New PC Thread #25421

[Heeuge]

Which base model did you start with on CyberPower? In PCPro's recently announced 2011 awards, they scored a creditable mid-table position for desktop sellers.

The motherboard looks to be one of the more basic Z68 chipset ones that Gigabyte sells, it has a single PS/2 port (so you can connect either your old keyboard or mouse) and a parallel port.
As far as alternatives go, I'd be tempted to stick with the P67 chipset models. The only additional features that the newer Z68 chipset adds is onboard graphics (although the 2500K has built-in VGA, the P67 doesn't allow using it - with an discrete VGA card this becomes irrelevant) and Rapid Storage Technology (SSD caching). Unless you'll be doing bucketloads of encoding the RST isn't too important and the onbard VGA is redundant - the P67 boards will give you more features for your money.
The trusty Asus P8P67 series are options on the list for most of the models on CyberPower's site but I'll hold back on further judgement until I know what base model you're looking at.

Personally, I'd say £1100 seems a lot for the kit but I'll bat that down later

[Smuigh]

It was just built from scratch. Was what I was looking for from a website to see if there was any notable difference in price. Tbh I didn't look for pre-built customisable systems there.

Looked at CCL which came second in those awards. This doesn't seem too bad, although there are no options and still over £1k with Windows.

I hope I'm not being overly ignorant and asking too much. I do appreciate your help

[Brechnar]

With all the new pc threads lately it feels like there should be a dedicated forum

[Heeuge]

If you can wait till tomorrow morning I should have time to have a check through things and maybe even draw up a component pricelist that shows how much you could save if you have a go at building yourself (or bribe a mate into helping).

I'd rather you ask questions and end up with what you want than keep schtum and end up paying £1000+ for overpriced bits & bobs!

[Heeuge]

Quick (!) comparisons.....

IMAGES INCOMING!!



The last spec you listed, built using identical (or cheapest when no brand is provided) parts bought from Scan:






£761.82 delivered - Not a bad price and certainly not a bad list of components.

I wonder what else we could get for that price though?







For £756.47 delivered you get a few important tweaks to the spec, notably a more feature-laden motherboard, faster RAM, better/faster SSD and twice the HDD capacity, for the sake of a slightly lesser case (still a 690 Dominator, just the 'lite' version that ChillBlast offer) and a 600W PSU instead of 650 (albeit still a decent 'named' brand).

That's £180 cheaper than the prebuilt models that are lower specced. Not bad!




Finally, what could you get for the full £1000?





Now we're talking!
Keeping the CPU, RAM, HDD & Motherboard from my second spec, we've added the improved case from the first spec and upgraded to the following:
¤ Power Supply is now a Corsair 750W Gaming model
¤ SSD is now a 128GB Crucial M4 (twice the space to store all your games etc as well as OS).
¤ 2GB ATi 6950 VGA card doubles the vram for smooooth framerates & big textures in high-res gaming.
¤ The DVD Writer is also a BluRay reader.

Of course all this is irrelevant if you flat-out refuse to build your own PC but honestly, it's not as difficult as you think. Most people have a mate who does that kind of thing - personally, sad as I am, I enjoy putting them together...... I can honestly say I've never destroyed a component while manhandling it into a new case!

The satisfaction of logging onto your own PC, built with your own (hopefully not too bloody) hands, can't be underestimated.


PS - Adding Windows 7 Home Premium adds £74.48 (from Scan, I'd shop around and see if it's cheaper elsewhere ) brings the total costs of the three specs I've listed to £836.30, £830.95 and an almost spot-on £1000.05


The money you save over buying a pre-built from Chillblast, CCL, CyberPower buys quite a lot of beer / a better monitor / a return train ticket to Ashee's lovenest but if you buy from them you get a warranty (assuming the companies still exist for the next 2/3 years!) and peace of mind that your girly hands probably won't break anything.


Your choice dude!

[Smuigh]

Ok, so that's a massive eye opener. I think I'm meeting the friend who might be able to help me down the pub tonight so I'll have a chat with him. Either way I think those numbers may have changed my mind.

I take it there shouldn't be too much problem swapping a few things between those builds. Eg BluRay reader is a waste of money for me, and I doubt I'll need a 2Tb second HD as I can barely fill my 350Gb internal and 1Tb external at the moment

Thanks again for all this, you're a legend. Seems like quite a bit of effort went into the calculations, muchly appreciated.

[Heeuge]

(Something like this helps pass the quiet times at work)


Of course you can swap out any parts you like, the BluRay drive was more to show you could get a lot more for your money.
I'd possibly keep the ATi 6950, drop the 2TB HDD down to 1TB and revert to a DVD-RW - you still get a damn fine spec whatever you go for!


PS - Congrats on seeing the light

[Roper]

If you're worried about your first build scan also seem to offer an insurance service against damaging your components while you carry out the build, and it doesn't seem much extra. Okay potentially money down the drain, but could give you some peace of mind? In fact if you don't want this be sure to remove it as the sneaky buggers add it by default.

Also I think you can still get free delivery if you create an avforum account and link it to your scan account, saving you around a tenner. Link below.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/scan_offer.php

[Heeuge]

Also I think you can still get free delivery if you create an avforum account and link it to your scan account, saving you around a tenner. Link below.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/scan_offer.php

Aye, good point. They've upped the minimum spend to qualify to £100 if I remember rightly. Not a bother for you though!

[Roper]

Ah yeah £100 now, on the plus side it did give me free next day rather than the 2-3 days mentioned on the link.

Bad news though, just spotted the bit that says you have to be registered with AVForums for 14 days first.

[Heeuge]

Oops, just noticed I'd not updated the PSU on the £1000 spec list from the 650W model to this 750W replacement. My bad!

[Heeuge]

In case you've not ordered anything yet, Scan's weekend offers are up - the CPU, motherboard, HDD, VGA & case we've discussed are all a few pounds cheaper for the next few days.

[Roper]

Ooh, damn you scan and your weekend deals!

Tiny tip from me having received all my stuff. Assuming you want to be able to connect both drives as SATA 3 you might want to chuck another SATA 3 cable in your basket as you only get one with the board. (I guess it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference with the HDD, but if you've got it you probably wanna use it)

[Heeuge]

Is Smoo's radio silence an indication that he tried to build a PC and blew things (himself!) up?






Any excuse to post Arrested Development stuff = win!

[Smuigh]

No no, everything's fine. Just took a little longer than I wanted to get around to ordering it.