[Kailight]

Hey all,

ok so i was thinking of just doing some minor upgrades to my pc and then after checking on here and finding out i need a new motherboard to go with with ram and gpu i decided i might as well go the full bang with a completely new pc.

Im going to be building it with a friend who has pc building experience but i wanted to get all the components myself and thought you guys would know if ive made any noobie mistakes.

So here goes:

Case: ANTEC VSK-2000 New Solution Tower Case (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...39092&context=)

PSU: Arianet Ezool 650W Tornado ATX2.2 Power Supply (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37291)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR3 PCI-Express Micro-ATX Motherboard (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37624)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 125W 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) Processor (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=35816)

RAM: 2x G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37609)

GPU: VTX ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5 (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=38060)

HD: Western Digital 500GB 3.5" SATA II Hard Drive (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=27026)

And then Windows 7 64bit.

Now im trying to do this on a budget, the total for all that is £843.60 and i was aiming to keep it all under £850 so i know ideally i should be going for a better motherboard and psu etc etc but i wanted to try and keep costs down and need to know if this set up would work of explode into a ball of fire etc

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

[BG-0]

Change power supply to http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=29099 or if you're really tight: http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=26933 You won't want to destroy £800 worth of quality components because you used a totally ******** quality power supply.
Get a Sapphire instead of a generic brand (VTX is not even a company that you can find info on, there won't be any customer support, the card will have the absolutely worst quality components on it, etc etc) http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=38063
Spend a little extra for a faster and double the capacity drive: http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37726 You won't regret it.
You could want to shift a bit off the CPU and get a full ATX board for ease of use and expandibility: http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=38137
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37520

Explode into a ball of fire is quite likely with an "Ezool" power supply. Other changes are quite just fine tuning
One good option, I'd say, would be a Phenom II x2 550: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CP-249-AM Quite likely to be able to be run as a quad core. Pair with a better board with better features and ACC support: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=5&subcat=1481

[Compiler]

Agreed on PSU, video card and everything. Cheap PSU = dead or malfunctioning expensive video card. That £300 5870 is the most expensive part and trying to power it up with a £25 PSU is a good way to smoke your system.
Corsair is top notch... if you can get it. Thermaltake and OCZ will be fine cheaper units. Trying to watch your budget.

I've opened the other two cores with an X2 550 and its running at 3.4Ghz easy. Only 1-2c warmer, still in the mid-30s. NICE!

The Samsung F3 is a good drive.

The mobo adds more money... but if you don't think its a problem, don't worry about it. After adding that card, you will have 1 PCI and 1 PCIe x1 slot let... which you would add... what? A wireless card, a TV tuner card... can't think of anything else. The bigger board gives you a bit more room... you'd have 3 PCIe slots and 2 PCI slots empty. Personally, over the past 5+ years... I've only added a single video card, other than my own TV tuner. (Out of 40 computers)

I usually just go with the mATX boards unless money is no object. Its not like the OLD days of 10 years ago: Video card, Audio card, Firewire, SCSI, RAID controller where more typical.

[Kailight]

thats tons of help, changed the cpu, psu, motherboard, gpu and hard drive like you said.

Because of the increased costing i changed the ram from 8gb 1333mhz to 4gb 1600mhz which saved me £75 so changed the price to £830 so still under my £850 budget and im pretty sure I personally wont see the difference between the 8gb and the 4gb, and i can always chuck 4gb more in a few months when i get a bit more cash behind me.

[Kailight]

yea my main concern was with the psu, definitely wasnt going to buy a psu without some feedback.

And thats nice to know about the cpu overclocking. All the upgrades are within my budget when i change the ram amount so it all seems to be working perfect.

[BG-0]

Ah, didn't see there was 2x2x2GB of RAM increasing the price, that's what would be the first thing to cut the costs on, good that you thought of that yourself. Get the CL8 1600 sticks while you're at it, worth the extra £2