Thanks for responding. I knew the sort of position I was putting you in but I also knew I was putting myself at the mercy of being told I'd made horrendous choices by someone with infinity more knowledge than me in the field. In my defence though, I did have a lot of knowledge backed up, used this and bought it over the course of a three hour Skype call with a very knowledgeable friend that'll help my put it together. Oh yeah, I already wrote that.
With regards to the RAM, I was aiming for Corsair, G.Skill or Kingston but the difference between them all was practically indistinguishable for a layman. The cost between all of them was negligible and I ended up going for the one my friend has and suggested amongst those we narrowed it down to.
The difference between in price between an i7 930 and the i5 760 was $95. Considering how much that would've pushed up the motherboard (and the RAM because I would've HAD to get 6gb), I stuck the i5 in the basket and decided to review it at the end. Given the cost, it stayed lol. I at least went for 8MB cache over 4MB and will overclock it to somewhere in the region of 3.5GHz.
I went with the 690 case because it was recommended everywhere, for most of the builds on that guide, had a shiney gold star thing on the site I bought from an LOADS of 5* reviews. It just came across as a really, really good piece of kit for a good price.
One thing we deliberated on for a while was whether to get a 5870 1GB or the 5850 2GB. After a lot of searching later (hell I almost asked you over AiM at one point but got confused by your away message) we came to the decision that the 5870 was far better. Looking through a Tom's Hardware benchmark test on L4D2 at the resolution I run at, the 5870 1GB won over the 2GB 5850 which was a big turning point.
One thing I spent probably more money on than I should've was the HDD. I was initially going to get one (or two) 1TB F3 Spinpoints but ultimately decided that double the cache and 300,000 spins (instead of 50,000) was worth the step up.
I paid a little extra to get that PSU over a Corsair one we were looking at. £10 more for an extra 100W and some other shit seemed well worth it.
Oh and my current PC is AMD 64 Dual Core 4200+, 2GB RAM and a GeForce 7900GS 256MB. And yes, that runs at 1680x1050. Jealous??
Now that I think about it I don't know why I even mentioned the i7 930. Theyre $199 here compared to $195 for the i5.. but that's at Microcenter which is a US only retailer ;x International prices can be wonky sometimes.
The only way a 2GB 5850 could even compete with a 1GB 5870 is when you're talking about 3-monitor eyefinity, where the extra memory can flex its muscle. So you definitely made the right call there.
Oh, and my AIM is 'MarandoPSU' nowadays. Ditched the old screenname from the teenage years, if that's the away message that confused ya :)
With regards to the RAM, I was aiming for Corsair, G.Skill or Kingston but the difference between them all was practically indistinguishable for a layman. The cost between all of them was negligible and I ended up going for the one my friend has and suggested amongst those we narrowed it down to.
The difference between in price between an i7 930 and the i5 760 was $95. Considering how much that would've pushed up the motherboard (and the RAM because I would've HAD to get 6gb), I stuck the i5 in the basket and decided to review it at the end. Given the cost, it stayed lol. I at least went for 8MB cache over 4MB and will overclock it to somewhere in the region of 3.5GHz.
I went with the 690 case because it was recommended everywhere, for most of the builds on that guide, had a shiney gold star thing on the site I bought from an LOADS of 5* reviews. It just came across as a really, really good piece of kit for a good price.
One thing we deliberated on for a while was whether to get a 5870 1GB or the 5850 2GB. After a lot of searching later (hell I almost asked you over AiM at one point but got confused by your away message) we came to the decision that the 5870 was far better. Looking through a Tom's Hardware benchmark test on L4D2 at the resolution I run at, the 5870 1GB won over the 2GB 5850 which was a big turning point.
One thing I spent probably more money on than I should've was the HDD. I was initially going to get one (or two) 1TB F3 Spinpoints but ultimately decided that double the cache and 300,000 spins (instead of 50,000) was worth the step up.
I paid a little extra to get that PSU over a Corsair one we were looking at. £10 more for an extra 100W and some other shit seemed well worth it.
Oh and my current PC is AMD 64 Dual Core 4200+, 2GB RAM and a GeForce 7900GS 256MB. And yes, that runs at 1680x1050. Jealous??
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The only way a 2GB 5850 could even compete with a 1GB 5870 is when you're talking about 3-monitor eyefinity, where the extra memory can flex its muscle. So you definitely made the right call there.
Oh, and my AIM is 'MarandoPSU' nowadays. Ditched the old screenname from the teenage years, if that's the away message that confused ya :)
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