re quote

[vanthus]

like jack im not caring about playing games at full throttle,so ive changed processor from 6 to 4 core,& ram from 8 to 4gb.also changed case,i see people telling him to change graphics card from 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5850 PCI EXPRESS to gtx 460,ive read on other sites yould be crazy to do this as the 5850 is better than even the gtx 465.so i would really appreciate some advice from you guys (or girls)
Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 965 (3.40GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION

Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0

Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)

Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5850 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

2nd Graphics Card
NONE

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
40GB Intel® X25-V 2.5" SSD (34nm / upto 170MB/sR | 35MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

3rd Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

RAID
NONE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
10x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£89)

2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Power Supply & Case Cooling
CORSAIR 650W PSU (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£76)

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)

Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium PCI Express (£66)

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
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)

TV Card
HAUPPAUGE HI-DEF SATELITTE DVB-S2 TV RECIEVER (WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2)

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
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

Monitor
NONE

2nd Monitor
NONE

DVI Cable
NONE

GeForce 3D Vision
NONE

Keyboard & Mouse
NONE

Mouse
Logitech® MX™518 Optical Gaming Mouse (£29)

Speakers
LOGITECH Z323 2.1 Stereo speakers with Rich bass and 360-degree sound (£39)

Webcam
NONE

Headsets (VOIP)
Logitech® PC Headset 860 Stereo with in-line volume control (£15)

Surge Protection
Belkin 8-Socket 2M SurgeMaster with £175,000 Protection Warranty! (£18)

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

price £1324.

 

[Sleinous]

if you want, you can downgrade the HDD to the 3gb/s WD10EARS (still 64mb cache) just runs at 3gb/s. But, anyway, HDDs dont ever operate at 6gb/s due to their relatively slow access times in relation to an SSD. yes, you do see a minute speed increase, but only in certain read write tasks So, really not worth it. the 3gb/s one is identical, just a green one, for power saving and obviously 3gb/s data transfer speed.

I notice you went for the 640GB 3gb/s drive too. Maybe you could now get 2x 1TB WD10EARS as you will save a little on the WD1002FAEX

CPU Cooler is fine, CPU is fine too. Graphics card is your choice. What the reviews often forget about is the CUDA technology you get with a GTX 460. So in some respects it would always thrash a 5850 at certain tasks. For example, video conversion through Badaboom using the CUDA tech (note that atm Badaboom doesnt support the 400 series GPus but it will at some point).

Sensible choice on the Samsung RAM.

Hope that helps.

 

[vanthus]

thanks for that sleinous,what do you think of changing processor from 6 to 4 core,sure makes some difference in the price.

 

[Sleinous]

Unless you're running some specialist programs that can make full use of 6 cores. E.g. folding@home or programming of some sort, 4 cores is more than enough

 

[PCS]

Great spec you've put together there, but do you really need ther extra DVD Writer drive? You Blu-ray writer can write DVD's too, and so unless you plan to regurarly copy DVD's directly from disc to disc, there's no real requirement for this (one drive can still copy and discs).

About the HD5850 - many of our forum emmbers are Nvidia fans and therefore recommend the GTX460/465 over Radeon cards, but you're correct in saying that the 5850 is a higher performing card in most benchmarks.

 

[vanthus]

Great spec you've put together there, but do you really need ther extra DVD Writer drive? You Blu-ray writer can write DVD's too, and so unless you plan to regurarly copy DVD's directly from disc to disc, there's no real requirement for this (one drive can still copy and discs).

About the HD5850 - many of our forum emmbers are Nvidia fans and therefore recommend the GTX460/465 over Radeon cards, but you're correct in saying that the 5850 is a higher performing card in most benchmarks.

glad you brought that up about dvd drives,im just not sure if the blueray drive can handle dual layer.

 

[vanthus]

just one more thing before i order,about usbs,ive had conflicting advice from pcspecialist,if i get 2 port usb 3.0 internal pci card will i still have usbs as standard,i just want to have usb3 option,but not at expense of losing all the usbs as standard as one guy has told me,hope that makes sense.also thanks to sleinous about the hard drives im going to go with that,just need an answer about the dual layer capabilities of the blueray drive.then i think im ready to go.

 

[Sleinous]

I do recall enquiring about dual layer on bd drives and am near 100% certain Pcs said yes. But still, triple check. No u wont lose the other usbs as they are all soldered onto the motherboard and face out the backplate + the frontal ones

 

[PCS]

To confirm, the current (20/09/10) Blu-ray re-writer drives do support dual layer DVD writing/reading. The current model is LG BH10LS30 with the following specifications:

BD Read Speed 10X
BD-R Read Speed 6X
BD-RE Read Speed 8X
BD-R Write Speed 6X
BD-RE Write Speed 2X
BD-RE DL Write Speed 2X
DVD-ROM Read Speed 12X
DVD-R Read Speed 16X
DVD+R Read Speed 16X
DVD-RW Read Speed 12X
DVD+RW Read Speed 12X
DVD-RAM Read Speed 12X
DVD-R Dual Layer Read Speed 12X
DVD+R Dual Layer Read Speed 12X
DVD-R Write Speed 16X
DVD+R Write Speed 16X
DVD-RW Write Speed 6X
DVD+RW Write Speed 8X
DVD-RAM Write Speed 12X
DVD +R Dual Layer Write Speed 8X
DVD -R Dual Layer Write Speed 8X
CD-ROM Read Speed 48X
CD-R Read Speed 48X
CD-RW Read Speed 40X
CD-R Write Speed 48X
CD-RW Write Speed 24X