Approximate Purchase Date: As soon as I finalise the parts.
Budget Range: £1000-£1500
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming (probably the most intensive at the moment is SC2, likely to purchase BF3, not sure the future holds), nothing else intensive.
Parts Not Required: OS, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, other peripherals not included in budget.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: www.dabs.com - although if elsewhere is cheaper on a quick google search I'll probably buy from there.
Country of Origin: UK
Parts Preferences: Irrational preference for Intel and nVidia. I don't really want to mess around with water cooling.
Overclocking: Up for it in theory, not particularly confident in my own abilities to do so, hence pre-clocked graphics card.
SLI or Crossfire: No
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080
Additional Comments:
- Intended to last ~5-8 years.
- Preference for 1 big fan over lots of small fans (for noise considerations)
- Preference for lowest PSU wattage I can safely get away with, for electricity bill considerations, since the computer will be running most of the day.
- Preference for plain cases with no LEDs or flashing lights or whatever. A plain matte black case would be ideal.
- I'm intending to run Win7 home 64bit and a small Fedora Partition if it's at all relevant.
- This will be the first time I've built a computer, and I've been dithering about it since before Christmas, so now I'm doing what I should have done before, and looking for advice from the lovely people of the internet, who know far more about this than I do, especially since what research I did is probably out of date now.
- I'm mainly seeking advice on the case, fan and PSU, since I've no idea where to start with those, although judging by the PSU advice in the "Homebuilt PC Buying Guide" thread, I should probably finalise the other parts of the build first, so that I know how much power I will need. I've also no idea how I know whether everything will fit in the case I buy.
- With the parts I have put down as considering below, I'm not fixed on buying those ones, and if I can get much the same thing for much better value, I'm very open to suggestions about that. I'm aware that some of the parts may be over the top, but I wanted to avoid a performance 'bottleneck' i.e. one part which is significantly worse than the others and I'll be itching to upgrade before the others. Similarly I want to avoid one component being significantly better than the others (except the motherboard/cpu), as then I feel like I've wasted money on something I'm not getting full value for money on. Basically I just don't want to get ripped off.
Current Intended Hardware (Not Purchased Yet)
Asus Intel Ultimate Bundle (P6X58D-E Motherboard, Intel Core i7-950 3.06GHz Processor)
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-intel-ultimate-bundle--includes-p6x58d-e-motherboard---intel-core-i7-950-3-06ghz-processor--7B22.html
Corsair Dominator Memory 12GB (6x2GB) (Would I notice any difference if I bought 6GB (3x2GB) instead? I presume I could always purchase another 3x2GB later if I felt it needed it?)
http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-memory-dominator-12gb--6-x-2gb--240pin-1600mhz-pc3-12800-dimm-cl8-74DT.html
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti 900MHz 1GB Pre-overclocked (I'm not confident overclocking something myself really, although open to persuasion that its possible)
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-560ti-900mhz-1gb-pci-e-hdmi-overclocke-7B29.html
Crucial 128GB RealSSD 2.5" SSD SATA 6GB/s (Any SSD to run OS & applications from will do - I figured that since the motherboard supported 6GB/s SATA I should utilise it, and this was the first I came across.)
http://www.dabs.com/products/crucial-128gb-realssd-c300-2-5--ssd-sata-6gbs--inc-data-transfer-kit--7DXS.html
Seagate 2TB Barracuda Green SATA-600 64MB 5900RPM 3.5" (Just wanted any 2TB harddrive to act as music/tv/movie storage - yes I will fill it up, I have a lot of movies in full HD - this one seemed alright. If I can get the same thing cheaper then please let me know.)
http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-2tb-barracuda-green-sata-600-64mb-5900rpm-3-5--78H7.html?q=2TB%20Seagate%20Barracuda%206GB%2Fs
Many Thanks,
Budget Range: £1000-£1500
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming (probably the most intensive at the moment is SC2, likely to purchase BF3, not sure the future holds), nothing else intensive.
Parts Not Required: OS, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, other peripherals not included in budget.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: www.dabs.com - although if elsewhere is cheaper on a quick google search I'll probably buy from there.
Country of Origin: UK
Parts Preferences: Irrational preference for Intel and nVidia. I don't really want to mess around with water cooling.
Overclocking: Up for it in theory, not particularly confident in my own abilities to do so, hence pre-clocked graphics card.
SLI or Crossfire: No
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080
Additional Comments:
- Intended to last ~5-8 years.
- Preference for 1 big fan over lots of small fans (for noise considerations)
- Preference for lowest PSU wattage I can safely get away with, for electricity bill considerations, since the computer will be running most of the day.
- Preference for plain cases with no LEDs or flashing lights or whatever. A plain matte black case would be ideal.
- I'm intending to run Win7 home 64bit and a small Fedora Partition if it's at all relevant.
- This will be the first time I've built a computer, and I've been dithering about it since before Christmas, so now I'm doing what I should have done before, and looking for advice from the lovely people of the internet, who know far more about this than I do, especially since what research I did is probably out of date now.
- I'm mainly seeking advice on the case, fan and PSU, since I've no idea where to start with those, although judging by the PSU advice in the "Homebuilt PC Buying Guide" thread, I should probably finalise the other parts of the build first, so that I know how much power I will need. I've also no idea how I know whether everything will fit in the case I buy.
- With the parts I have put down as considering below, I'm not fixed on buying those ones, and if I can get much the same thing for much better value, I'm very open to suggestions about that. I'm aware that some of the parts may be over the top, but I wanted to avoid a performance 'bottleneck' i.e. one part which is significantly worse than the others and I'll be itching to upgrade before the others. Similarly I want to avoid one component being significantly better than the others (except the motherboard/cpu), as then I feel like I've wasted money on something I'm not getting full value for money on. Basically I just don't want to get ripped off.
Current Intended Hardware (Not Purchased Yet)
Asus Intel Ultimate Bundle (P6X58D-E Motherboard, Intel Core i7-950 3.06GHz Processor)
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-intel-ultimate-bundle--includes-p6x58d-e-motherboard---intel-core-i7-950-3-06ghz-processor--7B22.html
Corsair Dominator Memory 12GB (6x2GB) (Would I notice any difference if I bought 6GB (3x2GB) instead? I presume I could always purchase another 3x2GB later if I felt it needed it?)
http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-memory-dominator-12gb--6-x-2gb--240pin-1600mhz-pc3-12800-dimm-cl8-74DT.html
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti 900MHz 1GB Pre-overclocked (I'm not confident overclocking something myself really, although open to persuasion that its possible)
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-560ti-900mhz-1gb-pci-e-hdmi-overclocke-7B29.html
Crucial 128GB RealSSD 2.5" SSD SATA 6GB/s (Any SSD to run OS & applications from will do - I figured that since the motherboard supported 6GB/s SATA I should utilise it, and this was the first I came across.)
http://www.dabs.com/products/crucial-128gb-realssd-c300-2-5--ssd-sata-6gbs--inc-data-transfer-kit--7DXS.html
Seagate 2TB Barracuda Green SATA-600 64MB 5900RPM 3.5" (Just wanted any 2TB harddrive to act as music/tv/movie storage - yes I will fill it up, I have a lot of movies in full HD - this one seemed alright. If I can get the same thing cheaper then please let me know.)
http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-2tb-barracuda-green-sata-600-64mb-5900rpm-3-5--78H7.html?q=2TB%20Seagate%20Barracuda%206GB%2Fs
Many Thanks,