Computer Building

[t0et0e]

Here is where I plan to shop,plan and build my rigs,to start with I plan to upgrade my current tower to the highest possible spec, within my budget. Then taking on board what I have learnt along the way will apply it to building a complete new system in a year or so.

Feel free to post your specs and plans and share any thoughts on things like good places to buy equipment etc

[t0et0e]

Google Can you run it? and you can scan your system to find out any games you can run or will endure a painful time with.

As for Battlefield 3 I definately need a new graphics card and really a new CPU, ones I have my eye on at the moment are, in order of priority I believe too...:-

CPU's Do tell if you know a better place

Nvidia GTX 570 Of course this depends if my PSU can handle it

Sound Card For good measure, eventually..

[t0et0e]

from recent discussions with a tech savvy dude, my motherboard doesn't actually support a 1333hz FSB! it only goes upto 800, and the ram is only on 500, so lesson learnt its not all about the ram

coz yeah 8 gb of ram but if it is bottlenecked but transfer rate it wont get used

[t0et0e]

So looking at my options I found a good rig for about £840, but to me, that's cheating and I will gain no experience in the area of building. So I am faced with a challenge, beat that price and enjoy the process!

STEP 1:- Motherboard Bundle, i7, 8gb RAM, and Board. PSU 700w

Motherboard Bundle £359.99 and PSU 700w £70.98

Thats the first step! Total so far £430.97

STEP 2:- Graphics Card

Nvidia GTX 570 £249.98

That's step 2, looking like mid April'12 Brings it upto £680.95

STEP 3:- Sound Card

Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty £119.99

And the last bit of optional kit totals it at £800.94,

OVERVIEW:-

Not much difference in just buying a whole new tower, but somethings I have chosen are the best I can budget for, and of course the added bonus of doing it this way is that I don't need to save for a long period of time to Bulk buy, I can spread it out over a few months, also learning loads (hopefully no major painful errors) along the way!

[t0et0e]

It has been a great experience building this rig, the only word of advice i can say is, be careful you may go overbudget when you start getting addicted to each upgrade's results. That said here is a breakdown of my new rig.

Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional Series £125.98

PCI-Express PCI-E 1X Riser PCIe Card Extender Adapter Flex Cable Ribbon 15cm New x3 £6.72

Turtle Beach Z6A PC Headset £60

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 £428.37

G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit £46.37

OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £86.66

AeroCool Sixth Element Full Tower Case - White £58.32

Akasa AK-H254 60CM 3-Pin Fan Extension Cable (AK-H254) x5 £8.30

Akasa AK-CB001 Single PSU 4-pin Molex to 4 Fans (AK-CB001) x2 £3.32

BitFenix Spectre 120mm Fan - White x3 £24

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Edition Upgrade £61.17

Novatech PowerStation Black Edition 750W Silent ATX2 Modular Power Supply £64.98

I7 2600 - 8GB - H67 £359.99

Comes to a total of:-

£1334.18

admittedly i went for higher spec graphics card and ended up getting the odd thing here and there that i felt would be cooler

also i have my eye on a few more things such as a nice cpu cooling fan and new joystick, but these are going to have to wait abit as think my girlfriend is sick of the expense

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