Rig recommendation for getting back into PC Modding/Building

iron_hide

Hey all,

been away for a while from PC building, sold my soul to Dell for a couple of years, but I want to get my hands dirty again...

1. What is your budget? €1000-€1300 (at a push)

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, video rendering. FPS mainly.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? I have a dell xps 8100 at the moment with some pretty decent kit (i7 sandybridge, decent amd gpu, 8Gb ram, blueray drive etc) but I'm gonna flog that to make money for this build, so long story short..NO.

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 23"-24"

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 1920*1080 will be fine.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Have corsair vengeance M60 and M90. Only need the monitor, so the question is; TN vs IPS, 60Hz vs 120Hz?

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes, after time to increase performance, but would like a good stock set-up also.

8. How can you pay? Any method.

9. When are you purchasing? In the next month.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? I'm going to build it myself, have done so before, so hopefully it will be like riding a bike.. albeit an expensive bike...

cheers for any and all help.

Procrastastudy

iron_hide wrote: »

Hey all,

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? I have a dell xps 8100 at the moment with some pretty decent kit (i7 sandybridge, decent amd gpu, 8Gb ram, blueray drive etc) but I'm gonna flog that to make money for this build, so long story short..NO.

Firstly unless you have a buyer in mind I would cannibalise your current machine and sell the rest. People massively over estimate the value of their PCs and desktop almost never sell. Have a look at adverts.ie to see what I mean.

Perhaps you could link the spec and what you expect to get for it as a reality check but also so we can see if anything can be used out of it.

iron_hide

Cheers for the reply Procrastastudy.

I may have a buyer in the family for my PC, as it is not that old, but the age of my current PC is not why I want to build. I am not expecting too much for it. If PC modding has taught me anything in the past, its that components are devalued as soon as you get delivery of them and dell OEM components are even worse. It might do some-one as a mid-range PC for a few years.

My build is not reliant on this selling. Would be nice to have the few extra bucks though to throw into the new build :-)

The spec's for my current PC are as follows:

StudioXPS 8100 - Intel Core i7 Processor 860 (2.80GHz, 8MB)
(4x2GB) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory
1GB ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 Graphics Card
2TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7200rpm)
Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) & 16X DVD+/-RW
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Card

Procrastastudy

Cool so - I'll leave you to get the monitor so I'll try and come in around €900. After the Catleap I find it difficult to recommend anything else!

Will you use SLI/xfire or an optical out at all?

Procrastastudy

Item|Price
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€43.45
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 3 6GB/s|€75.93
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 Coolstream Edition, 2GB GDDR5|€222.00
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€18.05
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€91.34
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€218.09
Noctua NH-D14, Sockel AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1366/1155/1156|€74.79
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W|€54.51
BitFenix Merc Beta|€32.19
Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA 6GB's Paper Box|€101.43
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€950.77

May want to look at the main board and up it a bit same with the case. SSD could be left out. Also the 660ti has just hit - if they come down in price they will be a better buy than the 7850.

iron_hide

Will probably not need optical out. May not xfire off the bat but was considering the GTX 670 as an alternative to the AMD gpu.

iron_hide

I have heard/read some good things about this SSD

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Solid-State-Disk/58191/OCZ+Vertex+4+128GB.article

What do you think?

Procrastastudy

Depending on whether you will overclock the 7950 will out perform a stock 670 for less money. A 660Ti when the come down in price might also be a good buy if you can get a voltage unlocked one and you're not gaming in high resolutions.

I've heard the OCZ SSDs suffer from relaibility issues. I don't think its any faster than the samsung - so I went with the 830 personally. I went from two older SSDs in RAID and the samsung impressed me even upgrading from that.