Buying a new pc

Bubble181

Bubble181

Yes, yes, once again. Still, as some may have read in the Rants thread, both of our laptops are now out, my remaining pc doesn't have a network card, and all in all, I'm looking to buy a replacement right about now, give or take a week.
I suppose I could try to assemble it myself, but if sensible, I'll prefer buying a whole pc - unless someone can show me a deal where the price difference is THAT big that it'll be worth mucking about for hours. Also note that any suggestiosn have to be able to be delivered in Belgium. Mostly this doesn't pose a problem, but you never know.

Anyway, I'm still playing mostly the same games. For the new pc, Witcher 2, Heroes of Might and Magic VI, Total War: Rome II seem to be the titles I'll be looking at first to play.
Also note that I find it far more important to be able to play computer games on "medium" settings in 3 years' time, than I do being able to play them in SuperUltraPower mode right now; I'm not a huge fan of upgrading every bit one at a time but I'm perfectly ok with buying a new graphics card in a year or two.

My budget isn't technically fixed, though every build I make tends to come out high. Honestly, I'd like to spend about €850-€950 (excluding monitor), but they tend to come out somewhere around €1300-€1400.
One sticky point is that I'd really like an SSD as boot disc, as I know it's an immense difference, but that's still not very often an option for gaming pcs, except for the high-end systems. I have no clue why.

Anyway.

Option 1 - Alienware X51 - €1300 - Yes, I know it's a Dell.

Win 8 64b
Intel® Core™ i7-4770 processor (8MB Cache)
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600Mhz (or 16GB for €50 extra - is it worth it?)
2TB (64MB Cache) 7200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s (or 256GB SSD + 1TB 5400RPM SATA 3Gb/s for €300 extra - which is ridiculously overpriced imho)
Also, a DVD-burner, wireless network card and all that other stuff you put in a pc.


Option 2 - Alternate.be - €1415

1 x Scythe Mugen 3 SCMG-3100 Rev. B
2 x MSI N660 TF 2GD5/OC
1 x Microsoft Windows 8 64b
1 x Intel® Core™ i5-3570K
1 x be quiet! Straight Power E9 CM 680W
1 x Corsair Carbide 500R
1 x Sharkoon Media Reader CF
1 x LG GH-24NS (DVD-drive, nothing special)
1 x Crucial CT128M4SSD2
1 x ASRock Z77 Extreme4
1 x Seagate ST1000DM003 1 TB
1 x Corsair 8 GB DDR3-1866 Kit


Option 3 - Zercom.eu - €1003

Microsoft Win8 64bit
Samsung 840 series 120GB
LG GH24NS95 (against, just some DVD-drive)
Gigabyte Radeon HD7950 WindForce 3
Western Digital Blue WD5000AAKX, 500GB
Corsair CMV8GX3M2A1333C9
Asrock B75 Pro3-M
Intel Core i5 3570K Boxed
XFX Pro 550W
Cooler Master K380 | RC-K380-KWN1


Option 4 - gamepc.nl - €1299 - unfortunately not as reliable a site as those others, but who knows?

Intel Core i5-3570K 4.20 GHz
Corsair Hydro H60 (don't ask me why this one suddenly gets water cooling)
Corsair Force Series GT 120GB
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600
Nvidia MSI GTX 660 TF 2GD5/OC
Motherboard MSI Z77A-G45
Power HX Series HX650
Windows 8 64bit NL
And once again, some random DVD drive - though this one's a burner, too.


Option 5 - anything else I haven't thought of. Feel free to give sugestions. Open to pretty much anything; I plan to buy a new monitor as well, probably 21" though I haven't decided yet.
 
Shakey

Shakey

I'm going to try to beat PatrThom to it and say try to get the new Haswell chip if you can. It's the I7 4770k. I don't see it listed on any of the systems you have. I know Cyberpower has systems you can build with it now, not sure if they do international or how good they are though. Here's alink to one I put together quick from their site. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1F5UXR. It doesn't sound like it's a huge jump in desktop performance, but the socket is different so it will leave you open to the possibility of an upgrade later on without changing the motherboard.

Here's what I built from the link:
*_PRICE: (+1306)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K 3.50 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150 (All Venom OC Certified) Cooling Fan: * CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo Gaming Cooling Fan [+4]
Motherboard: * [CrossFireX] Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ IRST, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16 (1 Gen3, 1 Gen2), 2 PCIe x1 & 2 PCI (Pro OC Certified) Intel Smart Response Technology for Z77: None
Memory: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory [+89] (G.SKILL Ripjaws X [+29]) Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 1GB 16X PCIe 3.0
Power Supply Upgrade: * 1,000 Watts - LEPA G1000-MA 80 Plus Gold Certified Modular Power Supply [+94]
Hard Drive: 128GB Corsair Force GS Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 560MB/s Read & 535MB/s Write [+57] (Single Drive)
Data Hard Drive: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [+85] (Single Drive)
Optical Drive: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: LG 14X Internal Blu-ray Burner, BD-RE, DVD+RW, 3D Playback Combo Drive [+99]
Sound: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
LCD Monitor: None
Speakers: None
Network: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
Keyboard: AZZA Multimedia USB Gaming Keyboard [+5]
Mouse: AZZA Optical 1600dpi Gaming Mouse with Weight Adjustable Cartridge [+4]

Also, it looks like there's no OS installed by default, so that would be extra.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Shakey said:
I'm going to try to beat PatrThom to it and say try to get the new Haswell chip if you can. It's the I7 4770k. I don't see it listed on any of the systems you have. I know Cyberpower has systems you can build with it now, not sure if they do international or how good they are though. Here's alink to one I put together quick from their site. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1F5UXR. It doesn't sound like it's a huge jump in desktop performance, but the socket is different so it will leave you open to the possibility of an upgrade later on without changing the motherboard.
Click to expand...
The first one (the Alienware) has a Haswell. The others don't, because those sites don't offer them yet :p I would prefer to geto ne, for the exact reason you said, though :)

Very nice system, btw, but they don't ship outside if the 50 states + APO/FPO.
 
Shakey

Shakey

Bubble181 said:
The first one (the Alienware) has a Haswell. The others don't, because those sites don't offer them yet :p I would prefer to geto ne, for the exact reason you said, though :)

Very nice system, btw, but they don't ship outside if the 50 states + APO/FPO.
Click to expand...
Ship it to me. I'd totally send it on to you.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Shakey said:
I'm going to try to beat PatrThom to it and say try to get the new Haswell chip if you can.
Click to expand...
Nice try. I already bookmarked this thread to get back to later because I'm extreeemly short on free time right now, but if we're talking a system where price is an important factor, then my recommendation probably won't include the hottest new Haswell. In fact, if you're talking a Haswell system that you're definitely going to upgrade later, my recommendation would be for the i5-4570 processor. It's the best-performing, lowest foot-in-the-door price on a quad-core Haswell. True, it's not multiplier unlocked (no -K suffix), you have 2MB less cache, and there is no hyperthreading, but guess what? Games don't really benefit from hyperthreading, and it's going to be such a big step up from whatever you use now that you're not going to notice the 8% performance dip from the difference in cache size. Building a system for the long haul is always about getting the best motherboard (and possibly PSU and case) underneath all your swappable parts, and then choosing the remaining parts based on needs/budget. That means a board based on one of the Lynx Point chipsets (probably based on Z87), although right now I'm not 100% confident recommending anything based on Lynx Point due to that USB3.0 bug since I don't know when the new (fixed) chipset revision will start coming out. Hence why I say I might end up recommending an Ivy Bridge setup.
Shakey said:
And don't forget to flip the little switch 0n the supply.
Click to expand...
Some of 'em don't even have that little switch any more. Full range, baby!

--Patrick
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Do we have any Swiss/Austrian forumites? Because their ALDI has a ridiculously good offer going atm....
http://www.aldi-suisse.ch/ch/html/offers/2867_36373_DEU_HTML.htm

For the non-German-or-French-speaking among us:
€999 for
Haswell i7-4770K
16GB 1600MHz RAM
Nvidia GTX 670 with 2GB DDR5
32GB SSD
2 TB HDD
DVD-burner

If I had the time, it'd literally be worth it for me to simply drive over there and get it (that's 700 miles or so). And in case you're wondering, while Medion is a relatively "cheap" brand of computer (and the cases tend to be a bit loud and plastic), their components are always fairly good - their motherboards are all MSI for example, the SSD is a Corsair.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Bubble181 said:
Do we have any Swiss/Austrian forumites? Because their ALDI has a ridiculously good offer going atm....
http://www.aldi-suisse.ch/ch/html/offers/2867_36373_DEU_HTML.htm

For the non-German-or-French-speaking among us:
€999 for
Haswell i7-4770K
16GB 1600MHz RAM
Nvidia GTX 670 with 2GB DDR5
32GB SSD
2 TB HDD
DVD-burner

If I had the time, it'd literally be worth it for me to simply drive over there and get it (that's 700 miles or so). And in case you're wondering, while Medion is a relatively "cheap" brand of computer (and the cases tend to be a bit loud and plastic), their components are always fairly good - their motherboards are all MSI for example, the SSD is a Corsair.
Click to expand...
That seems awfully cheap for the specs. What's the catch?
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Ravenpoe said:
That seems awfully cheap for the specs. What's the catch?
Click to expand...
Well, Aldi's a hard discounter, so their prices tend to be very cheap - and, of course, they only put something like 4 or 5 of these pcs per shop. If you want to be sure to get one, you better be there the first day they go on sale half an hour before opening time.
A long long time ago, I can still remember, (how the music used to make me smile...And I knew that if I had a chance....), I actually went with my dad to pick up the then-awesome Pentium 3 666MHz, and the first two Aldi's we came to had lines so long that personnel was already telling people to go elsewhere - an hour before the shop opened.

That said, one "catch" is that they don't have any extra cooling besides just the case fans - so they tend to be quite loud. Other than that...None that I know of. Some of their pcs are better-built than others, but their customer service is, very surprisingly, pretty good.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Though I ended up building something quite different, I used Tom's Hardware to get a gauge on good video cards, motherboards, and CPUs.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Different question, but related, of course.

On the one hand, there's this pc:

MEDION® AKOYA PC P5357 F

i5-4430
Windows 8
8GB DDR63-1600MHz
1 TB HDD
64GB SSD
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 1.5GB
DVD-rewriter

All built and ready to go, for €849.

On the other hand, if I try and build things myself:

i5-4430
Windows 8
8GB DDR3-1600MHz
1 TB HDD
120GB SSD
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB Jetstream
DVD-rewiter
a case and power supply etc

All loose pieces I'd have to configure together myself, for about €850.

The second one has a larger SSD, a much better graphics card, a slightly lesser motherboard (1e has a H85, second a B85), which are benefits, but I have to completely build it myself and there's absolutely no extras anywhere on it, which are the obvious down sides.
Would you say it's worth building it myself - considering I'm really, really bad at fine motor skills and tend to be clumsy as well? I mean, I'll probably end up replacing the GFx card somewhere down the line anyway, probably later with the second one... But the first one comes with a 2 year warranty and such as well, of course....So, err, WWYD? Assuming you're not a tech specialist who eats chips for breakfast :p
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

If manual dexterity is a concern, it's OK to go for the first one...depending on its power supply.
Upgrading SSD/GPU later is a very easy process, upgrading the PSU is not.

--Patrick
 
drifter

drifter

Do you want this for gaming? A GT 640 is not a good card. I mean, it'll get the job done at low/medium, but otherwise you're gonna be disappointed.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

I have a decent video card but it's old.

I could build, but I am so behind the times on my hardware knowledge it is pitiful.

I only have like a $700 budget for a tower.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

All 4 of the systems you link have unsatisfactory gaming cards. I would not recommend less than a 660 (NVIDIA) or x8xx-series (AMD) card as a minimum.

Actually right now I think the best BFB cards are AMD's 7850 or NVIDIA's 660/760.

--Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

drifter said:
A quick look around r/buildapc shows a $600 build sans optical drive, if you're inclined to build yourself. Looks pretty good, although I'll depend upon PatrThom to weigh in on it.
Click to expand...
I had no idea that pcpartpicker tool existed. Nice!
This $675 build is designed to get the best foundation under you without compromising your ability to play too much at the absolute minimum price. You said you already had a video card of some sort, so I would expect you to stick with that until you can afford something newer (or suffer with the not-entirely-terrible integrated graphics for a couple months).
One caveat: The (budget) processor I really wanted to recommend is the i3-4330, but apparently it hasn't quite been released yet. However, once it is released, I expect its price to probably be lower than the $200 i5-4570 that is part of the above build, so you might want to hold off a couple months to see if you can knock an extra $50-$75 off the above price.

--Patrick
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

A colleague who also has a pc store thingie (from the back of his van sort of deal) put together this pc:
i5-3500
8GB Ballistix memory
1TB HDD (Western Digital)
128 SSD
GTX 470 1GB
Win 7 pro
in a Sharkoon case, with a 700W OCZ power supply.

Compared to the Medion pc linked earlier, far worse graphics card and a bit weaker processor, but better power supply, bigger SSD, better cooling (Medion cases aren't exactly known for being anything more than a box to put parts in :p)

For the Medion, I checked and there's a Fortron 450W power supply in there, which is of course on the low side...
I can see the trade-offs, and in theory I'd say the graphics card, eh, I'll replace it in a year or so, but I'm not exactly convinced. Should I tell him to go stuff it since the Medion is better, or would you say it's something that can be built on?
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

I have now finally bought the parts. Expect lots of posts voicing my frustration and annoyance in the future, along with cries for help and annoying newbie questions.

@PatrThom: you didn't have anything planned next week, did you? :p

(I'll be watching videos and how to's first, don't worry :))[DOUBLEPOST=1375888316,1375888071][/DOUBLEPOST]Parts bought:

i5 4570
ASRock B85M-HDS
MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Twin Frozr Gaming
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST2000DM001, 2TB

Corsair Carbide 200R
LG IPS237L (monitor)
Gelid Solutions Tranquillo Rev.2
Corsair Vengeance LP CML8GX3M2A1600C9
LG GH24NS90 Zwart (DVD-drive)
Seasonic M12II 520W
Crucial 2.5" M500 120GB[DOUBLEPOST=1375888458][/DOUBLEPOST]Don't ask me about that lay-out. I tried copy-pasting without lay-out and it still comes out like ass.
 
ncts_dodge_man

ncts_dodge_man

Biggest thing to remember if your Processor is not already on the Motherboard - use thermal grease (if it's not already attached to the heatsink). You'll cook your processor without it.

Otherwise, take your time and make sure parts fit in together correctly and are plugged in all of the way.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

i5 4570
-Probably not the best gaming CPU, but probably the best all-around CPU for the money.

ASRock B85M-HDS
-Odd. ASRock's site says that board has 2xPCI. But it doesn't. And the manual confirms no PCI. Must be a typo.
-With the B85 chipset, you give up built-in RAID and SSD caching, but this shouldn't matter if you use the SSD as your boot drive.
-Slightly limited for RAM expansion because it only has 2xRAM slots, but this is not at all that unusual for the Micro-ATX size.
-Intel has already said they're going to update CPU code to prohibit overclocking on non-xxxK CPUs, but again I don't think this'll be an issue.
-Make sure the BIOS has the SATA ports set to AHCI mode to get their maximum performance.

MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Twin Frozr Gaming
-Performance is either on par with or just below the previous generation GTX 670 but at slightly higher power consumption. The 760 is quieter, though.
-FWIW, the 760 overclocks well, which can gain you as much as 20% performance (to higher than the 670, but at higher power/noise, of course).
-I was actually surprised you spent part of your budget on a card rather than saving up for later.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST2000DM001, 2TB
-The 64MB cache will help offset the slow, mechanical access time.
-Plenty of storage for stuff that your computer doesn't need to access all the time. Music, documents, all that stuff. A great D:\.
-BUUUUT...keep external backups anyway.

Corsair Carbide 200R
-Handy interior, and good price, but the drive cage is a source of frustration for at least one reviewer.

LG IPS237L (monitor)
-It's a monitor. If you are OK staring at it for 3-8hrs/day, then great.

Gelid Solutions Tranquillo Rev.2
-This cooler looks like it can be oriented to throw air in whatever direction is best. Make sure to choose the one that directs air where it needs to go.

Corsair Vengeance LP CML8GX3M2A1600C9
-It's some decent RAM.

LG GH24NS90 Zwart (DVD-drive)
-It's a DVD drive.

Seasonic M12II 520W
-A little underpowered for the really big graphics cards or power-hungry CPUs, could limit your overclocking in the future. 520W is right about what your system specs require, the thing to remember is that any future upgrades will require your CPU be one that is 95W or less, or that your GPU is right around 175W or less.

Crucial 2.5" M500 120GB
-The Marvell controller is reasonably good at cleaning up after itself (less reliant on TRIM to stay fast).
-120GB should be enough to hold everything you have to do all the time. A good C:\.
-Make sure to set it to SATA-III (6Gb/s) speed for best performance.

--Patrick
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top