Computer Parts - Advice needed

[Insanemuch]

Okay, so some of you may have seen my previous forum thread about a previous build, which got some people saying that it just wouldn't work. The advice that I took from that was spend more moneys, and switch to an Intel and NVidia system rather than AMD. So I managed to do some bargaining with Santa Claws, and here's my updated rig:

  Processor: Intel Core I5-3470 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-I5-3470-Processor-3-20GHZ-Socket/dp/B0083U94CO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382203469&sr=8-1&keywords=intel+i5+3470 £145

Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Zotac 2gb edition http://www.kikatek.com/P280951/ZT-61102-10M-ZOTAC-GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-2GB-Graphic?source=froogle&gclid=CI_mrcW7o7oCFSLHtAodaR0AHw £114.74

Ram: Corsair Vengeance 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 http://www.extak.com/catalog/24142/Corsair-Vengeance-4GB-Memory-Module-PC3-#rgWIk8a7BQblJFpU.99 £35.79

Case: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aerocool-VS-3-Screwless-Gaming-Tower/dp/B00606NBJ0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_5 £31.97

Motherboard: Asus P8H61-MX http://www.ebuyer.com/393399-asus-p8h61-mx-r2-0-intel-lga1155-h61-b3-90-mibjg0-g0eay0dz-p8h61-mx-r2-0?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=CPz0-qW1o7oCFVHMtAodLhUA7Q £34.98

Hard drive: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 6GB/s 64mb 7200RPM http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-1tb-barracuda-sata-6gb-s-64mb-7200rpm-hard-drive-7XD5.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc%20product%20search&utm_content=Q200&utm_campaign=Components%20and%20Storage%20-%20Hard%20Drives%20-%20Internal%20Hard%20Drives&origin=pla 46.99

PSU: G7 680W ATX http://www.maplin.co.uk/g7-680w-atx-pc-power-supply-345571 £39.99

OS: Windows 8 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-Pro-Upgrade-Edition-Vista/dp/B008GRKGXK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382206282&sr=8-1&keywords=windows8 £56.79

Optical drive: http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-GH24NS95-AUAA-SuperMulti-Internal-DVDRW/dp/B00A3SGB2K/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1378836812&sr=1-1 17.35

£523.60

Here is what I want from it:
Mainly: To be able to record minecraft, maxed graphics, while being in a skype call with one or two people, at deacent FPS
Hopefully: Run some high end games, purely for my entertainment, without recording
Possibly: Record some high end games. I realize that asking for this when only spending 500 pound is kinda naive, and most likely won't happen.

I also understood, that I would need to upgrade the previous PC within two years. I would be willing to add another RAM stick (the same one as listed above) within two months, (once I'd saved up enough) and next Christmas, upgrade some bits and bobs of it.

So thanks for reading my thread, if you have any advice, please contribute.

Thanks - Jake.

[Geek-9pm]

I realize that asking for this when only spending 500..

I would agree with that.

[DaveLembke]

If you find someone selling a used system with hardware of similar spec you might be able to fit it within the 500 pound budget you have. A friend got a great deal on a Core i7 gaming rig on ebay at 60% of the price new, and the seller had over 5000 positive feedback and looked to be a pawn shop that sold items on ebay, so someone hard up for cash pawned it off and hopefully it wasnt of stolen origin. But the system ran flawless although he had to delete the prior persons data on the Windows 7 64 bit install. Shipping was pricey though at $75 american, but still he got the system at 60% of the cost if buying new and the seller guaranteed it to have no problems as it was tested thoroughly before selling it.

If attemtping to buy all the guts brand new and not second hand you will likely need to expand the budget some.

As far as recording gameplay on the fly, I use FRAPS which I purchased a licensed copy of and use Virtual Dub to compress the raw digital recording. I would suggest 2 hard drives when gaming and doing other stuff plus recording the gameplay with fraps as for the hard drive that fraps is writing to is going to be flooded with writing of data, so in my situation I have my games on my SSD and have fraps writing to my 500GB SATA HDD, games that require reading/writing to the hard drive have quick direct access to the data without having to compete with the large amount of write traffic that fraps will create. When done with the recording I use virtual dub to make a 20GB recording sized down to around 700MB AVI.

[Insanemuch]

If you find someone selling a used system with hardware of similar spec you might be able to fit it within the 500 pound budget you have. A friend got a great deal on a Core i7 gaming rig on ebay at 60% of the price new, and the seller had over 5000 positive feedback and looked to be a pawn shop that sold items on ebay, so someone hard up for cash pawned it off and hopefully it wasnt of stolen origin. But the system ran flawless although he had to delete the prior persons data on the Windows 7 64 bit install. Shipping was pricey though at $75 american, but still he got the system at 60% of the cost if buying new and the seller guaranteed it to have no problems as it was tested thoroughly before selling it.

If attemtping to buy all the guts brand new and not second hand you will likely need to expand the budget some.

As far as recording gameplay on the fly, I use FRAPS which I purchased a licensed copy of and use Virtual Dub to compress the raw digital recording. I would suggest 2 hard drives when gaming and doing other stuff plus recording the gameplay with fraps as for the hard drive that fraps is writing to is going to be flooded with writing of data, so in my situation I have my games on my SSD and have fraps writing to my 500GB SATA HDD, games that require reading/writing to the hard drive have quick direct access to the data without having to compete with the large amount of write traffic that fraps will create. When done with the recording I use virtual dub to make a 20GB recording sized down to around 700MB AVI.

Hey Dave! Long time no see, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm that dude that was trying to upgrade his PC ages ago.

So as far as this PC goes, how good do you think it is?

Also, what would you recommend changing?

Don't forget that I would be willing to upgrade within a year, to maybe a 200 pound processor or graphics card

[Calum]

First off, do NOT buy that power supply, it's not a good unit and is not a good idea at any price.
I'm really struggling to put together even a basic gaming build for £500, especially one with any degree of expandability for a graphics card upgrade later on to make it more capable.  You'll need a case with decent airflow, a PSU that can handle it, and a decent board for starters, and that already blows a good chunk of your budget.  Particularly, IMO, it's pointless buying a system these days without an SSD, because it just won't feel quick day-to-day even if it does perform well in games.  A budget of £600 starts to put you into the realms of possibility.
I would agree that perhaps going used is the way to go, because for example it's possible to pick up a bundle of CPU (roughly on par with the CPU you have in your list), RAM & motherboard for £130 with ease.  I'm somewhat skewed as I tend to buy very few components brand new due to the good deals possible when going for used parts, but equally I understand it's not a route everyone wants to go down.

[Insanemuch]

First off, do NOT buy that power supply, it's not a good unit and is not a good idea at any price.
I'm really struggling to put together even a basic gaming build for £500, especially one with any degree of expandability for a graphics card upgrade later on to make it more capable.  You'll need a case with decent airflow, a PSU that can handle it, and a decent board for starters, and that already blows a good chunk of your budget.  Particularly, IMO, it's pointless buying a system these days without an SSD, because it just won't feel quick day-to-day even if it does perform well in games.  A budget of £600 starts to put you into the realms of possibility.
I would agree that perhaps going used is the way to go, because for example it's possible to pick up a bundle of CPU (roughly on par with the CPU you have in your list), RAM & motherboard for £130 with ease.  I'm somewhat skewed as I tend to buy very few components brand new due to the good deals possible when going for used parts, but equally I understand it's not a route everyone wants to go down.

Could you make me a rig with a £600 budget then please? And I've been told about SSDs, and to be honest I'm not to bothered about how fast it runs, just as long as is performs well with games. I can easily upgrade to an SSD and HDD hybrid type thing later.

[Calum]

Could you make me a rig with a £600 budget then please?

I shall do my best, bear with me.

And I've been told about SSDs, and to be honest I'm not to bothered about how fast it runs, just as long as is performs well with games. I can easily upgrade to an SSD and HDD hybrid type thing later.

Fair enough, your choice.  Don't go for a hybrid drive, they really don't give you the benefits of an SSD.  I would however imagine an SSD or at least another drive would help massively with recording games whilst also using your machine for other things.

Here goes, slightly over budget but you have a faster, newer generation CPU, 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB, a PSU that won't kill your system and leaves room for upgrades, a better quality case, a motherboard which has room for upgrades, and a full copy of Windows 8 rather than an upgrade.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail  £139.99
1 x VTX3D HD 7850 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card  £119.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614)  £71.99
1 x Asus B85-PLUS Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard  £71.99
1 x Antec Neo Eco C 520w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply  £61.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX)  £56.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD  £39.95
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black  £32.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM  £13.99
Total : £623.96 (includes shipping : £11.75).

[Insanemuch]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail  £139.99
1 x VTX3D HD 7850 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card  £119.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614)  £71.99
1 x Asus B85-PLUS Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard  £71.99
1 x Antec Neo Eco C 520w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply  £61.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX)  £56.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD  £39.95
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black  £32.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM  £13.99
Total : £623.96 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Dude thanks so much! That's awesome! But just incase I wasn't allowed that, as it would cost to much, what would you choose to downgrade first?

Also, those links don't work

[Calum]

Apologies for the broken links, that's what happens when I try and save time by using someone else's script heh.  Fixed.
It's pretty difficult to drop any lower than that without making severe compromises, as it stands it's a good base for a system and leaves you room for expansion.  If you absolutely had to drop some components down a level, bearing in mind that it will mostly mean you'll have to spend more later should you want to upgrade, you could:

• change out the board to this to save £27 or this to save £12 - the latter would be better.
• downgrade your graphics card to this to save £20, although the extra £20 gives you a much better bang for buck card so I really wouldn't recommend it.
  you could consider downgrading your CPU to a dual core for now with the idea being to upgrade to a quad core later, this can save you up to £90 or so but it'll be quite a difference.
• consider dropping your PSU down to this - OcUK don't seem to carry the XFX 450 and 550 and have shrunk their XFX range massively in fact, this is a better value unit than the Antec I linked above and will save you just over £25 so I would recommend doing this regardless as your budget doesn't really allow a PSU with room for upgrades so you'll likely need to change this if you go for a power hungry graphics card or Crossfire/SLI later on.

Also, consider shopping around and see if some things are cheaper elsewhere, the above was to give you an idea of a good build from an etailer I trust and one whose website I find easy to use.

[Insanemuch]

First of all, I just want to thank you for fixing those links, that's super helpful and great to know a trusted good computer website.

Second of all, I just want to ask that you are sure that that system will run with a 450w? Cause if you're from the UK, you've probably heard of Maplin, and when I was in there talking to them about one of there motherboard, ram and CPU packages, they recommended this 680w, and even with that it would struggle to run. The motherboard and processor was the one of my other thread, and the ram I chose to upgrade a bit. Now I'm not sure if this is just him trying to sell me stuff, or if it was just that that was a bad PSU, and it was sort of like those 4gb graphics cards that you see, but they're actually not that good, just got a lot of RAM.

• consider dropping your PSU down to this - OcUK don't seem to carry the XFX 450 and 550 and have shrunk their XFX range massively in fact, this is a better value unit than the Antec I linked above and will save you just over £25

And lastly, are you then recommending that I replace this power supply: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-206-AN
With this one?: http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-450w-proseries--80plus-bronze-core-edition-full-wired-psu-8DK2.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc%20product%20search&utm_content=Q200&utm_campaign=Components%20and%20Storage%20-%20Cases,%20Cooling%20and%20Power%20-%20Power%20Supply%20Units&origin=pla

Thanks again for all of you're help by the way, I really appreciate every word you write, and it really helps .

[Calum]

First of all, I just want to thank you for fixing those links, that's super helpful and great to know a trusted good computer website.

No problem at all, sorry they were messed up originally.  I'll note not to use the script I tried again, I was just trying to save some time copy and pasting heh.  I used to work for OcUK (the place I linked to) - I don't recommend them because of that, I recommend them because I've always had good service from them even before I worked there, and their prices are usually at least competitive even if they're not always the cheapest (although they often are, or as near as makes no difference).

Second of all, I just want to ask that you are sure that that system will run with a 450w? Cause if you're from the UK, you've probably heard of Maplin, and when I was in there talking to them about one of there motherboard, ram and CPU packages, they recommended this 680w, and even with that it would struggle to run. The motherboard and processor was the one of my other thread, and the ram I chose to upgrade a bit. Now I'm not sure if this is just him trying to sell me stuff, or if it was just that that was a bad PSU, and it was sort of like those 4gb graphics cards that you see, but they're actually not that good, just got a lot of RAM.

I am from the UK, yes.  I'm absolutely positive it will run with a 450W, but feel free to grab the 550W version of the XFX unit I linked if you feel more comfortable as the price difference is usually negligible - although, it won't really make any difference to future upgrades and it's not necessary as 450W is definitely enough.  The XFX is a good quality unit.
Maplin are, to put it politely, full of "something" as usual.  The 680W unit you linked from them is almost certainly not in fact a 680W PSU, it's labelled way above what it can actually reliably provide.  I can't even find the manufacturer's specifications, that's how bad it is.  Don't get me wrong, some (very little) of the stuff Maplin sells is OK or even good, and some of their staff know what they're talking about, but the vast majority haven't got a clue.

And lastly, are you then recommending that I replace this power supply: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-206-AN
With this one?: http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-450w-proseries--80plus-bronze-core-edition-full-wired-psu-8DK2.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc%20product%20search&utm_content=Q200&utm_campaign=Components%20and%20Storage%20-%20Cases,%20Cooling%20and%20Power%20-%20Power%20Supply%20Units&origin=pla

Correct

[Insanemuch]

Again thanks for the advice so far. We're nearly done, I just want to ask a few more questions.

One of those is that I don't really fancy risking putting the hardware together, you know cause I could easily screw it all up and that isn't good in anyone's books. So I left OCUK a webnote, asking them if they have some sort of service where they will put it together for me. They wrote back and said yes, but only so long as I get all of my hardware from their store.

So could you possibly find me a pretty good power supply from OCUK please? Here are some that I found that I am wondering whether they are good:

- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-036-AE&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463
- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-065-AE&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463
- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-147-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463

Thanks, Jake.

[Calum]

The Antec is what I would go for, avoid the other two.
OcUK do do an assembly service, yes, and you'll then have the benefit of having the warranty all in one place.
Hopefully they won't charge you too much for the service

[Insanemuch]

Okay, thanks for all the help . See you in the future some time.

Thanks, Jake.

[Calum]

No problem, enjoy your new build!  Any issues or queries, you know where we are