PC Cost Advice.

Bust_A_Move

Hey Guys,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

You guys give some great advice on PC Modding/Building. Before now, I've always bought pre-built for PCs/laptops, but my last laptop was about 5/6 years ago, and suffice to say it's pretty much given up the ghost.

I'm trying to put together what will hopefully be the last full PC I'll have to buy in years (as I'll just keep upgrading) and I was hoping you guys could have a look, and let me know what you think/If I could improve anywhere.

First, the background on what it's used for. Mostly Video and Photo editing, with a light to moderate amount of Gaming (But I don't need to go insane on the gaming side of things).

NZXT Phantom 410 Midi - Red , ATX, ohne Netzteil - I like this case, but mostly I just want a large one to provide for future expansion. If anyone can suggest a slightly cheaper one around the same size, I'm all ears. (Heck, if it saves me a lot of money, I don't care what it looks like, so long as I have plenty of room to expand).

AMD FX-6200 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+ - I'm not sure if AMD is a mistake. I'm going with it because it's cost + 6 cores (as I'll be doing a lot of multitasking) and 3.8 Ghz seems like it's hard to go wrong.

ARCTIC COOLING CPU-Kühler Freezer 64 PRO - This was kind of a random choice. Cooling is important, so Idon't want to skimp, but trying not to break the bank eithear. No strong feeling on the type though.

Cooler Master GX Lite Series PSU, 700 Watt - Don't want to skimp here, and PSUs I always find tough to work out. No intent on Overclocking (Yet) so could I save some money here?

Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3, AMD 970, AM3+, ATX - This seems to give plenty of room for Expansion, but I'm always nervous about motherboards, cause If I screw this up, it's a lot tougher to take out then say, RAM. Think I'm pretty safe with this one though, as it has all the ports I need. (I think)

TP-Link TL-WN951N, 300Mbps PCI-Adapter Unfortunately, Wireless is kind of a must in my house. Location of the Modem/renting the house/leads etc. Anyone know if this is semi-decent, or am I better off with something else?

Toshiba DT01ACA Series 1TB, SATA 6Gb/s - I intend to expand this in the future. For now It's fine.

LogiLink USB 2.0 all-in-one Card Reader, für 3,5" Einbauchschacht - Basic Card Reader is a must for me. If anyone thinks they know a better one, all ears.

8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 - Buying 2 sticks of 4, because in about 6 months I'll buy another 2 sticks of 4 for a total of 16. Just trying to hit a reasonable price tag short term.

Samsung SH-118AB schwarz - Basic CD/DVD. Tempted to go Blue-ray, but that's tacking 40ish quid on the build, and again, trying to hit a reasonable Price tag.

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch - I need an OS.

Including assembly hardwareversand.de tells me it's about €620, which is fine. Two things though, If I could save money anywhere, then that would be awesome, as it would allow me to spend it elsewhere now/save it for later and purchase parts sooner, so any suggestions are welcome.

Number two is, no graphics card. I can eithear buy a really, really cheap one now, or I can spend about €250 on one sometime in the next 12 months. Am I shooting myself in the foot using Intergrated Graphics atm and I'd be better off waiting, or will I be fine for a while. Not looking to play Battlefieldthree or anything, but Diablo and Starcraft and so on are what I'm lookng at...

Anybody with any comments, I'd love to hear from you.

Tl;DR: What do you guys think of my build, and is there anyway that Ican save money without sacrficing upgradibility in the future/short term performance?

Thanks Guys!

Tea_Bag

I think you should wait another week or so, whenever AMD Trinity hits the market. while I highly doubt its going to be very future proof, it might be very good value for money. the kind when you use it for 2 years and chuck/sell most of it off and start again. it'll be highly optimised for Photoshop, have a decent onboard GPU (slightly better than a GT640) and be clock for clock faster than the a6.

Eboggles

Tea_Bag wrote: »

I think you should wait another week or so, whenever AMD Trinity hits the market. while I highly doubt its going to be very future proof, it might be very good value for money. the kind when you use it for 2 years and chuck/sell most of it off and start again. it'll be highly optimised for Photoshop, have a decent onboard GPU (slightly better than a GT640) and be clock for clock faster than the a6.

Actually, FM2 is sticking around for a while, there's supposed to be two more after Trinity:

Bust_A_Move

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Do you think the performance increase vs the price would be substantial if I waited?

Also, as an update, do you think it might be nescessary for me to toss in a cheap GPU? Thinking MSI N210-MD1GD3H, 1024MB, PCI-Express might be a good solution in the interim, just for 12 months.

I also intend on sticking an audio card in in the future, but again, that can wait 12 months.

Monotype

The G210 would be worse than integrated graphics in the Trinity APUs.

I'd also be looking at something other than the GX line from coolermaster, but yeah, wait another week as others say.

Bust_A_Move

What would you suggest instead? Skipping the GPU entirely for the 12 months, and changing the PSU to Xilence Power 700 Watt? Does anyone have any reccomendations as to the PSU I need? Is 700W too much?

ED E

Video editing....man, you really want multiple hard drives. Fast ones if you can. Typically you want your main OS drive, two scratch disks(small) and a big storage drive or drives, backed up or in RAID. Having source material and output on two different drives helps too where you arent strictly limited by the CPU(which with that one you wont be).

What suite do you use, some can lean towards certain hardware or have problems with some, so look into that.

Monotype

Don't buy that PSU. Quality is more important than power rating. Choose the PSU when you have the rest of your system picked. Trinity is released tomorrow, I think.

Bust_A_Move

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the advice. As to the Drives, I'm aware that my ideal situation would be multiple drives, and I'm hoping that in the future I'll be able to extend to that, but I'm hoping to keep costs low short term, and expand to several drives in the future.

At the moment, I'm going to follow your advise, and wait for Trinity to drop (Tomorrow Hopefully) and come up with a new build in a week, depending on how much Trinity is going to cost me.

Still a little unclear on what PSU to go for, but I'll address that in the new build.

Thanks guys!

Amirani

I'd be inclined not to go APU. I'd wait a couple of months on integrated graphics on a good CPU, then when you have enough money just pick up a 7870 or something. Trinity will certainly be the cheaper, though inferior combo.

Monotype

It kind of depends on your needs in short and long term. In the medium term, yes, you'd have a better system with Intel.

Intel would be great if you wanted a lot of encoding and very light gaming in the present. Things like the source engine or older games would easily be handled at 720p.

AMD is a good choice if you think that you'll be without graphics for a good period - say approaching a year. As opposed to a tiny bit of gaming on the side, a Trinity system would be capable of running any title really, although you'd need to scale back resolution in a few of them, if you want a fluid game.

As for very long term and thinking about the life expectancy of the system, a 3570K would last a very long time. It's likely though that we won't see anything much better again on that socket. FM2 from AMD is brand new and in two generations, AMD could well match up with the current Intels in CPU power.