Building a Computer

At some point this year, probably over summer, I want to build me a decent computer, but have never done it before and to be honest have no idea where to start. I'm looking to spend no more than £600-700. Any tips, links to good sites? Thanks

You need to decide on what you are going to be using the computer for. Work, Gaming, Video editing? This will help you plan out how you will split the money. You also have to decide if you want to make it look pretty. Nice cases cost money.

How much do you know about computer hardware?

The main components you're looking to buy are:

CPU & Heatsink, RAM, Motherboard, HDD, PSU, Case, Graphics Card, DVD Drive.

Then the peripherals like mouse, kb, monitor, speakers etc.

You will want a quick ( 2ms ) respnse time screen this one is cheap and good quality!!
Screen -scan.co.uk

John wrote:You will want a quick ( 2ms ) respnse time screen this one is cheap and good quality!!
Screen -scan.co.uk

Anything below 10ms cannot be noticed by the human eye so a response time or 8,4 or 2ms will be sufficient for gaming. 16 is fine for anything else.

I do advocate Iiyama screens though. I think mine is great.

Probably a bit of gaming, not so much video editing, but as long as it's half decent at most things, and still will be in a few years I'd be happy. Cases I'm not too fussed about either.
I don't know much about computer hardware, so any help is much appreciated. I've heard that more than 8GB RAM is generally unnecessary, and a good graphics card can be less than £100, but other than that I'm pretty much in the dark on how much I should spend on bits. I just don't wanna get ripped off and end up with stuff I don't need

John, that monitor looks perfect

You certainly can get a decent GPU for under £100 if you're only going to be doing a bit of gaming.

CPU wise you can't go wrong with an Intel Sandybridge at the moment and a low end Gigabyte or Asus motherboard to fit it. Good performance at a pretty decent price.

8gb is more than enough RAM and will be for a few years more. That is unless you decide on running VMware with 10 machines open at once.

Make sure you get a well built case with decent airflow. You can get well built cases for £50+ anything less and it might fall apart if you put too many hard drives in.

This brings up another question. How much hdd space do you need/want? Are you a media whore who downloads all of the movies and TV shows? Installs every bit of software you can and many many games? If so you may need a few Tb. But I've been happy with 1tb for a long time.

ElliottH wrote:

John, that monitor looks perfect

becase its my screen

hdd i would say 2x 1tb is good they will probly only cost 30-40£ each now having the second allows you to fully backup your system.

you can now get some good cases on the cheap i think mine was only £20 and is one of the best ive had!

In summer you may be looking at DDR4 ram tho will probably cost a bomb!
DD3 is good enough and you are best of matching it to the motherboard, if it has 4 slots get 4x 2gb ram if it only has 2 slots get 2x 4gb ram

I would suggest getting 2x4gb even if you have 4 slots just in case you feel like upgrading.

1 or 2 Tb should be plentyy, I usually just stream stuff if I want to watch it, or buy the DVDs if I really like it.
Any other good sites, you know of? Where did you guys get things from? I'm not buying anything just yet though so I'm really just making sure I know what to look for when I do get round to it. If I get a job over summer I'll probably buy alll the luxuries as well, good speakers and a big comfy chair

John wrote:hdd i would say 2x 1tb is good they will probly only cost 30-40£ each now having the second allows you to fully backup your system.

Due to the flooding in Thailand, the price of hard drives trebled, it's down to about double the cost now. You'll find most hard drives are ~£80-95, but I suppose by the summer they would have gone back to normal.

It might be worth looking at RAID 1 so your drive is mirrored onto the second as a backup.

EDIT: I usually just buy my stuff from Ebuyer, but Scan is very good, and sometimes you can find parts cheap on Amazon.

Aria.co.uk is also a good place to buy stuff (they also have a forum) along with Novatech and Dabs.

Overclockers is also pretty good!

An important point to mention is that if your wanting to overclock your processor (now or in the future when it inevitably starts to feel sluggish) you'll want to choose a motherboard with the P76 or Z68 chipset!

If your willing to spend £650~ perhaps look at getting an SSD as well for your OS and main apps!

Dave

Two more things to consider: audio and USB ports.

If you listen/watch to a lot of music/film, you may want to consider audio. Speakers obviously make the biggest difference; you can get 3.1 for £30-40, or 5.1 for £60-70. Also consider a sound card- the difference is not as obvious as the speakers themselves, but you definitely notice it. Somewhere around the £50 mark will get you mid-range card.

Secondly, USB ports. Most motherboards give you 4 USB ports, but this may not be enough. Once you've plugged in a mouse and keyboard, that only leave a couple for flash drives, external hard drives, etc. You can buy a USB adapter that will give you an additional 2-4 ports (for around £20), however you need to make sure that you have a spare PCI Express port. Needless to say, you should be buying a USB 3.0 motherboard (an subsequently USB 3.0 adaptor).