400.00 GBP/634.780 USD of Amazon Vouchers to spend on PC please Advise

Z

ZuluChild

New Member
Hey Guys

I am based in the UK and have 400 pounds (634.780 USD) worth of Amazon Vouchers to spend and I have decided to invest in a new PC.

I Will be using the PC in my office for work but really I am an avid gamer I love FPS games eg: Americas Army 3, Modern Warfare, Counter Strike, Battlefield 3.

I would love to get your advice and help on this because I have never built a PC before so I will be popping my cherry haha.

I have picked some components and the links to which are below. Please, please, please could you guys check that they are compatible and hey if you think you could do better for 400 quid from amazon alone then I would really welcome some feedback, I have a 20 quid (31.7556 USD) margin.

Remember prices may vary from the US site to the UK one so remember to check the UK one.

Thanks guys look forward to a responce :)

Motherboard
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004Z5BYH4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004HBAGSO/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=AQ0GSAV8PJ0BI

Graphics Card
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005G50ET6/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=A3K5HHD3KZXXBZ

RAM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004CRSM4I/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Processor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005UBNL0A/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Power Supply
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/7135799410/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&m=AF58XVHU0LG3J

Case
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharkoon-AT...HPEE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1333725658&sr=8-3

PS, I already have a disk drive already.
 
All is compatible,But don't go with that Power supply it wont be any good for £15.

OR you could get this build instead!

Dont be put off by it been a Dual core,Those i3s are no slackers.

Intel i3-2100 Sandybridge Core i3 Dual-Core Processor ? 3.10GHz, 3MB Cache, Socket 1155
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004FA8NPK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE


Asus P8H61-M PRO REV 3.0 Motherboard
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004SAIDAC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Crucial Ballistix BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU 8GB (4GB x2) DDR3 Memory Kit
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006YG94Y2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Asus nVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card (1GB , GDDR5, PCI Express 2.0, HDMI, nVIDIA 3D Vision Ready)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005G50ET6/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&m=A3K5HHD3KZXXBZ

Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200rpm Internal Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005EEZ0H0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=AJ9HG9PKGCYUM

Corsair CMPSU-500CXV2UK Builder Series CX500V2 - 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005851O16/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Antec VSK-1000 Tower Case (Supports ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX Motherboard) - Black
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0054FCQUS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

£445.81p,I know its over budget by about £45,But you could try and get a deal on a used HD 6850-6870 graphics card i see them go for about £65-70 sometimes and it will outperform a 550ti.
 
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Thanks, what are the risks of buying a cheap power supply?

you say its a dual core but it says when I open it that its a quad core with a question mark after it i'm confused?

would you say the i3 chip is better than a quad core bulldozer?

Also I noticed you went for a smaller hard drive but better quality why's that? does it make a real difference?

Thanks for being patient with me I just want to understand the thought process behind it all, cheers

O I love the idea with the graphics card by the way.
 
The risk of cheap psu: %65 chance of it stop working in the next year. %50 chance of it blowing up and taking other parts with it. I wouldn't take that chance. That is a very likly estimate. Yes an i3 is better than the fx bulldozer.
 
MyCattMaxx said:
The i3-2100 is a dual core but has 4 threads.
The ad on Amazon just wasn't sure about it.
Click to expand...

Yeah,For some reason Amazon lists it as a Quad.:rolleyes:

ZuluChild said:
and would you recommend this over AMD Bulldozer FX-4100 Socket AM3+ 4 Core Processor - 3.60GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo???
Click to expand...

I would choose the i3 over that FX...But if you want to stick with AMD you could consider a Phenom II X4 965 which are £87.99

ZuluChild,What about an Operating system...i take it you already have a copy?
 
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There are awesome power supplys (Corsair,OCZ), good power supplies (coolermaster, antec) and there are bad power supplies (sparkle,topower), awful power supplies (logisys,themaltake) and then there's that one you chose, yes it's awfly terrible rubbish. The worse it is the faster it will go out and might blow up and take parts wth it.
 
Wow I never would have thought a dual core i3 would be better than a quad core fx bulldozer. what about the hard drive? Seagate ST31000524AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 1TB GB 7200rpm SATA Drive with 32MB Buffer vs Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200rpm Internal Hard Drive. what are the main differences in quality?
 
Nevakonaza said:
Yeah,For some reason Amazon lists it as a Quad.:rolleyes:



I would choose the i3 over that FX...But if you want to stick with AMD you could consider a Phenom II X4 965 which are £87.99

ZuluChild,What about an Operating system...i take it you already have a copy?
Click to expand...

Yeh I already have a copy of windows 7. Phenom II X4 965 better than fx bulldozer?
 
The Momentus i choose in the build list is a Hybrid Hard drive/SSD.

Read this. :)

The Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive fuses the lightning speed of solid state with the high capacity of a disc drive to unleash your system performance by removing the data bottleneck. The FAST Factor™ advantage takes the Momentus XT drive to a new level by enhancing data integrity and increasing storage longevity.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/products/laptops/laptop-hdd
 
ZuluChild said:
and would you recommend this over AMD Bulldozer FX-4100 Socket AM3+ 4 Core Processor - 3.60GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo???
Click to expand...
Absolutely. The i3 2100 is a fantastic CPU you can take it from me. I've used one in the past and would definitely use one again. For the price it's pretty exceptional. Definitely would go for the 2100 over the FX-4100.

ZuluChild said:
what are the risks of buying a cheap power supply?
Click to expand...
There are a lot of risks. Firstly, the PSU may not have all the connections you need, and the wires are likely very thin gauge. A cheap PSU will likely not have any over-current or surge protection and will not be 80+ efficient, meaning you'll be wasting power. Generic PSUs deliver nowhere near the amount of power/wattage they claim to (a 600W generic PSU will probably deliver around 350-400W before exploding) and yeah, they explode. I know this, because I was an idiot and bought a cheap PSU and it lasted a year until I had issues with my system before it finally went bang. When they do fail, they usually take everything else out with them (motherboard, hard drives and graphics cards especially), but I was lucky and my system remained OK. You may not be lucky.

If you want my recommendation for a good PSU, the Corsair CX500 is a good 500W PSU (more than enough for this build) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMP...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1333735121&sr=1-1 anything over 550W is going to be overkill for this build.

The build Nevakonaza posted is good, but a 6850 will likely outperform a GTX 550 Ti, so I'd go for one of those to finish off your build http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-11...27IQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333735078&sr=8-1 it is a tiny bit more expensive though.

ZuluChild said:
Seagate ST31000524AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 1TB GB 7200rpm SATA Drive with 32MB Buffer vs Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200rpm Internal Hard Drive. what are the main differences in quality?
Click to expand...
The Momentus is waaaaayyy faster than the Barracuda because it is a Hybrid SSD. It's roughly 2-3 times faster than a conventional 7200 RPM disk and it has SSD-like performance. Put simply - it's fast. :D
 
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Nevakonaza said:
The Momentus i choose in the build list is a Hybrid Hard drive/SSD.

Read this. :)

The Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive fuses the lightning speed of solid state with the high capacity of a disc drive to unleash your system performance by removing the data bottleneck. The FAST Factor™ advantage takes the Momentus XT drive to a new level by enhancing data integrity and increasing storage longevity.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/products/laptops/laptop-hdd
Click to expand...

Nice, I like the idea, to be fair I dont need more than 500gb. So all in all it should mean that when loading things from the hard drive it will be a lot quicker especially when it comes to loading things that have been on there for a while right?

gonna swap the nvidia for this what you rekon?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004HXW5OU/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

It's 89.99 so its actually cheaper than gtx550ti!

I'm sold on power supply as well btw. I guess its a must investment.
 
ZuluChild said:
So all in all it should mean that when loading things from the hard drive it will be a lot quicker especially when it comes to loading things that have been on there for a while right?
Click to expand...
Yes, the Momentus will be much faster than a regular HDD at loading things. Get one, you won't regret it. :)

ZuluChild said:
gonna swap the nvidia for this what you rekon?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

It's 89.99 so its actually cheaper than gtx550ti!
Click to expand...
Yep good choice, the 6850 is faster than a GTX 550 Ti, definitely get that card. :) ASUS is also a fairly god brand when it comes to graphics cards.
 
ZuluChild said:
Why would you say an i3 is better than bulldozer quad?
Click to expand...
The i3 has a much better architecture than the FX-4100 so despite having less cache and two less physical cores, it actually outperforms the FX-4100 in heavily threaded applications, and as far as price for performance goes, the i3 is much better overall. People haven't been impressed with AMD's FX line of AM3+ chips.

ZuluChild said:
would you bring the AMD HDZ965FBGMBOX Phenom II X4 965 - 3.4 Ghz AM3 Black Edition CPU into the equation?
Click to expand...
Yes, despite the 965 being older it is still a very good CPU. I nearly bought a 965 actually, but I went for an i5 760 instead (this was in December 2010) because back then the 760 was the better performer. If you compare the 965 to the 2100, the 2100 is ahead overall on most of the benchmarks, see here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=289, I'd choose an i3 over a 965 though because it is a newer CPU. Don't get me wrong the 965 is a great CPU, but it's kind of 'yesterday's news' now. The 2100 is the current generation chip.

ZuluChild said:
If we are going with the i3 which one of these below is better?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Sandyb...3736482&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Sandyb...3733913&sr=1-2
Click to expand...
As the 2120 is like £2 more and is clocked 200MHz faster, just go for that. I used a 2120 in a build once, it was good. :)
 
thats awesome that i3 packs some punch for a dual core, very close between the two though however the i3 scores better on all the games so i guess we're going with the i3.

I am gonna make up a new list will be back soon.

Thanks for the help so far guys I have learnt loads.
 
ZuluChild said:
thats awesome that i3 packs some punch for a dual core, very close between the two though however the i3 scores better on all the games so i guess we're going with the i3.
Click to expand...
Yeah the 2120 is very good. I used a 2120 in a flight simulator PC. Paired with an MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti, I was getting like 60-70 FPS on Ultra Settings at 1920x1080 with FSX when I was testing out the PC before it was sold. FSX relies on the CPU cores as well as the graphics card, so that's where the additional hyper-threaded cores come in.

ZuluChild said:
Thanks for the help so far guys I have learnt loads.
Click to expand...
No problems and we all learn new stuff by asking each other questions. :) Will have a look at your build when you post what you're going to buy.
 
OK as it stands this is how its looking but I'm gonna put a few different options for RAM at the bottom as they may be more cost effective, let me know what you think?

Asus P8H61-M PRO REV 3.0 Motherboard
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004SAIDAC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Intel i3-2120 Sandybridge Core i3 Quad-Core Processor ? 3.30GHz, 3MB Cache, Socket 1155,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004FA8NXM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Asus 1GB Radeon HD 6850 DirectCU PCI-E 2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004HXW5OU/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Two Module Kit
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004CRSM4I/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200rpm Internal Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005EEZ0H0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Corsair CMPSU-500CXV2UK Builder Series CX500V2 - 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005851O16/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Antec VSK-1000 Tower Case (Supports ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX Motherboard) - Black
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0054FCQUS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Subtotal: £432.17

Different options for RAM

Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 XMS3 8GB Two Memory Module Kit
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMX...GVUY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333739038&sr=8-2

massive saving of 3 pound 60 haha

Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 8GB 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Module Kit
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMZ...UL1C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1333739038&sr=8-4

50p saving

Crucial Ballistix BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU 8GB (4GB x2) DDR3 Memory Kit

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...t_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=vig-21

saving of 4.77
 
ZuluChild, it's all good stuff you've got planned there, and I'd go for the 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance RAM, either this or this, just get which colour you prefer because that's the only difference in it.
 
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