus, the 2500k can
take advantage of turbo too. It would be a step down(although in gaming a mild to moderate overclock on a 965BE shouldn't really bottleneck any games).

Edit: early benchmarks of fx8350 on am3+ look promising(trades blows with i7k quads),
but the price on it isn't available as far as I can tell.

 

[g-unit1111]

I never considered the i3 and never would since it is too much lower than i5 in games that
take advantage of multithreading(not many and not what reubenno is playing now, but
people don't play the same games forever do they?). I thought about Phenom II x4 965BE
because you can get it cheap in the US(not sure about UK tho) but if you bump it up 3 bins
matching 980BE it only trades blows with i5 2300 at 2.8 ghz. Even if ruebenno got a good
cooler and exceeded 4ghz it wouldn't be as fast as i5 2500k at stock. Plus, the 2500k can
take advantage of turbo too. It would be a step down(although in gaming a mild to moderate overclock on a 965BE shouldn't really bottleneck any games).

Not necessarily - most games as it is right now - even GPU hogs like BF3 and Skyrim - only use one or two cores at most. If you're playing strategy games like Civ V or Diablo III where there's multiple turns and multiple units being controlled then I can see where the extra cores would come in handy.

Edit: early benchmarks of fx8350 on am3+ look promising(trades blows with i7k quads),

But it's still on AM3+ though - a socket that's been around for 7 years now, the 1155 socket is still relatively new.

 

[CaedenV]

@ gUnit
um... my skyrim takes advantage of all 4 physical cores on my i7. Not saying that it would not run fine on an i3 (especially one of the new IB i3's), but it deffinately utilizes the hardware when it is there.

 

[jtenorj]

But it's still on AM3+ though - a socket that's been around for 7 years now, the 1155 socket is still relatively new.

Uh, am2 (940pins) debuted in the summer of 2006 as an update to the venerable socket
939 and moved amd from ddr to ddr2. am3/am3+ are not as new as 1155, but they aren't
as old as you think. There is also more life in them, what with piledriver coming(not sure if
steamroller will still be on the same socket or a new one next year). I think it is abundantly
clear that besides maybe a few speed bumps on the ivy arch., 1155 is essentially dead.
I'm pretty sure Haswell is going to be on a new socket, so no upgrade path for socket
1155 beyond what is pretty much already out.

Edit: I believe am2 was enhanced to am2+ to support the first 65nm phenoms(the
ones with first a flawed tlb bug and also a cold bug not letting them get past 2.6

am2+ then supported the first phenom IIs, and am3 switched amd over to ddr3. am3+
was an enhancement of am3 that allowed for the use of the Bulldozer FX processors.
Piledriver and steamroller are just further enhancements of bulldozer.

 

[CaedenV]

AM3/+ is actuially at the end of it's lifecycle. My understanding is that there will be a few more chips released for this current gen chips, but that they will be moving on to something else for steamroller.

 

[reubenno]

Thanks for all the help guys. I think I might improve the case as I don't want to run out of space. Also I have had a look at the 7850 but the 6950 seems to be better. I will be using the PC for gaming but also for video editing such as stop motion animation which requires quite a lot of processing power.
Thoughts?

 

[g-unit1111]

AM3/+ is actuially at the end of it's lifecycle. My understanding is that there will be a few more chips released for this current gen chips, but that they will be moving on to something else for steamroller.

The biggest problem with AMD is that they drag out their sockets way past the point of usefulness.

 

[CaedenV]

The biggest problem with AMD is that they drag out their sockets way past the point of usefulness.

No kidding, you have Intel which changes sockets every 2 revisions, and generally has 3 tiers (consumer, high end, and professional), but (with rare exception) if the chip fits then it will work.
On the other hand you have AMD who makes sockets that last FOREVER. The nice thing is that you can get your mobo to limp along for a very long time. The bad thing is that you always need to make sure that your CPU, socket, firmware, and northbridge all work together, which is simply too complicated for most of us to care about keeping up with. And by the end of a sockets life it can typically fit CPUs in it which are severely bottle-necked by the buss speeds and feature sets available by older boards, or fit extremely underpowered CPUs into brand new mobos.

Surely somewhere between the 2 methodologies there is a good middle ground of a socket that lasts for 3 years or so? Or have a persistant low-end socked like 775 that lives on forever through several CPU architectures with a minimal fuss about firmware updates... but then again I guess we did not see a whole lot of interface and buss speed innovation through the 775 era.

 

[g-unit1111]

No kidding, you have Intel which changes sockets every 2 revisions, and generally has 3 tiers (consumer, high end, and professional), but (with rare exception) if the chip fits then it will work.
On the other hand you have AMD who makes sockets that last FOREVER. The nice thing is that you can get your mobo to limp along for a very long time. The bad thing is that you always need to make sure that your CPU, socket, firmware, and northbridge all work together, which is simply too complicated for most of us to care about keeping up with. And by the end of a sockets life it can typically fit CPUs in it which are severely bottle-necked by the buss speeds and feature sets available by older boards, or fit extremely underpowered CPUs into brand new mobos.

Surely somewhere between the 2 methodologies there is a good middle ground of a socket that lasts for 3 years or so? Or have a persistant low-end socked like 775 that lives on forever through several CPU architectures with a minimal fuss about firmware updates... but then again I guess we did not see a whole lot of interface and buss speed innovation through the 775 era.

That's the biggest problem I have with AMD. Sure the socket lasts years but you never know if your new CPU is going to work in your motherboard, and I've actually fried a couple of AMD builds that way - including my own, I was using a Phenom II in a motherboard that was using a socket 880 chipset, and the voltages didn't match, and the motherboard eventually died as a result. You could build something like 775 that lasts a lifetime but even then the CPU and supported RAM list dwindles over time making the chipsets useless again.

 

[reubenno]

I have been unable to find a bundle with a MotherBoard that would enable me to overclock the CPU so I might just get it all separately. Do you guys have any suggestions of a motherboard and a 8GB of RAM that would come to around £120 bearing in mind that I would want to overclock the CPU

 

[CaedenV]

I think you are out of luck with that budget. The most basic z67 and z77 motherboards that allow for overclocking start at $100 USD, and the ones built with enough quality to last a while start at $130... so that puts you at 81 pounds for just the motherboard alone.

Then the CPU has to have a K at the end of it, meaning an i5 2500K or 3770K which goes for ~$220 USD and brings your total to $350 USD, or 220 pounds, and you still need to buy Ram before getting a basic working system. And I am sure that prices over there are a lot higher than they are over here to begin with, so that really kills the budget.

If you are dead set on hobby overclocking then you have to stick with AMD. But if you are willing to not OC then you can get a B75 mobo for 1/2 the price but most of the features, and an i3 or low end i5 CPU should be enough to play the games you listed originally with high settings (assuming you have a good GPU). But just know that the AMD is barely going to catch the Intel stuff even after overclocking.

 

[reubenno]

Thanks I am probably just gonna go with the original bundle as I can get it cheap and overclocking isn't really something tat I would rather spend an extra £150 plus to do

 

[g-unit1111]

Thanks I am probably just gonna go with the original bundle as I can get it cheap and overclocking isn't really something tat I would rather spend an extra £150 plus to do

What we're trying to say is that it's pointless to pair a 2500K with H61 because you forfeit use of the multiplier. If you're not going to overclock go with what I suggested - H77 and i5-3450, that won't alter the cost much and it's a far newer CPU. H61 will have very limited longevity.

 

[reubenno]

How about this then?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/INTEL-Core-i5-2500K-3-3Ghz-ASUS-P8Z77-V-LX-Motherboard-Bundle-/190701055050?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item2c66ab2c4a
and
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Corsair-XMS3-TW3X4G1333C9DHX-RAM-Module-8-GB-4-x-2-GB-DDR3-SDRAM-1333mhz-/330792656163?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_MemoryRAM_JN&hash=item4d04c75d23
This comes to £287

 

[spat55]

Hi everyone, This is my Pc spec that I'm gonna build. I was wondering how good it will be and if I need to change any parts
My Pc
i5 2500K 3.3 ghz processor
8GB DDR3 RAM
Motherboard- Gigabyte H61M (The motherboard, processor and RAM come as a Bundle) £256
Radeon HD 6950 £130
Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD £60
LiteOnIHas 124-9C CD Drive £15
Cit Vantage case £30
Power supply- XFX Pro Series Core Edition P1-550S-UKB9 550W £50

I can build this Pc for about £541 and I dont have enough money to expand on that budget but if there are any components that cost the same but are better, any help would be gratefully received
Thanks. Also if you guys could tell me how well I would be able to run the latest games like BattleField 3 and Crysis 2 that would be appreciated.
Cheers

Get a i5 3570k new tech, then a z77 board like, ASUS P8Z77 OR GA-Z77-***.

 

[g-unit1111]

How about this then?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/INTEL-Core-i5-2500K-3-3Ghz-ASUS-P8Z77-V-LX-Motherboard-Bundle-/190701055050?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item2c66ab2c4a
and
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Corsair-XMS3-TW3X4G1333C9DHX-RAM-Module-8-GB-4-x-2-GB-DDR3-SDRAM-1333mhz-/330792656163?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_MemoryRAM_JN&hash=item4d04c75d23
This comes to £287

Tread *EXTREMELY* carefully purchasing used components on eBay - especially RAM. Do not purchase RAM with tall heat sinks and don't purchase RAM without making sure the timings and voltages match.

 

[jtenorj]

I'd like to point out that while these new parts will allow you to overclock the i5 2500K, they do cost a total of 30
pounds more than your original combo. Plus, if you want to really oc i5 2500k, you will want to spend even more
money on a decent after market cooler. The stock intel cooler works ok for stock speeds (turbo, even), but if you
don't have the funds to increase your original budget, OCing i5 2500k may be a path you are not destined to go down.
You should be quite satisfied with the stock performance of the i5 2500k compared to some of the alternatives.

I still wonder about that case. Would it be tall enough to fit a decent size tower cooler? And the HD6950? Those
are usually 10.5 inches long. In many tests the HD 7850 is as fast as hd6970/gtx570, and it is usually a much
shorter card. Plus, it has tons of overclocking potential. And, if you are looking at benchmarks from hd7850 launch
comparing it to hd6950, keep in mind that driver updates from amd in the last few months have boosted the
speed of all the newer gcn architecture chips. Now hd 7000 series cards from hd7750 on up perform better than ever.

 

[reubenno]

Thanks jtenorj. Im gonna get the HD 7850 as I have seen it for the same price as the 6950. I am looking to build a Pc that will last me quite a few years. Do you think the i5 processor without overclocking will be fine for that? Plus would it be worth spending an extra £30 if the motherboard would last me longer too?
Thanks

 

[jtenorj]

That i5 at stock should suit you for quite some time.

You might want to look into a newer mobo that supports usb 3.0 and sata 6gbps.