Picking and Building my First System

[Panzer91]

Hi,

I'm looking to build a new system up for using engineering software and a little bit of gaming and I'd like for it to last me a few years until I graduate and have more money to spend. I'm currently on a Dell which I'll be selling, but basically I wanted to upgrade the graphics card on it- bought a GTX 560 ti, and an XFX Pro 650W PSU, and the motherboard kind of rejected it (The CPU fan speed stopped adjusting automatically, and just went on full power : / ).

So since I bought these items off the internet and there's a no returns policy on opened goods I thought I might as well sell my current OEM system and build a custom rig. So here's what I'm planning and would like to hear the opinion of people with more experience than me.

PSU: XFX Pro 650W
Video Card: Asus GTX 560 ti
CPU: Intel i5 2500k Sandybridge 1155 Socket (Want to overclock to 4-4.5GHz)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3P Intel Z68
Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO
Case: NZXT Phantom Full Tower
HDD: ? I have an external one, but with the prices they're going at right now I really don't want to spend too much for one.
Drive: DVD-RW Drive, Not fussed

I can get the CPU, Mobo and Cooler for £279 inc. VAT as a parts bundle which is cheaper than buying them separately, and with OC'ing capabilities, it looks pretty nice. What do you think?

Cheers

 

[brandonwh64]

I see no ram on there, You would benefit from 2x4gb DDR3 1600 Gskills. As for a hard drive, I would find a 250-500GB and use your external for storage.

The combo you have picked out looks very good!

 

[JrRacinFan]

Regarding hard drives; if you got the budget get a 120gb ssd.

 

[Panzer91]

I knew I missed something, meant to add 2x4GB DDR3, those Gskills ones sound decent and the price is quite nice too. 250-500 would do the job, atleast for now until the prices drop again.

I've been looking at SSD's and they look like they work amazingly for boot up and application launching. However this system currently rests on me selling what I have at the moment , I'll be looking into an SSD, but not just yet.

 

[brandonwh64]

I love my Gskills! Sandy Bridge has a great IMC and OCs well up to around 2000mhz but after that it gets bumpy. 1600Mhz is plenty for most tasks.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Ok cool next best thing could get a Seagate Momentus XT. Pretty fast and decent size.

 

[boomstik360]

Yeah hard drive prices are ridiculous! Last year when I bought a WD 640GB Black Sata III it was $59 with a promo code! 1TB Blacks were $80-90 on sales at newegg! SHeesh

 

[Panzer91]

I love my Gskills! Sandy Bridge has a great IMC and OCs well up to around 2000mhz but after that it gets bumpy. 1600Mhz is plenty for most tasks.

2000MHz is plenty for me, I was just going to go to 1800 - I'll be sticking those sticks on the shopping list now.

Ok cool next best thing could get a Seagate Momentus XT. Pretty fast and decent size.

I was looking at this,

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...rnal+Hard+Drive+[ST500DM002]+?productId=46054

Those momentus ones are pricey - just realised they're ssd/hdd hybrids and I can get this one for about £10 more, I'm more inclined to get this one, I'll just cut back a bit on the crap I eat at uni

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B002JIMYIC/?tag=tec053-21

Yeah hard drive prices are ridiculous! Last year when I bought a WD 640GB Black Sata III it was $59 with a promo code! 1TB Blacks were $80-90 on sales at newegg! SHeesh

Yeah they're ridiculous, I would of thought they'd have factories in mainland China or in another place, just in case something does happen to factories in Thailand - and for some reason (cheap running costs?) most companies have set their parts/hdd's to be made there. Can't do much about it now though, and with prices looking to sit high for pretty much the rest of the year, I'll bite the bullet.

 

[JrRacinFan]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...rpm+16MB+Cache+-+RECERTIFIED+?productId=47708

Don't let the word recertified scare you, it comes with a 1year warranty. Most drives if they are bound to fail, would be within first 3 months.

 

[Panzer91]

Wow that's a nice price, and with 1 year warranty. That'll work nicely in my budget

 

[Panzer91]

Well I couldn't shift my PC for what I wanted, so I'm going to have to buy a few parts a month, rather than buying them all in one go - I managed to find the mobo for £30 less, but everything else is pretty much the same price everywhere. So, do you think that when the ivybridge cpu's drop (April?) the sandybridge ones will see a decrease in retail price?

 

[Yo_Wattup]

4 sho'

 

[JrRacinFan]

I don't see them dropping in price, if they do won't be much.

 

[Yo_Wattup]

I don't see them dropping in price, if they do won't be much.

Why wouldn't they?

 

[white phantom]

can officially say the asus 560ti is a beast of a card i just built my system over crimbo n got the 560ti TOP card yesterday runs everything great and is very very quiet max temp in a phantom case was 46 degrees! average 28..

 

[JrRacinFan]

Why wouldn't they?

Because Intel is a money hoarder. Why should they drop prices to compete with themselves?

 

[Athlon2K15]

Dont bottleneck your system with anything less than a Sata6 SSD or hard drive,all of the time an effort your putting into this will go to waste with anything inferior

 

[Yo_Wattup]

Because Intel is a money hoarder. Why should they drop prices to compete with themselves?

Well that's exactly what they have been doing. Why is the i3 2100 cheaper than the A8 3850?Why is the 2500k less $ than bulldozer? They could've set the 2500k and 2600k up $100 each but they didn't. Money hoarder my ass...

 

[Panzer91]

I see, well I'll leave the CPU as the last component to purchase and see what happens. Cheers Guys

 

[Yo_Wattup]

Dont bottleneck your system with anything less than a Sata6 SSD or hard drive,all of the time an effort your putting into this will go to waste with anything inferior

Hey athlon since when were you a mod?

 

[Athlon2K15]

since inception

 

[Panzer91]

Finally got all the parts and built it. Used my old HDD since I was running out of disposable cash and I'm not sure if it's SATA 6, but it's doing the job fairly quickly and I'll buy an SSD in the future I guess.

So a strange thing happened, and it worked first time without having to reinstall windows. Before moving onto the serious business of OC'ing, is there anyway to determine my system is running fine? According to HWmonitor, my CPU temp is 40C whilst typing on this page (only thing I have open).

 

[Athlon2K15]

40c is fine and sorta normal. you could run 10 passes of IBT to confirm

 

[Panzer91]

Ibt?

 

[theeldest]

Intel Burn Test

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4965-intelburntest.html

It's a good stress testing / benchmark program. Similar in scope to Prime95 but gives performance data too.


Also,
Update your system specs!

Go to User CP on the top and the first or second link on the left is System Details (IIRC). Fill it out so everyone will see what you have under the hood.