Thread: New PC / Any Suggestions

Go Intel. Forget AMD, Bulldozer couldn't bulldoze it's way out of a paper bag and is actually in single threaded performance a step back compared to the already quite miserable Phenom2.

Other than that the build looks good for it's intended purpose.

I'd rather get this case
Prophecy.co.za - Coolermaster Elite 370 (RC-370-KKN1) Black Chassis - No PSU
it's got a much better future then the case you chose.

And then I'd go for this graphics card
Prophecy.co.za - Club3D CGAX-67724I AMD Radeon HD6770 1GB GDDR5 128-bit PCI-E x16

I'd also much rather get a full ATX board such as this Prophecy.co.za - Intel DH67CL-B3 Cold Lake LGA1155 DDR3 PCI-E x16 ATX especially considering the width of the graphics card suggested but since that would inflate the the cost of the build too much then yes your current choice is fine.

All your other choices are fine, I wouldn't change anything else.

Trust me even the i3-2100 would be better than your AMD choice, they just completely dropped the ball so bad that they're in fact slower than they were before with the Phenom2 Range (aside from majorly multi-threaded apps but those are few and far between and I'm talking about far more than the age-old issue of nothing even makes propper use of 4 cores).

The issue with mATX VS Full ATX wasn't to take a stronger graphics card it was the lack of expansion opportunity. Your average graphics card take up it's own slot and then is wide enough to cover the slot next to it and then you generally don't want to use the slot next to that so you don't obstruct the card's cooling or overheat anything you put into that slot from the graphics card's heat so on your usual mATX board you're left with just one PCI slot. Which means you have to choose between a sound card and TV card for instance rather than have the ability to use both and the same goes for any other expansion cards like wireless cards or extra USB or legacy slot cards or anything along those lines. Full ATX has more free slots for stuff like that.

You won't get any benefit from that RAM, all 1333Mhz RAM is basically equal, all the matters is you pick a good brand. You'd have to pick higher clocked RAM to get better performance and even then only for overclocking.


Great new processor choice but it presents a problem since it's an overclocking processor and that means that an H67 board is no longer good enough since it won't allow you to overclock. You now need something with either a P67 chipset or Z68.
The cheapest of those boards would be this
Prophecy.co.za - Intel Buffalo Flat DP67BA-B3 LGA1155 DDR3 (New B3 Sandybridge) PCI-E x16 but I have no idea how Intel boards fare at overclocking.
Next up cheapest would be this
Prophecy.co.za - Asus P8P67-M LGA1155 Dual-Channel DDR3 PCI-E x16
and unfortunately from there it starts climbing rapidly thanks all the out of stock boards with the first in stock full ATX board being this
Prophecy.co.za - Asus P8Z68-V LX LGA1155 Dual-Channel DDR3 LucidLogix Virtu/CrossFireX
So I guess in this case you either need to settle for mATX or hope the Intel board can deliver just as much as the ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI boards can when it comes to overclocking (then again with 1333Mhz RAM you won't be able to overclock as much anyways and you don't have a custom cooler either which further limits overclocking).

Perhaps a better choice since you don't really have the budget for a nice board or some higher clocked RAM or a custom CPU cooler might be to get the regular i-2600
http://www.prophecy.co.za/intel-core...e-p-87343.html
that way you can stick with the Cold Lake board AND have a stronger processor (at stock at least)


Any remaining budget needs to go to the graphics card (if I haven't used it all up on my other suggestions XD). You can always do bigger and better there. Next up would be HD6790 and then a HD6850 and then a 6870 and then perhaps a GTX560.

Basically just the extra threads and cache though that can translate to quite a bit of extra performance especially in the long run. But no you'd be far from stupid by settling for the regular 2500 especially on somewhat tight budget since it frees up money for the GPU department which would get you far more bang in games than a stronger processor would (at least for the next 2 years or so after that the gap between the stronger and weaker processors of generation starts widening rapidly as games start demanding more of the processors as well and by then any extra bang you got in the GPU department is just about nullified).
(mind you there was nothing wrong with the K version, it would have still worked even on the Cold Lake, just that you would have received ZERO benefit from the premium over the regular non-K version).

Yep that board is fine.

As for the RAM, well no neither is really better. As I said unless you pick higher clocks when looking to overclock (1600Mhz RAM and true 1.5v for Sandybridge (some like Kingston actually use 1.65v at 1600Mhz which isn't meant for Sandybridge but still sell it has 1.5v so there it becomes more important who you go with)) there's nothing really that makes any RAM any better than any other RAM providing you pick from a reputable maker. And Mushkin is just as reliable as Kingston and I'd also count Corsair and Transcend as reliable so just pick whichever is cheapest among them, no need to waste a couple of bucks on brand preference here in my opinion.

Stock cooling should be fine at stock clocks. Sandybridge (LGA1155) runs a lot cooler than the Nehalems (LGA1366, the previous generation of Core i-7s) so stock should do just fine. Certainly you should at least try stock first before spending money here you likely won't need especially also since the case change advised earlier already offers up more cooling.

As for the OS...well though I don't always care much about copyright especially since availability of stuff here in SA can often be so limited or even plain non-existant that I often have little choice but to just obtain stuff, the one thing I would never mess with is the OS. Though it's unfortunate how big and seemingly unnecessarily a portion of a budget it can eat up. Perhaps you could obtain a DSP version at a local PC store which would be a little cheaper (technically they aren't allowed to sell DSP versions without a system to put them on since DSP licenses are meant to be tied to hardware but few walk-in shops really know about that) though that means your license will basically be tied to your Motherboard and if you need to replace that the license becomes invalid since however you're already considering an invalid route you may not really care though and can try it this way legit at least for a while.

Looks good

For the PSU now I'd rather get this:
Prophecy.co.za - Antec HCG 520W 80PLUS Bronze Certified Gaming Power Supply
since the CX500 isn't quite a 500W, at least not @40C which is the temp all the good PSUs are rated at.

The next sensible step up in the graphics department however would eat up all remaining budget (not sure the HD6790 is worth the extra 300 so I'm skipping it) and would be this:
Prophecy.co.za - Sapphire Radeon HD6850 1GB GDDR5 256-bit PCI-E x16
Definitely would be worth it for an avid gamer though since depending on your intended settings you might not feel the 6770 is beefy enough (heck even the 6850 might not be beefy enough but it at least has a fair bit more grunt to offer than the 6770). Unless perhaps you'd want to make do now and see what sort of power the next generation of cards might be bring around the R2K price mark (for which you then have about R600 saved up already).

Just CS-Source and UT2004? Well then even the HD6770 is overkill as is the rest of your system lol
In that case I guess you might as well stick the 6770, it's not gonna allow you to max modern games but will definitely give you a good taste of what's out there beyond 2005 providing you aren't too liberal with the eye-candy. And should you get into modern games a year or so down the line there will almost certainly be something out that'll make you regret spending the extra on a 6850.

Well since you're choosing system assembly as well you could go for a DSP license but other than that I'm afraid I don't know. When people order out of stock items at Prophecy they generally get notified of alternatives and ETAs and so on so I'd probably just try much luck and order. You'd need Firestar or someone from the actual shop to give you a proper answer to this though. I'll try PMing him to come and take a look after posting this.

And yeah if you want to give BF3 a shot then the extra grunt of the 6850 will definitely help out.

The retail pack has been out of stock for a week or two now. I expect stock to arrive either end Jan or mid Feb, I'd guess. You can order this and, if the waiting time is too long, we can change to the DSP pack, if you want. That's pretty easy to arrange, and won't take any time to sort out.

Hi Nadar,

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, it is possible to put vat details etc on the invoice. Just reply to any of the emails we sent you with the details you want included, and we'll update it for you.

The DSP pack does come with a disc, yes