Need a new rig ASAP

[Rick Sanchez]

Hi guys,

I am looking to rebuild my main computer before the end of January. I have had endless issues with this setup that I currently have and I can't afford to mess around with it anymore due to big university projects rolling in and a lot of extra business coming my way.

My current system; parts that I'm keeping:

Dual screen monitors: 2x 23" LG IPS231P-BN
My case: Fractal Design R3
My PSU: 750W SilverStone SST-ST75ZF Black S

My other system parts:
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
4GB (2x2Gb) Corsair Dominator DDR2 (8Gb total)
2x 60gb vertex 2E
LG GGW-H20L + LG Blue Ray & HD DVD Reader x16


All of my 'other system parts' I am going to sell so I can offset some of the cost for my new system. I have to have a decent graphics card to compliment my two IPS monitors (dual screen) for the work I do (university & business).

I'm looking for:

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
1x SSD drive (120Gb min)

What water cooling kit would you advise for the new system? The computer will use the full range of software in Adobe Master Suite CS5.5 and the odd game (C&C).

I am not fused about makes, I currently use AMD&Intel but have read a lot of mixed reviews about BullDozer. I am happy to consider either brand but I want the most I can get for my money considering the use.

Budget £800 + What ever I can achieve for the parts sold

Kind Regards,
Jon

[evilsatan]

Not my area of expertise (overclocking, watercooling etc.) as I build home and office PCs but the i7 k series should give you the CPU power you are looking for and is heavily overclockable from what I have read as the cores are unlocked. Match that with a decent mobo with triple channel memory DIMMS (I like Gigabyte as they offer great value for money and have never had a problem with them), Corsair Vengence/G.Skill DDR3 triple channel 1800mhz RAM and an Intel/Crucial SSD.

If you really want speed then look at the PCI OCZ RevoDrives for an incredibly fast SSD, cheapest 120GB will set you back around £300 though...

Keep an eye on the Scan 'Today Only' page. It changes each day but you can often save money on there, they have i7 bundles most days and RAM on there most weeks. Recently the RevoDrives have been on there regularly too.

[Brydo666]

I've no experience of overclocking or SSD's ... but for that budget you'll get a high-end i7 setup going no problem.

Second the comment on the Scan deals... I got most of my current rig on there ... individual parts came to about £750 and I paid £550 and only then had to fund my video card and optical drive. (Could have got by without the later!)

[lou3b]

I would highly recommend scan to I got all my current PC bit from there. I have a i7 2600k OC'd at 4.8ghz with a corsair h80 water cooler and its crazy fast coupled with my p8p67 mobo, corsair dominator ram and gtx580 its a beast of a computer.
As for ssd I haven't delved into that area yet due to the prices of them still. So picked my self up a 1tb western digital sata 3 hdd and it does the job fine for me i use adobe for uni at the moment im doing multimedia and its plenty fadt enough for it.

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[Rick Sanchez]

What motherboards your i7?

[Sanj[UK]]

You can Overclock an i5 to 4.5ghz quite safely.

[Mickey]

Check out my sig

I can rec any of the new I7 boards from ASUS. my rig i built nearly 2 years ago still pi$$es over farcry on full eye candy. You really wont need to OC to water unless you really want the extreme. No point really as the I7s OC easily on stock cooling, as again check by clicking on my stats in CPU-Z.

[lou3b]

For overclocking go for ASUS and mobo's in general never had 1 problem with them and been like a rock when overclocking. Yea overclocking to what I have mine at will require a very good air or water cooler.

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[Rick Sanchez]

Cheers, any other input

[sgtbarton]

I5 2500k will over clock easily and keep up with i7 not over locked . If ya don't wanna do over clock ya self get the Msi board as they have the over clock genie ( button on motherboard) . For reliability I would go for the m4 128gb ssd and nvidia high end gfx card as ati can be a bit fussy . Decent brand ddr3

[sgtbarton]

From Looking at a lot of these posts it would seem you guys are holding off SSD'S !!!! and without doubt its prob due to the price.
Well I did take the plunge with the Crucial M4 and OMG, stop wasting ya time with overclocking honestly. ya nearly always bottle necked by the moving HDD you have.

It may be expensive but forget about it for its size (128gb or whatever) and realise its for performance, which really will out weigh and no doubt be cheaper than a lot of other upgrades / overlocking / water cooling. - . I could not own a pc without one anymore. just make sure ya m/b has sata3/6gb

[Rick Sanchez]

When I upgrade mine I'll be selling both my 60gbs

[Over Carl]

From Looking at a lot of these posts it would seem you guys are holding off SSD'S !!!! and without doubt its prob due to the price.
Well I did take the plunge with the Crucial M4 and OMG, stop wasting ya time with overclocking honestly. ya nearly always bottle necked by the moving HDD you have.

I tried out a tiny SSD for a while and didn't notice much difference, although it could be because I'm using a bunch of 15k sas server drives in raid 5 with a proper server raid controller. If you can get bargains on 2nd hand kit it suddenly becomes quite cheap, even compared to 2nd hand ssds although major drawbacks are waiting an extra 15 or so secs for the raid controller bios, and they are noisy and hot.

Have to say at my old work though, when I upgraded a few people to ssd's, they were amazed, and it really helped on my old work desktop that would often be doing a million things at the same time.

[mysterym]

i've got a ocz vertex 3 in mine as a boot up drive, and 2x2TB raid 0 as my second drive, and the difference is fantastic, ms word boots up in about 2 seconds, visual studio in about 3-4 seconds, the same with sql server. Makes my work pc seem tame. Don't think i'd ever build another pc without an ssd now.

[Rick Sanchez]

Been specced up this by Aria:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 Intel Z68 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard
16GB Corsair Vengeance Blue (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B
Crucial m4 128GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive
Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti DCII/2DI/1GD5 DirectCU II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

£713.66

What you think? I don't want to upgrade for another 2-3 years at least.

[evilsatan]

From experience aria have terrible customer service. Returned faulty ram about 2 months ago, I only get updates when I chase them and they just say it is with the manufacturer. Few weeks ago they offered replacement ram which I accepted and no sign of that. Now ignoring my emails.

The spec should do the job if you don't need an i7. Just get it from scan or ebuyer.

[lou3b]

looking good that mate. Just a quick thing if you using Adobe a lot then the i7 2600k will be faster due to it having hyper threading built in and the i5 2500k doesn't so won't be as fast converting files, these applications tend to be like video editing, video encoding, photo editing, compression software.



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[lou3b]

looking good that mate. Just a quick thing if you using Adobe a lot then the i7 2600k will be faster due to it having hyper thresding built in and the i5 2500k doesn't so won't be as fast converting files, these applications tend to be like video editing, video encoding, photo editing, compression software.



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[Rick Sanchez]

Can you guys help me spec up an i7 then please

[evilsatan]

This is on Scan Todays deals, not sure how much use a 20GB SSD would be though:

Intel Core i7 2700K, S 1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad Core 3.5GHz, 8MB Cache, HD 3000 IGP 850MHz, 95W, OEM + Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD inc 20Gb SSD Drive Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), ATX

£339.99

£407.99

Or just CPU on offer:

Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.4GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 8MB Cache 95W Retail

£204.99

£245.99

Choosing a mobo is always the hardest bit, too many to choose from. I usually decide on a manufacturer (usually Gigabyte) then go to their website and compare a few using the compare tool.