Chosen spec'. Advice needed please.

R

raydee

Active member
Hello helpful people.

I am new to forums and have been viewing some of the help given to other members.
I wonder if you can also help me.
I am a bit long in the tooth and not very very clever with computers, but my wife and I would like to buy our two sons a special present each of a new computer for Christmas.
I have shown below a copy of the specification that we have organised from the pcs web site and have offered to them and they seem quite pleased with it.
Have we chosen well ?.
Are we over the top with the spec' or is there anything that would be better for changing.
The pcs web site approved with what we have chosen.

We will be pleased for any help and guidance that anyone out there can give us.

Many thanks to all

raydee.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chosen spec' as follows....

Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU) AMD PHENOM II X6 1055T (2.80GHz/9MB CACHE/AM3/)
Motherboard ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM) 8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 6870 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
RAID RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD) (£9)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NONE
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£76)
Processor Cooling TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£16)
USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Floppy Disk Drive NONE
Firewire & Video Editing NONE
TV Card NONE
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor 19" Wide TFT Silver/Black 1440 x 900 5MS, D-Sub, DVI, 18.5" Panel (£89)
2nd Monitor NONE
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables NONE
GeForce 3D Vision NONE
Keyboard & Mouse Logitech® Wireless Desktop® MK250 Keyboard and Mouse Combo (£19)
Mouse NONE
Speakers LOGITECH S120 2.0 BLACK SPEAKER SYSTEM (£9)
Webcam NONE
Headsets (VOIP) NONE
Surge Protection NONE
Printer NONE
External Hard Drive NONE
Home Installation NONE
Warranty 3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Data Recovery NONE
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Miscellaneous Created Using Jargon Free Configurator
Price (excluding VAT) £925.96
Price £1,088.00

Order Quantity 1
Bulk Discount £0.00
Total Order price (Ex VAT) £925.96

Total Order Price £1,088.00
Payment Method
 
S

Slurpak

Silver Level Poster
with a budget at like that i would look advise a spec like this:

Case
COOLERMASTER CM690 MKII ADVANCED CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-760 Quad Core (2.80GHz, 8MB Cache) + Turbo Boost
Motherboard
ASUS® P7P55D-E PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX™ / SLI SUPPORT
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1280MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX470 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11 + MAFIA II
Free Item
FREE MAFIA II Game (RRP: £34.99) with a qualifying GTX 4xx Series GPU!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply & Case Cooling
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£76)
Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1156 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
IIYAMA E2271HDS 22" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D FULL HD 1920x1080 (£139)
Keyboard & Mouse
Logitech® Wireless Desktop® MK250 Keyboard and Mouse Combo (£19)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,095.00 including VAT and delivery.

by having an intel processor, you will get better performance than having an AMD processor and more 'futureproofness'
the 8 gigs of ram is a little excessive, 4 gigs of ram will be fine
the graphics card is personal preference, however i have specced a Nvidia GTX470, as my personal preference in Nvidia as you have the cuda cores for photoshopping and video editting, and the physx for gaming and the GTX470 fits in with the budget. im not very familiar with the ATI graphics cards, so cannot comment on it, however im sure someone will be along soon that knows more than me about the ATI cards.
i have swapped the 2 8MB cached 500gb hard drives with a single 1TB 64mb cached drive. the 64mb cache will offer you better performance, and you can partion the drive into 2 500gb's if you want.
the PSU is fine
the CPU cooler is unneeded unless you plan to overclock, which i don't advise, especially if you're not very very clever with computers.
i have replaced the monitor with a 22" Iilyama, as this is a much nicer looking screen, is bigger, and offers a higher resolution
the silver warranty is only £5 and offers a year collect and return, however this is completely up to you.

this spec would be good if your son's are into gaming, which im assuming from the graphics card that you have chosen, however if they are into photoshopping or video editting then you would be looking at a different spec. what would this computer mainly be used for?

EDIT: forgot to add in the logitech speakers, having these will increase the total order price to £1104
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: PCS
Phoenix

Phoenix

Prolific Poster
Change the two hard disks for a western digital caviar green (1TB) because RAID is very unpredictable and could result in the loss of all data across the two hard disks, it will also perform faster due to the higher cache. 4GB of RAM is enough to do pretty much any task right now so I wouldn't bother with 8GB, the titan fenrir cooler isn't really necessary either so I'd just use the standard cooler and upgrade the case to the Maelstrom T900.
 
R

raydee

Active member
Slurpak

Many thanks for your help and suggestions.
Much food for thought and I will be advised by what you have said.

I have to say that the spec that I came up with was straight out of the PCS pc build web site when we chose the Coolermaster Elite case. Not knowing very much about things I had to start somewhere and now your suggestions and upgrades are really useful.

I have an Intel processor in my existing PCS machine but again in this case I found the AMD one was already in the set spec’ but now I will change that.

No our sons are not into gaming and they say that they will not be using it for gaming at all.
They both want a good fast high spec’ machine that will allow them for use on the internet and emailing and photo editing, business and home documents and spread sheets etc.
Plus some extra for future expansion.
------------------------------------------------------------

Phoenix.

Many thanks for the information That has stopped me in my tracks.
I am concerned at what you say about RAID 1 mirrored as I always thought that it would be a failsafe way of insuring against loss of data if one hard drive failed.
I accept what you say and is there anywhere that I can learn more about this please ?.

With regard to the Titan Cooler. The only reason that it is there is that the PCS web site automatically included it in the chosen spec’. As I worked down through the spec it was just there so I thought that it must be a necessity.

I have already got 4 GB of ram on my pc using XP pro and I thought that I had read somewhere that windows 7 x 64 bit required more ram to run correctly.

What is the advantage of the Maelstrom case? Will this give better cooling than the Coolermaster case?.
 
Phoenix

Phoenix

Prolific Poster
Well basically if you get a virus or accidentally delete something on one hard disc, the second one mirrors the first and so you have the problem on both of them. You can read up about it on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1_failure_rate it can be useful in some situations such as if one of the hard drives stopped spinning and died but it's a fairly rare occurrence.

Unless you started creating the system from the overclocked section the titan fenrir shouldn't have been automatically added, it will perform better than the standard heatsink but it's not necessary unless the CPU is being overclocked. Windows XP can only make use of 3.3~GB of RAM so even though you have 4GB installed the operating system won't actually be able to utilize all of it.

Windows 7 can run with 2GB of RAM, having 4GB of RAM is enough to do 95% of things people do on a daily basis (gaming, office work, watching videos, light photo/video editing, internet browsing etc.). You only really need more than 4GB of RAM if you're using very resource heavy software such as 3DSMAX.

The Maelstrom T900 will provide better cooling and looks more interesting (I think your sons would prefer the look of it). As an alternative to the intel build you could swap the CPU for a Phenom II x4 970 (which is better than the 1055t for games) and make the other changes from slurpak's build.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: PCS
R

raydee

Active member
Thank you again Phoenix. We will be advised by what you have said.
We have scrapped the idea of RAID and have changed the hard drive to a Western Digital caviar green and changed to 4 GB of RAM.

The boys are not keen on the Maelstrom T900 case or the Coolermaster CM690 Mk11 case. They say that they prefer the Coolermaster Elite 310 and they like the idea of the USB outlets low on the front of the case.
Would their choice be ok with their spec’ ?.

They have decided on a new spec’ based upon Slurpak’s suggestion but altered slightly.
They have changed the graphics card because they say that they are not gaming and do not want the Mafia game.

They say that they do not want wireless facilities so have stuck with the standard on board

They say that they are happy with a 19” screen as they now have only 17”.

They have got their own keyboard and mouse and speakers.

This is their latest choice. What do you think ?.
If it is ok then we can go ahead and order them.


Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i3-550 Dual Core (3.20GHz, 4MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard ASUS® P7H57D-V EVO: FULL ATX, TRUE USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0GB/s
Memory (RAM) 4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
2nd Hard Disk NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NONE
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling 450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling INTEL SOCKET LGA1156 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Floppy Disk Drive NONE
Firewire & Video Editing NONE
TV Card NONE
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software Microsoft® Office Home & Business 2010 (1 License Product Key Card) (£155)
Anti-Virus BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Monitor 19" Wide TFT Silver/Black 1440 x 900 5MS, D-Sub, DVI, 18.5" Panel (£89)
2nd Monitor NONE
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables 1 x 2 METRE DVI-D CABLE (£5)
Eyefinity / GeForce 3D Vision NONE
Keyboard & Mouse NONE
Mouse NONE
Speakers NONE
Webcam NONE
Headsets (VOIP) NONE
Surge Protection NONE
Printer NONE
External Hard Drive NONE
Home Installation NONE
Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Data Recovery NONE
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Price (excluding VAT) £817.87
Price £961.00
Order Quantity
 
Rakk

Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
raydee said:
The boys are not keen on the Maelstrom T900 case or the Coolermaster CM690 Mk11 case. They say that they prefer the Coolermaster Elite 310 and they like the idea of the USB outlets low on the front of the case.
Would their choice be ok with their spec’ ?.
Click to expand...

Well, I've got the Coolermaster Elite 310 and it works fine for me, and I've got a higher spec CPU, slighter more RAM, and nearly the same GPU, as long as you leave it where it can get good airflow it should be perfectly fine.
 
Phoenix

Phoenix

Prolific Poster
The coolermaster elite 310 is a great case I just thought the flashing lights would appeal to them ^_^
There's not a lot of point getting the 2GB version of the GTX460 unless you'll be using a multi-monitor setup or a very high resolution monitor (larger than 1920x1080). Unless you really want to go with Intel an AMD phenom II x4 970 would perform a lot quicker and is a true quad core processor which isn't anymore expensive (http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-top-spec-pc/).
 
B

bananaracing

Member
If you are currrently using a 17 inch 4:3 monitor then a 19 inch widescreen monitor may be smaller heightwise but with a wider width

cheers banana
 
R

raydee

Active member
Many thanks to Phoenix, and Slurpak and all who have responded.
We have been guided by your advice given and the orders are now placed.
Many thanks to all you helpful people.
I will now close down this session.

Now that we have got the boys settled with their Christmas present I now intend to buy myself a present of a new pc,
so I will be joining the forum again very soon to seek your help.

Raydee.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top