My first build, but I'm pretty sure I have all of the terminology and general knowledge about building down pat. :3

That said, I'd really appreciate a check over and some reccommendations from you guys. I had a look at other people's build threads before I threw this thread up and I know there's a proper forum (hardforum) for all of this stuff, but having the opinions of random strangers just isn't the same as getting the opinions of all you people I know and actually like.

My look at other threads has also thrown up a lot of similarities between what I've picked out and what other people have picked out, which is cool for some things but kinda embarassing for the kinda expensive case I'm fond of that some other guy with awful awful initial tastes in case apparently ended up getting. My god that was the ugliest case I've ever seen in my life.


There are some components I'm pretty happy with and some I'm not so sure about. I started trying to fit a budget and eventually kinda gave up on trying too hard with that. To that end I'm pretty sure most nearly everything I've picked out is quality, but I'm open to looking for cheaper things if they don't skimp out too much on quality.

I'm building this for multipurpose reasons, though nothing so strenuous as video editing/CAD software. I'm looking to be able to run most modern games that I fancy on at least medium if I can help it, to be able to keep up with new games, as well as excellent multi-tasking abilities for things like my extremely old and extremely resource-intensive photoshop that I use pretty much daily (ten years old and still better than a lot of newer ones D: ), my inability to close tabs on my browsers, better compilation times... that sorta thing. Usually all at the same time. I'm an awful person. You get the jist.

Heheh, it's been fun as hell so far to learn about all this stuff, and I can't wait to put it together. Sorry, I'll cease my ranting now. Not planning to OC anything, by the way, and I'm hoping my build will last me a while to come.

Parts I'm Pretty Sure About

CPU - i5-3570k - £162 - $261
Seems like an excellent processor, nothing much to say about this. Everyone and their mother has one. I'm ordering most of my parts from Amazon because it's not much cheaper anywhere else and a lot of other sites I've seen are a little suspect, especially with packaging.

I'll be converting prices from pounds to dollars for people to compare easily, but so far it's been looking like some things are more expensive in the UK. Bleh.
[LINK]

RAM - G. Skill Ripjaws 2x4GB - £33 - $52
Sure, this isn't the cheapest RAM out there, but it's all cheap as hell anyway. Shouldn't need more than this, but if I do then it's no issue to get any more.
[LINK]

OPTICAL DRIVE - Sony AD-7280S-0B - £14 - $22
Some people say you don't need optical drives. Blasphemy. I love CDs. Anyway, this drive seems decent enough. I don't hate the look of it too, which is plus. The drive comes OEM - I don't think that'll be an issue at all, will it?
[LINK]

SSD - Sandisk 128GB SSD - £53 - $85
2.5" SATA III, 480MB/S R 380MB/S W, 3yr Warranty
I haven't been able to find any cheaper SSDs but I'm happy with the look of this one. Reviews on it look good, seems to be reliable, and the warranty is good. Apparently I'm going to buy this from a site called "ebuyer", which I'd never heard of before I started trying to find parts. Seller ratings look decent on them, but I'd like a second opinion if any of you guys have experience with them?
[LINK]

HDD - Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - £75 - $120
64MB Cache, SATA 6Gb/s, 126MB/s <4.2ms, 7200rpm, OEM, 5yr Warranty
Any other 1TB HDDs that are any cheaper that I can find don't seem worth it that I've seen so far, being only a couple pounds cheaper and with shorter warranties and not supporting SATA III. I'm not sure SATA III compatibility is too important, but it's nice to have. Once again this is OEM, but it has a good warranty despite that.
[LINK]

Parts I'm Less Sure About

MOTHERBOARD - ASRock Z77 Extreme4 - £110 - $177
32GB DDR3, ATX, 2xSATA3, Nvidia support, AMD crossfire support, 3xUSB2, 2xUSB3, 6 Channel Audio
I like this motherboard a lot from the video reviews I've seen, and I've already gone through making sure everything else is compatible with it down to getting a case with USB3.0 ports on the front. My brother, however, mentioned that I could get a cheaper one, and this is true. I was trying to get one to last me a long time when I was looking for one.
[LINK]

GRAPHICS - Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB - £175 - $282
2yr Warranty
Oh god I just realised it's five in the morning here. Anyway, this card seems good, maybe a little skimpy on the warranty. I feel like I could stand to cut back how much I spend on my graphics card since I'm not a huge gamer, but like I've said I want to keep up with newer games and run everything on medium at least. If I could run things on high I'd be thrilled - never had a computer that could do that before, heh. Not overclocking, just a reminder.
[LINK]

CASE - Inwin Dragon Rider Full Tower Mesh - £97 - $156
I've looked at a lot of cases across the price ranges and this is the one I'm fondest of so far. I like the design on the front, and, dammit, I like the goddamn LED fans because I'm a girl like that okay don't judge me. It's spacious and has good cable management options (can route them behind the motherboard), all holes have dust filters, a rubber stand for the PSU, legs for the case itself, comes with several fans, 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 USB 2.0 on the front, nice slotty things for HDDs, SSDs and optical drives, sound dampening material on the sides. I'm buying a case to last me as long as I can make it last, so I'm comfortable with this choice. But yes, I could have gone for something cheaper. I'm open for recommendations, though I do like this case a lot. The bad thing about the case is that the ports are on the top of the case, I guess.
[LINK]

MONITOR - AOC E2243FW 16:9 LED - £85 - $137
21.5", 1920x1080p
The £80 price for this is for a Used - Very Good condition monitor, which apparently still has protective plastic applied. The base price for the monitor is £115 - £30 more expensive. I'll be honest, I didn't put too much thought into which monitor to get. This one seemed to have a good price for a high resolution and decent reviews. If this is too expensive then I'd love any links. The used monitor price seems good, though.
[LINK]

MOUSE - Gigabyte GM-M6800 - £9 - $14
I've never had any swanky mice before so I plumped for this kinda creepy looking shaped mouse. Are they any good? I do get handache occasionally with regular mice - not to mention my old was was pretty much broken and couldn't click and drag for shit. P.S. Looks like another thing to buy from ebuyer?
[LINK]

PSU - ??? - £? - $?
Biggest thing I wanted to ask you guys about was the PSU. I shouldn't need more than 500w for my system as it stands (graphics card needs 500w), but I was going to go for a modular 650w. I'd like to know if getting the better certified PSUs are worth it, for one. I was also considering a 750w PSU that looks to be about £20 more expensive than the £650 for the same efficiency rating - not because my system needs it, but in case in the future I'd need more power to future builds. Do PSUs last long enough for that to be worth it and if so is it likely that I'd ever actually need that much?

KEYBOARD - Hurr durr a Dell one I've had for years - £0
This section is pointless, just thought you guys could laugh at me for using the same keyboard for ten years.

I've not really looked into newfangled keyboards. You can get icky flat ones and I'm not even sure what mechanical keyboards are. You youngsters can run around with your hi-tech keyboard thingymahdoodads with your fancy schmancy illuminations and your gaming setups! I'll be sat here with good ol' trusty Dell The Keyboard.

But seriously, thanks for having a look at my party part thingies guys. I look forward to hearing your firey rage at my choices and probable lack of fiscal sense.

 

If you're not planning to overclock, why the 3570K?

If you can stretch the budget, I'd go for a 2x8GB kit.

I can't seem to find a single review for this SSD that I'd trust. That said, it seems to be good, especially for that price.

SATA III support on a hard drive isn't important, at all. If you're willing to pay the extra for warranty, that's up to you, but any saving is a saving.

If you're not overclocking, check for H77 or even B75 chipset boards. They'll do the same job and will probably last as long given that you're not overclocking them.

It'll do medium 1920x1080 no problem, high settings will be hit and miss depending on the game. Also, you're paying too much. StaticIce UK lists a range of prices from £128-£222 though the cheaper ones are for the 1GB VRAM variant. At the resolution and quality you intend to play at, this is not an issue.

This uses pass-through instead of motherboard header for its USB3.0. That may impact your choice of motherboard and/or case. Another case you may want to consider due to lighting is maybe the Bitfenix Colossus.

In total, you're never going to be using more than about 350W in any case, so there's no point getting a 650W, let alone a 750W unless you're seriously intending to upgrade by doing something like adding in another graphics card. Instead of buying bigger, spend the extra money on quality and/or efficiency. That said though, buying a 750W PSU can allow you to re-use it later down the line (though it may not be capable of pulling its full specification due to capacitor aging).

Recommendations: Anything by Antec, Corsair or Seasonic are pretty much guaranteed to be good. If you're not sure a PSU is any good, check the reviews at http://www.jonnyguru.com.

 

I've just been through the same thing - my parents' old PC (like 6-8 years old) needed to be replaced.

Most of the stuff you've chosen is ok, still here's some food for thought:

RAM - If you intend to use this build for video editing/CAD software and games start from 2x8GB to be on the safe side. (Suggested motherboard with 4 RAM slots for possible expansion)

OPTICAL DRIVE - When I was looking for one, I was offered some LG with their newest M-DISC capability - it's a new kind of memory storing disc that, according to the producer, boasts lifelong warranty, as compared to a few years of DVD. You might want to look into it. It's 6£ more and while the discs themselves are expensive right now, it most likely will change.

HDD - I suggest starting with 2TB. Besides remember that HDDs weren't using SATA II transfer capabilities @100% - SATA III was designed with SSD in mind.

PSU - what kaleironfist said - unless you intend to have more graphics 550W is more than enough.

 

The non-unlocked version doesn't cost any less. It doesn't operate any differently as far as I'm aware, and the K version is more readily available.

Ah, I meant I'm not using it for video editing and CAD software, sorry for the confusion. But I am for all that other crap. My old computer had two gigs so it's pretty tempting to splurge and buy as much as I can and never be out of RAM ever, but I really don't think it'll end up being necessary. If I go for a motherboard with 4 RAM slots - the current one I have selected does - then if I find myself having problems I can just throw in two more sticks there.

Are there any RAM compatibility issues I should be aware of, like 2x8gig not working with 2x4gig or different brands/makes not working together?

What price range is reasonable?

Can't say I wouldn't like to play on high, to be fair, I just don't have my hopes up too much. Didn't find a cheaper version of the card that didn't come with £10+ shipping charges or being from really suspect sites that made an alternative seller look viable. I'll look into the 1GB ones, though.

Doesn't impact it too much, but I wasn't aware of that. Case you linked is ugly as fuck.

Like I said, graphics card requires 500w. And yes, the being able to reuse in the future was what I was debating. How long is the lifetime of PSUs/how quickly do they age?

Thanks - is there anything more to having a good PSU than the power rating badge?

The freedom from lag shall be immense!

Thanks for the input too. Running late, so gotta dash.

 

Get a 620/650 seasonic or corsair psu and be set for life.

Average lifespan of shitty psu is trash, so who cares.

Average lifespan of a quality psu is 'as long as you feel like using it for', so buy it instead.

Basically better quality psu's have better internal parts so they're less likely to explode, and less ripple on the 3.3, 5 and 12 volt lines, so they're less likely to make things explode.

I recommend spending less on things you don't notice every day (processor, motherboard) and spending more on the things you do (monitor, SSD, graphics card).

In your usage (presumed to be office work, video games, interbutts, similar) you won't notice a difference between a i5-3350 and a i5-3770k, but with the money saved there you can purchase something that you will notice a difference in like a better video card, monitor or bigger ssd.

So that's something you should consider for all similar parts - will you notice if you spend less on this? If no, then spend less on that and more on something you will.

 

In theory, any DDR3 RAM will fit in any DDR3 slot. Occasionally issues crop up but there's really no way to tell in advance. That said, motherboard and RAM vendors have compatibility lists and pretty much any RAM has lifetime warranty.

To be honest, I don't know anything about US/UK prices, but amazon.co.uk has a range of B75 boards in the £50-£70 range.

It doesn't actually require 500W, see here (graphics card only) and here (whole system). That's only there to cover AMDs ass in case you buy a really poor quality power supply and covers the entire system. A decent 400W power supply is more than you need, but obviously won't accept much in the way of upgrades.

The lifetime of a PSU depends on how hard you stress it - the closer to its maximum rating (or even over its maximum rating) and for longer periods of time, the earlier it will degrade to the point it can't output power it's rated for. Expect them to last around twice their warranty length, longer if you buy a power supply that is significantly more than you need.

The internal components dictate whether the PSU is any good, not the efficiency or maximum power, though higher efficiency power supplies pretty much have to have better components in the first place.

 

I have had two of these mouse's and they are great. Very reliable as long as you dont get it wet.

 

In general, I've always been told to try to keep all RAM sticks as similar as possible (brand, capacity, model, etc). However, I've seen manufacturers mix up 2GB and 4GB sticks in laptops all the time, so I don't know how critical that guideline is.

I have the XFX model of that card and I'm able to play Skyrim on ultra at 1080p. Mine is overclocked a fair amount, so YMMV, but I suspect that you'll be able to play most, if not all, newer games on high settings.

Keep in mind that your case is fucking enormous. If you put it on your desk, you won't be able to reach those top ports easily. My case is ~44cm tall and I can't see the top of it (it sits on my desk). Yours is another 12 cm taller - and also significantly longer; it may not fit on your desk at all.

Also, InWin doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for quality. They're not horrible, but I wouldn't necessarily expect this to last you through several builds. If you're looking for that level of quality, you should be considering brands like Silverstone, Antec, higher-end Cooler Master, or Lian-Li.

 

I was looking for cheaper motherboards, then... how's this look?

Asus P8Z77-V LX - £83 - $134
Thirty pounds cheaper, seems to have a lot of the same features.
[LINK]

I'm looking into other cases, but I haven't found anything that I like much yet.

---------- Post automerged at 02:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:38 AM ----------

I was looking for cheaper motherboards, then... how's this look?

Asus P8Z77-V LX - £83 - $134
Thirty pounds cheaper, seems to have a lot of the same features.
[LINK]

I'm looking into other cases, but I haven't found anything that I like much yet.

 

I built myself a computer this summer about as good as the one you are building.
That said, I used that optical drive, and it is rather loud. No, it is LOUD. I would recommend against it if you plan on using it regularly for more than installing stuff.


You don't really need a i5 3570k if you do not overclock and the differences to cheaper versions are rather small.
I would safe some money here and buy a 3450 or even a 2400.

8GB RAM are fine.

A case of that size is a piece of furniture. Consider going for a smaller one, especially if you want to put it on a desk instead of on the ground.

If you are using photoshop with a mouse, make sure you get one suitung your grip and get a good mousepad.

 

At risk of being lambasted (admittedly kinda deservedly) for being a dumbass again, I got mine built, and I enjoy the hell out of that case. It /is/ massive, but it fits fine under my desk and it gives you a lot of space for expansion. It even had room for the fucking massive heat sink that I bought and a full compliment of fans, so it did it's job as far as I'm concerned. It's louder than some cases (price you pay for the mesh), but it runs cool; even with plenty of overclocking. Since you aren't worried about that, you could likely set all the default fans to low and have a fairly silent case.

 

Thanks for all the comments guys - I've ordered parts now, will be waiting on them arriving. Went for a smaller case in the end; the cooler master 690 II version with USB 3.0 ports. Got a great deal on it, too - £56. :3

 

D: You case thief!

 

I'm climbing in Lutris's windows, snatching his cases up...

 

Just finished putting it together today! It's awesome so far, especially after having a laptop that can barely open a web browser, but noisy - I think that may be my graphics card alone that's causing all the noise. I'm tempted to replace the fans - I'll see how it goes.

My components test:



All crammed into my case:



So turns out I had one SATA cable too few; at the moment I can either have my SSD and HDD or my optical drive plugged in... lol. That's my only issue, aside from having an american power plug on the PSU.

Bonus: Cable management level: You Tried XD



With the case on:



All in all, 'twas fun building! The case is still rather large and heavy - thank god you guys talked me out of getting that one I was going for originally. It's twice as heavy as this one and bigger still - and as you can see, this thing is rather large. XD

My monitor is *godly*. Really crystal clear, great colours and huge to boot. Got an awesome deal on it. Case is really nice, despite being huge and heavy - I'm a big fan of the mesh style cases. I don't think there's anything else to mention? Thanks for all the input on the build, guys - you're all awesome people. :3

 

Looks great!

You can use a utility like MSI Afterburner to tweak your graphics card fan settings. For instance, I have mine set to run at 10% fan speed until it reaches about 30-32 degrees C, then it ramps up steadily to 100% by 80 degrees. That way, the noise is basically nonexistant (read: inaudible over my case fans) during normal usage and only ramps up when I'm gaming, when I'm usually wearing headphones anyways. The default setting was for it to start at 30-40%, which was fairly loud.

It could also be your case fans making the noise though, and there's not much you can do about that short of replacing them or getting a fan controller.

 

Great job, Katiekate.

On the topic of the case fans, I own the same model case (black though, not white, but cosmetic differences are cosmetic), and they're fucking quiet as all hell. It's probably your GPU's fan, since you don't appear to have an aftermarket CPU fan and the stock fans are generally quiet.

On another note, is that a BenQ monitor? The base looks like one of theirs. I swear, if it turns out that you got the same model monitor as me too, I'm calling shenanigans.

Shenanigans, I say.

 

It's a samsung! Is it difficult replacing stock GPU fans, would you say?

 

No.

But the screws are really easy to strip so you have to be sure you're using the correct sized screwdriver - a Phillips #0/#1

But first thing to try is getting a program called MSI afterburner and setting a custom fan speed curve so the fan doesn't run loud when you aren't playing games.