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When I have more time today I will have a proper look around and price something that is more comparable to PCSpecialist one.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking them, I know a few people who have bought from them and nothing but praise for the service they offer. £100 or £300, is better in my pocket than some one elses. When I was looking at mine I seriously considered a pre build more from a laziness point of view more than anything else but, to get the same spec I built pushed the price beyond my budget. When you when you consider I’ve spent almost the last 20 years working with Computer Hardware in one form or another it was a luxury I couldn’t afford!
@xdc the doc wrote:
@bmstalker wrote:
Also, if you want to find the cheapest of each part, use this website
you can specify criteria for each part and it will show you the selection available at the lowest price. Great site, but I ordered all from the one site. Might help you though WET
Good site Ben – just looking at it now as I am tempted by a 670 myself. Actually looking at prices it reminds me of another point – that 670 Lammie links to is very cheap – but it only has one small looking fan – there are loads of different versions out there and most people would pay a bit extra to get one of the nicer ones (I am looking at this one) http://www.ebuyer.com/368520-gigabyte-gv-n670oc-2gd-gv-n670oc-2gd
These cost 40-50 quid more than the basic version – so it would be worth you asking PC specialist exactly what brand they are using WET. When I bought my computer from them a few years back I was worried as i was getting a notoriously loud 470 – but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were going to fit the Palit version of the card with a better cooling set up.
If they are doing the same with their 670s that means that you would have to knock off another 40 or 50 quid from the potential savings from building yourself. Once you are down at the 100 quid mark i reckon you are wasting your time building yourself for sure.
I actually spent a little extra to get the EVGA 670GTX FTW version. I could have picked up a stock 670 for around £290 but for £310, I got a card that has the same performance as a 680 GTX (from scan.co.uk)
edit.
Which has actually dropped down to £304 since I purchased it.
son of a….
edit 2.
Also, scan are a great retailer, they busted their balls to get my order out to me asap and even gave me a free £90 monitor upgrade to keep my happy. I would absolutely recommend them and will do all my future computer shopping there because of the customer service (massive price variance may change that ofc)
@Lammie wrote:
When I have more time today I will have a proper look around and price something that is more comparable to PCSpecialist one.
Ok had some time this morning to have another look using Ben’s link to Part Picker. This is a close as I could get to the WET’s original quote with the only noticeable difference being the memory is a Kingston Hyper X Predator instead of the Kingston Hyper X Beast. Also this memory is 1866 and not 2400 not because of cost, but because that exact part wasn’t listed on the site. I’ve also added a more expensive cooler as the H40 wasn’t listed either.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£166.79 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£59.00 @ Ebuyer)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver Arctic Alumina 5g Thermal Paste (£7.27 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£83.98 @ Dabs)
Memory: Kingston Predator Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£110.60 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5″ Solid State Disk (£128.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£47.50 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (£279.98 @ Novatech)
Sound Card: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card (£63.49 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master Silencio 550 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£60.23 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: OCZ ZT 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£67.99 @ Dabs)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£11.66 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHOS104-06 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Drive (£22.98 @ Ebuyer)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£68.35 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1178.42
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-06 11:10 BST+0100)So, still £138.58 saving which could go towards something else like a monitor. If you took away the sound card theres another 60 odd quid so total savings push toward the £200 mark.
If fact, If I removed the sound card and the orginal saving with it included then total cost saving would be… £202.47 therefore, I win the challenge! :P. Seriously though, there are savings to be had, depends on whether your willing to pay the extra premuim for someone to build it for you and peace of mind.
Looking more tempting to self build seeing as I could drop the ram to 8Gb, lose the soundcard and now don’t need to purchase an OS. I could also upgrade the gfx card to the faster 670 mentioned earlier and possibly still be a few quid in to buy a new monitor!
I’d forgotten how “enjoyable” configuring a new PC could be lmao.
@Lammie wrote:
@Lammie wrote:
When I have more time today I will have a proper look around and price something that is more comparable to PCSpecialist one.
Ok had some time this morning to have another look using Ben’s link to Part Picker. This is a close as I could get to the WET’s original quote with the only noticeable difference being the memory is a Kingston Hyper X Predator instead of the Kingston Hyper X Beast. Also this memory is 1866 and not 2400 not because of cost, but because that exact part wasn’t listed on the site. I’ve also added a more expensive cooler as the H40 wasn’t listed either.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£166.79 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£59.00 @ Ebuyer)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver Arctic Alumina 5g Thermal Paste (£7.27 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£83.98 @ Dabs)
Memory: Kingston Predator Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£110.60 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5″ Solid State Disk (£128.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£47.50 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (£279.98 @ Novatech)
Sound Card: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card (£63.49 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master Silencio 550 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£60.23 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: OCZ ZT 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply (£67.99 @ Dabs)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£11.66 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHOS104-06 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Drive (£22.98 @ Ebuyer)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£68.35 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1178.42
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-06 11:10 BST+0100)So, still £138.58 saving which could go towards something else like a monitor. If you took away the sound card theres another 60 odd quid so total savings push toward the £200 mark.
If fact, If I removed the sound card and the orginal saving with it included then total cost saving would be… £202.47 therefore, I win the challenge! :P. Seriously though, there are savings to be had, depends on whether your willing to pay the extra premuim for someone to build it for you and peace of mind.
!!!!!!!!!!! You can’t remove the soundcard from your list and then add the savings on without taking it away from Eggs! LOL at the maths there!
So that is the best offer? You saved 138.58 quid, but actually the memory was slower… and the chip isnt overclocked at all…. two things that would be worth a fair bit i would say. Oh… and we don’t know what GFX card PC specialist are actually offering to install either – which might reduce the savings further.
Admit defeat! My gut feelings about self builds have been proved right in this case.
I think a rational conclusion from this thread is – if you self build you might save about 100-150 quid on a 1300 quid setup – but you would need to overclock it yourself and if you cant get it to boot when you are finished you could be spending several days troubleshooting (says the voice of experience).
If you have infinite time / like mucking about with computers then saving 100 quid is probably still sensible. For me though it is a no brainer. I have no problems with folk who want to do this… I just think self builders tend to fool themselves a wee bit about how much they have saved whenever these threads come up. 😀
I think one thing you are glossing over doc is the lack of selection in most pre builds. When selecting my components, selected very specidic parts that allowed me to maximise performance for budget. If i wanted similar perfwas my machine from a pre built, i wold have had to pay a lot more. The pre builds dont alow for the micro selection of components like having 20 different models of 670 gtx to select from, same as ram etc. You have a basic (and often poorly optimised) choice.
I looked into ordering my system pre built from lots of retailers and for similar performance, i was looking at 2-300 more.
We could challenge you the other way, find my system prebuilt for withing this £200 windows with equal or better components.
@bmstalker wrote:
We could challenge you the other way, find my system prebuilt for withing this £200 windows with equal or better components.
I dunno – maybe. You need to list exactly what kit you have and the exact price you paid then – that is missing from your post.
These conversations always end up the same way – someone says “build it for yourself it is a lot cheaper” I say “I don’t think it is that much cheaper actually… here is the evidence” and then someone says… “yeah but if you build it for yourself it is much cheaper”. It is a weird phenomenon. Possibly an example of post purchase rationalisation (or in this case post build rationalisation 🙂 )
What you are saying about increasing choice when you build yourself goes without saying – how much better optimised you end up being… that is a hard thing to quantify! If you put a premium on this then of course DIY is the only way to go.
It all boils down how much you think the effort is to do something yourself. For me, I’d rather spend 50 quid on a few pints rather than to someone who could do it for me. Generally I’d feel I was being lazy not doing it myself,but only do so up to the point where i’d not have full confidence in avoiding damage to components, eg i’m happy to opt for an overclocked bundle.
With that bit of sense out of the way, lets try amd stretch my knowledge a bit and tackle your point about RAM in Lammie’s build. As far as I understand, the front side bus speed offers very little over 1600 on a K series i5, 2 or 3% low, as far as remember from when I was looking at it. You can achieve the higher frequencies to use with fast memory, but for 2 or 3%, i’d deem the extra cost unnecessary.
I don’t mind getting shot down if i’m wrong on this because i’d like to know if I am.
Well i dunno Matt – thats some of the fun uncertainty oftrying to do your own overclocking isn’t it 🙂 Buy the cheap memory… find that you cant overclock to the speeds you wanted… and then find you are stuck because you cant RMA stuff you have overclocked. Thats why buying a pre clocked build costs a bit extra!
Besides the point though – we are just talking about cost here… you cant replace a product with an inferior version and then claim the savings for the self build camp, whether the superior product is worth the extra cash or not is a completely separate topic.
Sorry doc maybe I wasn’t clear, i’m all for oc’d bundles, and while i’ve neglected to look at the details of Lammie’s option, I don’t think 1600 frequency ram would affect the cpu oc’d speed, and the performance gain of using faster ram is minimal.
It’s also not irrelevant to consider what you say are inferior options, it’s bamg for buck, and you get that choice through self building.
Matt, reference your FSB Query. Yes it is right to say the ultimate speed and performance of memory is wholly limited to the FSB of the system board. Yes you can try and save a few quid and get slower memory and overclock it but it can get a bit more complicated than that as you need to factor in timings, clock cycles and voltages. But in general terms you are correct. So if a board is rated at a maximum FSB of say 1666Mhz it will only support memory of that speed so putting faster memory is of no consequence and the board can only run it at it’s rated speed.
Doc, you are correct regarding the removal of said Soundcard , based on previous posts the general consensus of advice offered to wet was not to waste money on it, yourself included. Regardless of wether the saving is £138 or £400 the point is you can save money and invest it elsewhere on the build or piss it up the wall.
Re overclocked bundle, again there isn’t an option for this via PartPicker but it’s made so much easier now via apps that come shipped with the MB it’s almost irrelevant. You don’t even need to go into the BIOS in most cases now and fanny around with a multitude of settings, and hope it doesn’t blue screen at boot or go up in a puff of smoke.
At the end of the day, It’s really shouldn’t be about having to prove or disprove one postion over the other. WET asked for some advice he has recieved a range of views and untimately it’s up to WET wether or not to take that advice.
As you seem so determined to prove your point lets examine this further to see if your argument holds water. If you can prove me wrong I’ll hold my hands up and admit defeat (maybe…) So I counter challenge you find a prebuild system with the same compents I’ve posted (forget the overclocking bit at the minute as it’s irrelevant) within the magic £200 window.
Just to further my query slightly, wet’s prebuild board supports the higher fsb, so am I right in the slight performance gain part of my previous statement? The internet told me yes when I researched it a while back, but that was about 6 months ago.
@Alzir wrote:
Just to further my query slightly, wet’s prebuild board supports the higher fsb, so am I right in the slight performance gain part of my previous statement? The internet told me yes when I researched it a while back, but that was about 6 months ago.
Yes, if the board supports the higher speed memory. How much performance gain versus price differential is another debate! 😀
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