PC Again

[Zed]

having not taken the plunge so far im looking at the following from Scan:


Base Specifications
Silverstone FT03B-Mini USB 3.0 Fortress Tower Mini ITX, Black
450W Silverstone Strider SST-ST45SF, Quiet Fan, SFX

Qty Selected Specifications

1 Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe - Intel Z77 Chipset, USB3 & WIFI Support!
1 Intel Core i5 3570K, Ivy Bridge, 3.4GHz, Quad Core, 6MB Cache
1 Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H60 high-performance CPU water-cooler

1 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3 1600Mhz
1 2GB EVGA GTX 670, 915MHz GPU, 1344 Cores, 6008MHz GDDR5
1 120GB Corsair Force 3, Read 550MB/sec, Write 510MB/sec - SF-2281
1 1TB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64Mb Cache
1 Sony AD-7800H Slot Loading DVD Drive

Anything wrong with that? (the fortress looks to be a nice lump of Aluminium and has some positive reviews on OCUK)

 

[Rochdale]

I've never built a mini ITX PC... so I'll say "hmmmmm"

Spec looks ok, I just don't like the form factor

 

[Chick]

Looks alright.
What's the price ?

 

[Aciiid]

um, you go for 16gb of ram but only an i5 ? got for 8 and an i7 or just an i7 and both.

is the corsair a ram drive or something ? if so not sure why they're quoting 500mb a sec when your hard disk does 6gb/s..... Sounds a bit slow. Make sure your hdd and this is plugged into the grey sata ports as they are 6gb/s.

 

[Rochdale]

The SSD speeds are the physical read/write speeds on the device, the 6GB/s on the SATA drive is the theoretical maximum bandwidth on the bus, not the speed of the disk, the SSD will be much faster than the HD.

 

[Zed]

Price is �1200 to the door.

 

[Zed]

I thought the I5 was the better CPU for gaming? ;-)

Or have we moved on again in the last 3 months....

And is 16gb not worth the extra right now?

 

[Rochdale]

It's not the better CPU for anything, but it's adequate for gaming, the i7 is as good for gaming but generally better for multi tasking blah de blah.

If you're just gaming then 8GB is probably sufficient, but RAM is so cheap at the moment I'd just get 16 anyway. In fact I did

 

[Zed]

The alternative could be something like this:

1 Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H, Intel Z77 Chipset
1 Intel Core i5 3570K, Ivy Bridge, 3.4GHz, Quad Core, 6MB Cache.
1 Thermalright Macho Performance CPU Cooler
1 8Gb (2x4Gb) Corsair Vengeance LP, DDR3, 1600Mhz
1 2GB EVGA GTX 670, 915MHz GPU, 1344 Cores, 6008MHz GDDR5
1 650W Corsair Enthusiast Series, TXM, Modular, 80PLUS Bronze (Single Graphics Card)
1 120GB Corsair Force 3, Read 550MB/sec, Write 510MB/sec - SF-2281
1 1TB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64Mb Cache

Coming in at �1160 to the door.

I also wonder if i could build this cheaper myself? (though i dont really like doing that)

 

[Rochdale]

I doubt you can do it cheaper yourself, not much point in doing it unless you enjoy it.

I don't see anything wrong with your original spec, you can debate i5 vs i7 or 8gb vs 16gb but what you've got should easily play games so long as that 450w PSU can power the GTX670, and if they're building it for you then I guess they'll be checking to make sure it does.

 

[Aciiid]

I'd recomend just getting the pc shop to build it for you rather than build it yourself as they will hopefully provide some sort of warantee for it. I've had friends in the past where the motherboard supplier was blaming the cpu etc.

The power supply sounds a bit small so I'd double check because if your graphics card really does pull 650w you won't be able to switch the machine on or it will just cut out when you start playing. Check the card's web site for it's actual specs of how much current it's pulling.

And I would double check it's using the grey sata ports when you get the machine as they are the fastest.

 

[Chick]

have a look at the mini's from: http://www.pcspecalist.co.uk do - quickly though you can get a slightly more powereful machine for 1050 (faster drives, better mobo)

I got a laptop from them a year ago and am still stunned by it's performance.

I'm planning to get a mini myself soon, and will definitely go back to them. they know their stuff.

 

[Zed]

It looks like the card typically pulls 170W but has a recommended minimum of 500W. So thats the bit that might be off putting.

 

[Agravaine]

The Scan 3XS FT03 Nanu got a very good review in Custom PC this month if you're after small form factor.

 

[Artanix]

build looks solid to me, 450w PSU could do with being a 500w. Just for the record, I'm running a 450w PSU with a AMD HD5770 and I was worried about power draw and thats 2 generations old now I think?

i5 vs i7 argument is as pointless as arguing whether 16gb or 24gb/32gb ram is better, unless you're planning on running 3 instances of crysis 2 on 3 seperate monitors, I would stick with i5, but might as well get the 16gb ram, the price increase is minimal.

SSD wise, I'd go for the OCZ Vertex 4 or the Samsung 830. The Samsung 830 has had alot of praise for a while. However recently I've been hearing alot of good things about the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, although it did have some bad press a few months ago, firmware updates seem to have sorted everything.

 

[Kelger]

All other points aside I have a personal dislike of Seagate drives. Maybe I'm unlucky but seen a lot more dead Seagate drives than any other manufacturer.

 

[Artanix]

All other points aside I have a personal dislike of Seagate drives. Maybe I'm unlucky but seen a lot more dead Seagate drives than any other manufacturer.

heh, back in the day I managed to kill 3 WD drives in 2 years, and had 2 maxtor drives that out lived them all. Was slightly confusing.