Could someone please review my spec?

[cdarke]

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2400 Quad Core (3.10GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8P67 PRO (NEW REV 3.0): USB 3.0/SATA 6Gb/s, CrossFireX™ & SLI
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD5770 - DVI,HDMI - DX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2010 (Incl Disc & 1 License for 3 devices) (£87)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

If you were to change one item, what would it be?

 

[Nemesis]

What is going to be your main use for this machine?
Also what budget are you working towards?

 

[DeadEyeDuk]

Did you plump for the Silver warranty? (Well, someone'll suggest it anyway!)

Also, did you want a wireless card, because I have noticed the last few days a few people no realising its not standard and forget to add it, only to recieve said PC and wonder why they cant connect to their wireless network!

What kind of a price jump is it from the i5-2400 to the 2500? Just saying with all the wizz stuff you have elsewhere, might be an idea to have a CPU to match? (No idea how good the 2400 is of course!)

DED

 

[cdarke]

I realised I did not say what my needs are. This is for work and play. Work, my main apps. are MS Office (mostly PowerPoint) and Visual Studio C/C++ with Perl and Python (both fairly lightweight). XAMPP (Apache) with PHP and MySQL (all on Windoze) for fairly lightweight exercises. Heavyweight stuff is VMWare with maybe 2 or 3 Linux VMs running lightweight stuff. Comms is mostly emails and the odd product download, no online gaming.
Games -Civ V (I might even get into Lua).

I have a 500Gb SATA drive from my old machine (Dell 710) which I want to mount in addition to the new one.

 

[Nemesis]

The i5 2400 is just the i5 2500 running at 0.2Ghz Slower. The Price difference is £16

 

[cdarke]

I'll look into the i5-2500, thanks. I have a fairly new wireless adapter on my existing machine thanks, EdiMax 802.11 (150Mbps, allegedly).

 

[cdarke]

Sounds like a no-brainer, 2500 it is then.

 

[Nemesis]

There are a few suggestions i would like to make but they depend on knowing your budget

 

[cdarke]

I posted a brief overview of the use in here somewhere, I think!

Budget is (round numbers) about £1000. I'm a bit under, but I'm not complaining about that.

 

[Nemesis]

The only difference between the PRO motherboard and the Standard P8P67 is SLI support so you could drop that if you plan on staying with ATI
You dont use any programs which support CUDA processing do you (If so a NVIDIA card may be preferable)
Also i would stretch my wallet to include a better GPU than that with that budget.
And lastly a better case would be ideal, Something such as the PCS Maelstrom T900 or above. This is down to personal taste and what case you like the look of.

 

[cdarke]

Many thanks for the suggestions. A couple of questions if you don't mind:
I notice that the PCS Maelstrom T900 has a top mounted fan. What sort of clearance should there be above it? I will be putting this under a desk, about 70cm vertical space.

Update: I like the look of the Coolmaster 690 II, but it looks like the front USB ports are behind a grid. Is that right?

I have a Radeon HD5770 in my old machine which is quite new, I was going to use that to drive a second monitor - nothing fancy, just so I can read 2 docs at a time (I don't need to couple them). I thought it safer to go with the same type, or would that not matter? Which main card would you recommend?

 

[Nemesis]

The PCS Maelstrom T900 has a height of 45.6cm so youd be fine

The CM690 MKII has two USB ports, a headphone socket, a mic socket, a e-sata port, a light button, an on button and a reset button on the front
These can be found on the top of the case :

Also what Ports do you have on the back of your HD5770 as im pretty sure you are able to run two monitors on a single card.
So if that is possible then you could leave the option as (No, I already have a Grapics Card) and install it on arrival