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The PC Building Thread

It's free you get what you pay for.

Got a 7 on IGN which must mean it's pretty bad cos IGN don't know how to score anything less than an 8.5
 
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Also, I'm up for annual renewal for newsgroups - anyone recommend some good cheap options? I like to change each year.
 
If you're not bothered about really long retention the cheapest right now is http://www.frugalusenet.com/ which is £32 a year for unlimited, 20 connections, SSL, 300 day retention.

Obviously if you want longer then TheCubeNet is the best one with over three years of binary retention.
 
Does anyone know if being limited to a 10 inch graphics card will severely limit my options? I cant see any physical lengths listed in the online stores.
 
I think most of the good cards are around 11" now, you could always get a new case though.
 
Thats a shame, I am looking at building a mini itx system in the silverstone ft 03 mini case which has a 10" max expansion card length. The case seems to overcome the problems associated with a small case except the card size.
 
Ern Dog said:
Thats a shame, I am looking at building a mini itx system in the silverstone ft 03 mini case which has a 10" max expansion card length. The case seems to overcome the problems associated with a small case except the card size.
Click to expand...

I use a Sapphire 7850 which is 210 mm long (or 8.27 inches). Bloody good card too (excellent overclocker + dual cooling).

The dimensions of the 7850/7870 range are here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5705/amd-radeon-hd-7850-launch-recap
 
Ern Dog said:
Thanks Jamez I will take a look.
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It's a better card than the 560Ti for performance. The general advice seems to be if you're after a mid-range card go AMD, if you want a high-end card go Nvidia.

Just make sure you get a non-reference dual-cooling card (such as Sapphire, MSI, XFX, Asus) as they run very cool and quiet. Or at least my Sapphire does anyway, and I'm running a 40% overclock and the fans never reach even 50% speed. Even on stock clocks I can run most games at high-max settings @1920x1080.

They can be picked up for around £175. You could even go for 7870 although all 7850's can be overclocked to 7870 performance very easily. Something to think about.
 
hi chaps,

here's what i'm looking for

gaming pc able to run pro evo 2013 and fifa 13
play blu ray movies (and be able to store them on the hard drive)
play my music (would run through an external dac into my yamaha av amp)

basically i'm thinking of getting rid of all my clutter i.e xbox 360, cd's, blu rays etc and having all coming from the pc tower stored at the front next to my 55 inch telly

sounds great to me but not knowing fuck all about PC's in the sense of gaming

could somebody point me in the direction what i need to do, iv'e seen previous posters being pointed towards building their own pc but not sure if i'm savvy enough pc wise to pull it off
 
Just read a couple of reviews and it looks like my graphics card problem is solved :TU:
Did you bother with a soundcard Jamez?
 
danhammer said:
hi chaps,

here's what i'm looking for

gaming pc able to run pro evo 2013 and fifa 13
play blu ray movies (and be able to store them on the hard drive)
play my music (would run through an external dac into my yamaha av amp)

basically i'm thinking of getting rid of all my clutter i.e xbox 360, cd's, blu rays etc and having all coming from the pc tower stored at the front next to my 55 inch telly

sounds great to me but not knowing fuck all about PC's in the sense of gaming

could somebody point me in the direction what i need to do, iv'e seen previous posters being pointed towards building their own pc but not sure if i'm savvy enough pc wise to pull it off
Click to expand...

This link was posted before in this thread and is quite useful. It will give you an idea of what components you need to be looking at for builds at various price points. It also has links to good building guides and places to buy:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=455869

But generally, there is so much info out there on various sites. Check out the likes of Overclockers.co.uk and AVForums for good "spec me a PC" threads. There are loads of videos on Youtube showing how to build a PC. It's pretty straightforward really, just need a bit of common sense.

Ern Dog said:
Just read a couple of reviews and it looks like my graphics card problem is solved :TU:
Did you bother with a soundcard Jamez?
Click to expand...

Do tell.....

No, not bothered with a sound card yet.
 
One of the Radeon 7850 OC variants, from my brief readings it seems to the the card of choice under £200. Thanks for the nudge.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...hz-core-gddr5-4800mhz-dl-dvi-i-2xmini-dp-hdmi seems a good buy.

Is the sound good without a card? I wouldnt have room for one in my mini itx build. I would like to output HD audio to my reciever though, dont know if thats possible without one.
 
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Ern Dog said:
One of the Radeon 7850 OC variants, from my brief readings it seems to the the card of choice under £200. Thanks for the nudge.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...hz-core-gddr5-4800mhz-dl-dvi-i-2xmini-dp-hdmi seems a good buy.

Is the sound good without a card? I wouldnt have room for one in my mini itx build. I would like to output HD audio to my reciever though, dont know if thats possible without one.
Click to expand...

You can output surround over hdmi. I have one hdmi from the 7850 to my amp, and another from my amp to the tv.

If you can't do that with your amp then you need to go the optical route.
 
Ern Dog said:
One of the Radeon 7850 OC variants, from my brief readings it seems to the the card of choice under £200. Thanks for the nudge.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...hz-core-gddr5-4800mhz-dl-dvi-i-2xmini-dp-hdmi seems a good buy.

Is the sound good without a card? I wouldnt have room for one in my mini itx build. I would like to output HD audio to my reciever though, dont know if thats possible without one.
Click to expand...

Oh, and good choice on the card by the way. Have you ordered?

All the dual cooled cards supposed to be good so you won't go wrong with the MSI. If the non-overclock edition is any cheaper then consider going for that instead. You can achieve the same performance as the OC edition with a couple of adjustments in the drivers.

For instance, the non-OC edition of my card:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-295-SP

In hindsight I should have got this rather than paying a little more for the OC edition. It's exactly the same card otherwise.

Good thread here, worth reading if you want to get the full potential out of this card:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18389760

You'd be mad not to.
 
I wish I could order mate, got to wait for a loan repayment first. I have got myself all excited aswell. Went to scan and priced it all up, came to £971. If i went with a cheaper case I could probably knock 100 off that but the ft03 mini will look great in my lounge.

Silverstone ft03 mini case
Silverstone sfx 450 psu
Asus p8z77 i mobo
Intel i5 3570 ivybridge
Corsair h60 hydro cpu cooler
8gb corsair vengeance ddr3 low pro ram
Msi r7850 power edition gpu
Corsair force 3 120gb ssd
Win 7 pro 64bit oem

I think thats everything, I already have a 500gb HDD. Do you think 120gb is enough for the ssd? I originally had a 240 in the basket but it was 60 quid more than the 120 and I wanted to come in under a grand. It seems like alot of money but if I was to buy another PS3 to last me until the PS4 comes out I would of bought 2 360s and 2 PS3s this gen, I am not going through that again with the next gen, PC is cheaper in the long run.
 
Depends what you want to do with the SSD. Mine is only 64gb and is used as a boot drive with all my 'serious' programs and applications on there. I've still got room for two or three games if I wanted to. So 120gb will be fine. SSD prices are coming down but it will be a while before you can pick up large drives for reasonable prices.

Looks like a nice build otherwise. I'm sure bsmaff could get the price down for you though.
 
Ern Dog said:
I wish I could order mate, got to wait for a loan repayment first. I have got myself all excited aswell. Went to scan and priced it all up, came to £971. If i went with a cheaper case I could probably knock 100 off that but the ft03 mini will look great in my lounge.

Silverstone ft03 mini case
Silverstone sfx 450 psu
Asus p8z77 i mobo
Intel i5 3570 ivybridge
Corsair h60 hydro cpu cooler
8gb corsair vengeance ddr3 low pro ram
Msi r7850 power edition gpu
Corsair force 3 120gb ssd
Win 7 pro 64bit oem
Click to expand...

You will need alot more than a 450w PSU, do you plan on overclocking? If not you don't need the cooler. I wouldn't recommend a Force 3 SSD if you really want pure performance get an OCZ if not then just get the cheap Crucial M4 or Samsung 830.
Do you need a graphics card as good and expensive as a 7850?

How much you paying for your Windows 7? I saw a while ago a website was selling off their old stock of Win 7 Pro for £20 but don't know if they still are.
 
Ern Dog said:
Silverstone ft03 mini case
Silverstone sfx 450 psu
Click to expand...

IS this PSU included with the case and/or built in? Sorry, I don't know much about HTPC cases.

Like bsmaff says, you probably want something a little more powerful. 450W will be fine but you're better off leaving some headroom. A 600W+ PSU would be better. A modular PSU would probably be more practical in a small case.
 
Laptop sorted through means I didn't want to use.

Loving my new PC still :) I have bought games that I've not even played yet just for when it rains :)
 
The case only takes a sfx psu, these are low wattage and I think 450 is the max. I probably would overclock but not until I need the extra power. To be honest by he time I get my money back there will be new stuff out that I am interested in, I jumped the gun a bit with pricing things up.
 
I am going to need a bigger case. Stupidly I bought a cheep and cheerfull case (without a PSU) thinking it would be big enough and good enough. Yes stuff fits in and last night I re-wired everything so its a lot neater in there and im happier with the cabling BUT I can only mount my GTX 580 in Slot 1 of my PCIE ports and I would prefer to use Slot 2 for cooling purposes. However due to the position of my Hard Drive bay the card doesnt fit.... So looks like I will need to splash out on a better PSU and a bigger case. Thinking of a Coolermaster CM Advanced II.
 
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