~£1000 Best Value Advice

[BiggestMunchkin]

Hey folks,

So I'm building my first machine. The idea is to go for something that'll be able to blow current and upcoming games releases out of the water and be a wet dream to use, but with a serious eye on economical upgradeability in the future - I've got some cash on hand now, but that's not something I can count on in two-three years when upgrade time comes along.

My budget is around £1000, but I'm most interested in getting the most for my money, so if I'm overspending I'd like to know about it, and alternatively if there's something that I can throw another £50 at for a huge performance boost that would be good to know too.

Thanks for your help!

Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: next month

Budget Range: Non-strict £1000

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Games (all sorts), Office, Audio/Video editing

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: New build

Do you need to buy OS: Yes

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Scan, Amazon, other UK based companies.

Location: Yorkshire, UK

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe (for an easy upgrade in the future)

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

And here's the build:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570k (£170.00)

CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 (£16.00)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 (£109.99)

Memory: Gskill 8GB Ripjaws (£53.53)

Storage: Samsung 830 128GB (£87.60)
WD Caviar Green 2TB (£77.75)
(With OS and key apps on the SSD, I thought a Green would be better than a Black, am I right?)

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 2GB (£185)

Case: Antec Eleven Hundred (£88.40)

Power: OCZ 700W(£77.41)


That gets me to something like £870 - throw in a Sidewinder Keyboard, G500 mouse and a new set of speakers (suggestions for those welcome) and I'm just under my grand budget.

So what do you think? Will I see much difference from a better graphics card (a 670 perhaps) running only one 1080p monitor? Would a more expensive Mobo serve me better when upgrade time came? Should I spring for a caviar black (though it'll just be for storing all my legitimately obtained media and audio edits)? Any other suggestions?

Cheers.

PS. This is a slightly edited re-post of a message I put up yesterday, but no-one replied and I thought this would be preferable to bumping that one. Apologies.

 

[samuelspark]

Looks OK. I would maybe drop the 700w to 500w unless you're planning for CF and get a better GPU. Probably spend less on case and more on GPU as well.

 

[BiggestMunchkin]

I was planning to Crossfire for an easy upgrade in the future - which GPU would you recommend? And would I actually notice the increased performance only running one 1080p monitor? The 7870 seems to do pretty well on Tom's benchmarks.

 

[Silvune]

8GB for £53 is poor value, as you can get 8GB for under £40.
Crucial Ballistix Sports 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CAS9 1.5V BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU (£25 @ Ebuyer / £27 @ Amazon / Dabs)
http://skinflint.co.uk/723497

The OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W would not allow you to CF 7870s in the future, and is not worth £77, either because it can be bought for ~£65 in the UK, and/or because for that price you can get better units.
Antec Truepower New TPN-750 (£70 @ Scan)
http://skinflint.co.uk/407704

I agree that a 7200RPM drive isn't necessary unless you are going to be running programs off it.
I'd keep an eye on the Load Cycle count in a program such as HD Tune, to make sure it's not going up too quickly, as this is a 'problem' with some WD Caviar Green drives. According to the spec sheet the max load cycle count is 300,000, although when I contacted WD about it I got a response saying that the load cycle count could be in the millions without problems.
If it does rise quickly then this is the solution:
http://www.storagereview.com/how_stop_excessive_load_cycles_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3

 

[samuelspark]

I would try and get a 7950 if possible. Thing is, when newer games come out, they're going to stress your system more and a 7870 might not cut it. IE: Crysis 3

 

[BiggestMunchkin]

8GB for £53 is poor value, as you can get 8GB for under £40.
Crucial Ballistix Sports 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CAS9 1.5V BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU (£25 @ Ebuyer / £27 @ Amazon / Dabs)
http://skinflint.co.uk/723497

The OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W would not allow you to CF 7870s in the future, and is not worth £77, either because it can be bought for ~£65 in the UK, and/or because for that price you can get better units.
Antec Truepower New TPN-750 (£70 @ Scan)
http://skinflint.co.uk/407704

I agree that a 7200RPM drive isn't necessary unless you are going to be running programs off it.
I'd keep an eye on the Load Cycle count in a program such as HD Tune, to make sure it's not going up too quickly, as this is a 'problem' with some WD Caviar Green drives. According to the spec sheet the max load cycle count is 300,000, although when I contacted WD about it I got a response saying that the load cycle count could be in the millions without problems.
If it does rise quickly then this is the solution:
http://www.storagereview.com/how_stop_excessive_load_cycles_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3

Thanks very much, all good recommendations. I was going with the Ripjaws because I'd read that Vengeance don't leave much clearance for aftermarket CPU coolers, is that not the case? I admit, £50 is more than I'd like to pay for my RAM.

 

[BiggestMunchkin]

I would try and get a 7950 if possible. Thing is, when newer games come out, they're going to stress your system more and a 7870 might not cut it. IE: Crysis 3

I'm looking into it, you make a good case for throwing an extra £50 at the GPU, though I probably won't play Crisis 3, and I have a feeling they only make that series of games so that shmucks like me will fork out for super high-end video cards ;-)

 

[Silvune]

Thanks very much, all good recommendations. I was going with the Ripjaws because I'd read that Vengeance don't leave much clearance for aftermarket CPU coolers, is that not the case? I admit, £50 is more than I'd like to pay for my RAM.

Yes it is true that the heatspreaders on the Vengeance restrict your choice in CPU cooler. There are VengeanceLP (low profile) sets.
Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CAS9 1.5V CML8GX3M2A1600C9 (£32 @ Scan)
http://skinflint.co.uk/652381

However there's no reason to pay more for Corsair/G.Skill RAM vs Crucial RAM, who are actually a top manufacturer of RAM.