Just about to put in an order for the new computer build and thought it wouldnt be right without posting it on afterdawn for the good ol times.
So any suggestions would be great :)
Its for a friend who doesnt game and purely to speed up day to day activitys (Hes got an old dell) which yes i know this is slight overkill but definatly futureproof for a good while. Therefore no overclocking hence the retail packs, not OEM might aswell use stock fans aye :).
My usual marks out of 10 system:
CPU: 10/10 - The only i7 worth buying, they're now pretty good value CPUs
Mobo: 4/10 - cheap and Asus is not a good combination. Buy an EX58-UD3R instead, £139 at Scan.
RAM: 9/10 - Not the highest performance, but the best value, and like all corsair products, solidly reliable.
GPU: 3/10 - 1GB of RAM on an HD4650. Why? You'd barely tell the difference between 256MB and 512MB with a GPU like that. The 512MB card is reasonable value for a card, but they're very weak cards for gaming overall, similar to the 2006 era Radeon X1900 and Geforce 7900 series in performance. What you gain by not having 1GB you could spend some of on the upgrade to an HD4670 which is much more powerful, more akin to an 8800GS or HD3850.
PSU: 6/10 - Reasonable units, you can do better than an OCZ, but for the price, it's not a bad unit. For a graphics card without a PCIe connector though, a Corsair 450W VX (or HX, sometimes they're almost the same price) would be a better unit.
Case: 9/10 - one of the best cheap cases out there, but with an i7 it's wise to buy an extra 2 or 3 120mm fans to fill the missing ones (Side + Front)
HDD: 7/10 - Good drive, but how much extra is a 500GB these days? £5?
DVD: 6/10 - LG make good DVD writers, but you could probably save a few quid by not getting it retail, with no disadvantages.
