The PC Building Thread

I was just thinking, say you bought that 810 pounds (I can't find the pound sign on this bloody keyboard!) set up and put it together. How much do you think you could sell it on Ebay for?

Could you make 100pounds? 200 pounds? and would there be many takers?
 
BobbyBox said:
I was just thinking, say you bought that 810 pounds (I can't find the pound sign on this bloody keyboard!) set up and put it together. How much do you think you could sell it on Ebay for?

Could you make 100pounds? 200 pounds? and would there be many takers?
Click to expand...

There is fuck all money in building PC's, I used to do it in my spare time and found it isn't really worth all the hassle.

I used to basically make £30-£100 on each build I did, which wasn't too bad when people wanted very similar spec machines as I know how to do image deployment. But in regards to eBay you could never make money on there as you would have to charge near PC World prices to justify the fees eBay charge.
+ places like Novatech and Scan do semi decent builds for your money these days unless people want top end gaming PC's.

Like I put though in a previous post, if anyone wanted a PC on here, I would build it for them and load and configure Windows for them, but this would take away the fun of doing it yourself and learning about PC's yourself. The most difficult part of a PC build is loading and setting up Windows, and that is actually a piece of piss these days.
 
bsmaff said:
There is fuck all money in building PC's, I used to do it in my spare time and found it isn't really worth all the hassle.

I used to basically make £30-£100 on each build I did, which wasn't too bad when people wanted very similar spec machines as I know how to do image deployment. But in regards to eBay you could never make money on there as you would have to charge near PC World prices to justify the fees eBay charge.
+ places like Novatech and Scan do semi decent builds for your money these days unless people want top end gaming PC's.

Like I put though in a previous post, if anyone wanted a PC on here, I would build it for them and load and configure Windows for them, but this would take away the fun of doing it yourself and learning about PC's yourself. The most difficult part of a PC build is loading and setting up Windows, and that is actually a piece of piss these days.
Click to expand...

I thought so, I just wanted to see if you could set them up pretty quickly and there was a market there for them and a good selling price.

I was just thinking because you can build a PC for quite a bit less than shops sell them for, so I thought you may be able to churn out a few a week and sell them it could be a good income. But I guess everybody would do it if you could make lots of money from them.

If I decide to get one I will be building it, It will be fun :DD
 
Looks very good, but the main thing for me is it comes with sound proofing throughout.
Might not be the best for cooling but has very good reviews everywhere and my SSD will no longer be hanging halfway out a drive bay as my current case was never designed with SSD's in mind.
 
Jamezinho said:
Is it a living room build? The aesthetics and sound-proofing will be ideal for that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my living room has always been where my PC has lived.
I only game on it when the Mrs is in bed and then can easily connect it via HDMI to the TV when she is away and hook up the sound card to the 5.1.

My PC at present is silent, I have a massive air cooler and my 680 has a custom Artic Cooler on it. I also replaced all the case fans with silent coolermaster fans.
 
bsmaff said:
Yeah, my living room has always been where my PC has lived.
I only game on it when the Mrs is in bed and then can easily connect it via HDMI to the TV when she is away and hook up the sound card to the 5.1.
Click to expand...

Sounds like me, except I run the audio over HDMI to my amp and the send the video from the amp to the tv with another HDMI.

After 10pm is PC time.
 
Got the case today it is absolutely huge.
I might have to reconsider it now, but the sound proofing is really good and it is definitely a quality build, but might have to re-consider due to the sheer size if it.

Please note I am not a photographer, although my attempt at taken a blurred effect picture worked brilliantly:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
Guys what do you think of a mini ITX machine with the following for £699

Core I5 3570
8gb Corsair Vengeance ram
1tb HDD
2gb MSI GTX670 OC
Win 8.1
Silverstone Sugo 05


I was going to skimp on the GPU and get a GTX660, then wait until the next gen NVidia cards came out and upgrade. The MSI GTX670 is on offer today for just £20 more than the 660, so I figure get that and then wait even longer for the next gen cards to get reduced.

Seem like a decent build to you guys?
 
Excellent build. The GTX 670 is one of the best price/performance cards right now and slightly better than the GTX 760 that replaces it.

My only concern is the Silverstone Sugo 05. I see it has an included 300w power supply. Personally I would want a more powerful PSU, around 500w would be ideal. That way you have a bit of headroom for upgrades and overclocking.
 
I would buy the case without the PSU and get the 450w SFX PSU that Silverstone also make.

After seeing that huge tower Bsmaff wants to use in his living room it has me thinking, do I really need to build an mini ITX machine? A nice MATX case would not look so bad and save some money. I am also having a think about going AMD, with the new consoles being 8 core and a powerful 8 core CPU being relatively cheap its something to consider. Am I right in thinking that past a certain point the CPU does not matter for gaming? An 8 core 3.5ghz AMD chip for £116 seems good value to me.

The GTX670 deal is on until Monday so I have a little time to think.

Just seen that Scan also have a deal on a 3gb MSI Twin Frozr OC 7950 which is just a few pounds more than the reference GTX670, wondering whether this may be the better deal with the extra ram and much better cooler.

I have the price down to £600 from Scan with the following:

AMD 8320 3.5ghz
MSI 3gb 7950 OC twin frozr
8gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
1tb HDD
Win 8.1
Fractal Designs core 1000 case

£100 saving for a larger case and a small or negligible performance drop?
 
Last edited:
A Real Gentleman said:
I would buy the case without the PSU and get the 450w SFX PSU that Silverstone also make.

After seeing that huge tower Bsmaff wants to use in his living room it has me thinking, do I really need to build an mini ITX machine? A nice MATX case would not look so bad and save some money. I am also having a think about going AMD, with the new consoles being 8 core and a powerful 8 core CPU being relatively cheap its something to consider. Am I right in thinking that past a certain point the CPU does not matter for gaming? An 8 core 3.5ghz AMD chip for £116 seems good value to me.

The GTX670 deal is on until Monday so I have a little time to think.

Just seen that Scan also have a deal on a 3gb MSI Twin Frozr OC 7950 which is just a few pounds more than the reference GTX670, wondering whether this may be the better deal with the extra ram and much better cooler.

I have the price down to £600 from Scan with the following:

AMD 8320 3.5ghz
MSI 3gb 7950 OC twin frozr
8gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
1tb HDD
Win 8.1
Fractal Designs core 1000 case

£100 saving for a larger case and a small or negligible performance drop?
Click to expand...

CPU does make a difference you need to make sure you get a semi decent one.
The only decent AMD processor I would recommend is the 8350, otherwise I would get Intel and personally I would always recommend Intel over AMD anyway.
Also in regards to the next gen console CPU's they are not a decent processor they are just 8 core Notebook Processors, so they are processors not considered powerful enough to go in laptops.

In regards to 7950 v 670 they are very similarly matched with the 670 seeming to have an advantage at higher resolutions.

Also if you can afford it I would get an SSD, even just a 64GB SSD to use as a boot drive will add a massive amount of performance onto the PC.

Also in regards to my new case, my PC sits on the opposite side of the living room and when the Mrs goes to bed I put a 5m HDMI cable and 5m fibre optic to the TV and surround sound, so I don't use it as a media centre as I use my PS3 as my media centre and stream videos from the PC to the PS3 using PS3 media server.
 
OK thanks, so back to the intel then. When you say the 670 has advantages at higher resolutions do you mean higher than 1080? I would only use 1080 because of my TV so would the extra ram give then 7950 the advantage in my situation? I have also read that you can OC the 7950 very well.
 
A Real Gentleman said:
do I really need to build an mini ITX machine? A nice MATX case would not look so bad and save some money.
Click to expand...

Depends if you are doing so to fit a small space requirement or you simply fancy the idea of a small form-factor PC.

I'm using a mid-tower case (Bitfenix Shinobi) and it's plenty big enough for my needs but not too big to look intrusive sat next to my TV in the living room. I think I would always go for a tower build personally as I like a bit of space to work in and I prefer good airflow for the components.

A Real Gentleman said:
OK thanks, so back to the intel then. When you say the 670 has advantages at higher resolutions do you mean higher than 1080? I would only use 1080 because of my TV so would the extra ram give then 7950 the advantage in my situation? I have also read that you can OC the 7950 very well.
Click to expand...

I sold my MSI 7950 Twin Frozr III only last week. Went for £130 in the end which is peanuts for such a good card. Could have done a deal if I had known.

Anyway, the two main advantages of the 7950 are it's overclocking ability and 3GB VRAM.

The vast majority of these cards will easily OC to the same level as a 7970 GHz Edition or go even further.

3GB VRAM gives the 7950 an advantage over other cards at this price point. It ensures a good level of future proofing, particularly if you don't plan to exceed 1920x1080 resolution any time soon. The counterpoint to this is very few games push 2GB VRAM at the moment. Modded Skyrim is the only example of a game going above 2GB that I can think of. Therefore the GTX670 isn't a bad bet, but I think I would rather have a 3GB card in my machine as we don't know if the new consoles will bring about a generation of more demanding games.

Putting forward the case for the GTX670 - Nvidia's drivers are usually better than AMD and you get PhysX on Nvidia cards which is a nice effect in games that support it. I believe the 670 can also be overclocked to around the level of a 680.
 
Thanks James, this is a tough decision! I have found through some more research that the SG05 case would benefit more from the GTX because of its blower style fan. The downside of this is that I have read the blowers are loud and do not cool as well as the twin fans, the poorer cooling also would limit the OCing of the card. I have decided that if I go for the 7950 I would get a Fractal Designs 304 case as the card may me a bit long for the SG and the Fractal case would have better airflow for the style of fans on the 7950. The downside of this choice is that the case is a bit larger than the SG and if placed in my TV stand may not get all that much clearance around the case.

I think the wise choice would be the 7950 with the Fractal case. The OC ability of the Radeon along with the extra ram and the increased space of the case makes it more flexible for future upgrades. But as I have said the clearances would be a worry and the point of the mini ITX was to fit in my TV stand as I dont have the floor space for a tower unless I stand it next to the sofa and run a long HDMI like Bsmaff(which I dont really want to do).
 
It is a tough call. I've just gone from AMD to Nvidia (7950 to a 780) and given the choice between a 7950 and 670 I'm not 100% sure which way I would go. They both have their pros and cons but I think the 7950 would edge it.

The blower style coolers on the reference 7950/7970 are very loud and I assume the 670 is similar. The advantage is they blow hot air straight out the back of the case which is great for a small form factor case.

If noise is a concern I would look at the custom cooling solutions on the non-reference cards. Obviously they circulate hot air back into the case but if you have a few case fans pushing/pulling air through then I don't think it's a problem.

I can speak from experience that the 7950 Twin Frozr cooler is pretty good if a bit noisy when wound up above 60% fan speed, but it does the job. I know people who have owned the Gigabyte Windforce 7950/7970 and apparently that is one of the best coolers on these cards (it has three quiet fans). I would try and track down one of those personally.

On another note (and I know this is no good to you) I think the Bitfenix Prodigy is one of the best looking and most practical Mini-ITX cases on the market. I'd go for one of these because they look cool!

http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy
 
Last edited:
After some thought I have decided to go with the Fractal case, I will run the front and rear fans in reverse exhausting the hot air out the front of the case where it wont be blowing against a wall.

The build:

Fractal Design Node 304 Case
Corsair 430w PSU
Win 8
Intel i5 4570
Asus h87I-plus mobo
3gb MSI Twin Frozr 7950 OC
8gb(2x4gb) Crucial Ballstix RAM
1tb Seagate barracuda HDD

£677

Quite please with that, just over £250 more than a ps4 with one game. I figure I will more than make that 250 back over the next few years by saving on paying £40 - £50 on a game every time. Cant wait to get on Steam and play Assetto Corsa, which looks like the kind of racing sim that I hoped GT5 would be.

Thanks for the info lads. James those cases are nice but what about their new mini itx cases, the Phenom, they look awesome! http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/phenom-mini-itx
 
Last edited:
Got the build done yesterday, it was a bit daunting at times but once I read through the motherboard manual and got familiar with where everything went and what was needed to connect it up, it was easy and I feel like I'd be able to do it again if needed because of the experience.

Only thing that I don't think I've connected up properly is the LED on the case front. :P

Got a key for BioShock Infinite and started playing that on mostly ultra settings, 1080p. Looks fantastic.

There's no going back now. :D
 
I wouldn't get the poor H87 chipset boards.
I would def invest the extra in a Z87 board, we use the H87 boards at work and they are the complete budget option and an inferior chipset, but then I never use cheap boards in systems I build as the motherboard controls the whole system so why skimp on the quality of the most important component.
 
Aboutreika18 said:
Got a key for BioShock Infinite and started playing that on mostly ultra settings, 1080p. Looks fantastic.

There's no going back now. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah that's a stunner. I kept stopping to look around at the scenery so it probably took me twice as long to complete the game.

Once you see why some of us bang on about 1080p@60fps gaming there is no going back. That's why the XB1 and PS4 look quite disappointing.
 
Hey guys, i'm seriously thinking about buying/buildng a gaming pc, but i'm not really sure what i would need to buy.

Can anyone tell me what kind of graphics card i would need to run pes 2014 with some of the amazing mods i see on this site?

I'm only really looking to play Pes and Football Manager on it, so nothing too crazy.
 
Aboutreika18 said:
Got the build done yesterday, it was a bit daunting at times but once I read through the motherboard manual and got familiar with where everything went and what was needed to connect it up, it was easy and I feel like I'd be able to do it again if needed because of the experience.

Only thing that I don't think I've connected up properly is the LED on the case front. :P

Got a key for BioShock Infinite and started playing that on mostly ultra settings, 1080p. Looks fantastic.

There's no going back now. :D
Click to expand...

Same from my build from 2011, I never did bother with the LED lights. :LOL:
 
jayjay7 said:
Hey guys, i'm seriously thinking about buying/buildng a gaming pc, but i'm not really sure what i would need to buy.

Can anyone tell me what kind of graphics card i would need to run pes 2014 with some of the amazing mods i see on this site?

I'm only really looking to play Pes and Football Manager on it, so nothing too crazy.
Click to expand...

If you are only looking to play those two games then a cheap, low/mid-range graphics card will do fine. Depends if you want to play the latest, more demanding games as well. If you do then something more powerful is needed.
 
If you are looking at just FM just get a top CPU and an SSD make an absolute massive difference when playing FM.

As for PES you just need an average GPU as sports games are the least demanding games available on the market.

When I have a spare 20 minutes at work next week, I will re do the system builds that were done about 3 months ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom