[OT] Building a new comp, need help

[Dribble Joy]

Overclocking today is simpler than leveling a droner - you just tell it how fast you want it and off it goes. Or it doesn't, so it reverts to factory and you can try smth else.

So no fiddling about in the BIOS with voltages and whatnot anymore?

OK, next thing is what's the difference between the i5 3xxx and 4xxx CPUs? Is that simply the onboard graphics or something as there doesn't seem to be any difference otherwise at first glance. Also, what about this Ivybridge, Sandybridge, Haswell business?

[Agent L]

So no fiddling about in the BIOS with voltages and whatnot anymore?

Well, ofc you can (and have to) raise the voltage when you want to go from 2.5GHz to 5. But getting +20% like in the old days is a walk in a park.
Mostly because Intel went very clever - now everything is derived from one clock. Try to touch it and something will crash. So there is only one way to OC now, change the multiplier. Which is blocked on all except K's.

what's the difference between the i5 3xxx and 4xxx CPUs?

Just take a look at the socket. They won't even mount same mobos.

Also, what about this Ivybridge, Sandybridge, Haswell business?

These are generations. Sandy (2XXX) was the new architecture in 2011, 32nm. Ivy (3XXX) is Sandy remade in 22nm. Haswell (4XXX) is again new architecture, fresh out of Intel's stables this month.
Sadly, each new architecture means completely different socket, so you have to really pay attention to it.
I'd go for tried LGA1155 (Ivy or Sandy if you can get one much cheaper), unless someone can reliably say that Haswell is more bang for less buck. If you can find a shop that allows you to browse by socket, do it by all means, because Intel has like 8 incompatible sockets out right now.

[Dribble Joy]

unless someone can reliably say that Haswell is more bang for less buck.

A quick search indicates that Intel seems to be favouring power consumption (since mobile devices are 'where it's at') over processing power recently. Unless you're running programs highly optimised for Haswell there's little point for desktops. A big leap in battery life if you're looking at laptops though.

Probably looking at a 3570K then.

I noticed a couple, one retail and one OEM. I kinda know what those mean, but why the £22 difference? Is it simply a reselling mark-up?

[The Red Guy]

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/boxed...sor-43774.html

never had any issues with OEM but the retail fan is very versatile and can be used as a nice paperweight :P

[Britney]

OEM is probably the tray only, so without the stock cooler and stuff. I'd get a haswell i mean it's the newest generation and idk how much less a sandy bridge combo is but it can't be that much cheaper really.

[Agent L]

BOX is: processor, cooler with fan and pre-applied thermal grease, tiny plastic shell protecting the processor, paper box, paper warranty printed in a dozen of languages, often a sticker to display proudly on your case.
OEM is just the cpu. Often the plastic shell too.

Warranty differences does not bother EU residents - if you're buying it as a retail customer then default consumer rights protection is still better then most producer's warranties. Even if buyer is a company, there is nothing to worry about. The chip either works - which means it won't break on it's own, or it doesn't work - which is a breach of contract even without warranty.
The manufacturer warranty becomes important ass-cover when you resell.

Best word to describe box cooler is "adequate". The only problem with box coolers is they are imho one-use only. They work best with their factory applied, super-sticky grease. So once you take if off, it'll never be as good even with Arctic Silver.
Box cooler is nice when you get it for next to nothing, but £22 is a damned armed robbery when you can pay £29 for a real cooler.

[The Red Guy]

The boxed cooler on a 3570K (especially overclocked) is simply not an option. Loud as hell and it is just not sufficient to cool the CPU properly. At the utmost you can keep it as an emergency replacement.

[Dribble Joy]

OK, so the next thing is the mobo chipset razzmatazz. Z77 seems to be the thing for the 1155 socket, but there seems to be a whole load of the usual added on letters to bamboozle this ignoramus by the manufacturers. Was looking at this one, but there are so many just from gigabyte and asus, let alone the rest.

[Britney]

Z77 is the one you want for a sandy bridge cause that's the one supporting easy as pie overclocking. But yeah it's a huge jungle out there with all the mainboards and its hard as hell to find out which one you want to go for. Price goes up for extra stuff like more (e) sata 3 ports and sli/crossfire. be sure not to get a micro atx motherboard by accident if you're building a normal pc.

[paolo escobar]

Intel > AMD

I wouldnt use AMD, even if I got it for free.

I wouldn't use AMD either and I do get them sent to me for free.

[Agent L]

I'd just ignore all extra features and read OC reviews, starting with the cheapest board and stopping at first good enough. Most important differences are not in enumerated "features", but in quality - like stiffness of PCB, layout of components, size of heatsinks.
For example, look at the £77 one : http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/...board_review/6
Still managed to get to 4.6GHz, just with manual tweaking and feeling like it's going to fall apart.

SLI/Crossfire are imho little more than expensive toys, so it's not an important factor. Same goes for SATA-over-9000 ports. No plate drive will be limited by SATA2 (300Gb/s) and even best SSDs can make use of SATA3 only in short bursts, making little difference except for benchmarks.

be sure not to get a micro atx motherboard by accident if you're building a normal pc.

Why not? Most of us just put just one card (gfx), in some very rare cases a second sound card, so few slots is not a problem. Micro atx on the other hand gives you more options when choosing a case and allows building a smaller computer so I consider it to be advantageous.

[Dribble Joy]

OK, BDay prezzy was £100 towards a new monitor. That said I know less about monitors than the gubbins that go inside the box it sits next to.

So I'm looking for a monitor between £100 and £150 that will work with my existing comp (though that isn't critical) and the latest GFX cards.

I'm primarily after quality/refresh rate rather than resolution/size/over-compensation.

[flib]

Make sure the response time is 5ms or lower, otherwise you'll probably notice "input lag."

Gaming on a monitor with 120hz refresh-rate is amazing; I don't think I could go back to 60hz. That said, I doubt you'll find many 120hz monitors in your price-range. Also, in order to really take advantage of 120hz, your graphics card needs to be able to render at least some of those extra frames.
If you went with the GTX 770, I imagine you'd be able to pull off more than 60fps in most newer games at reasonably high settings. Not going overboard with anti-aliasing settings helps a lot. 8x MSAA is generally sufficient; more than that doesn't look much better and costs significant performance. (TXAA also looks really nice in games that support it.)
I try to balance graphics settings so I get around 90fps, because I don't notice the difference with more frames than that.

[Brammers]

I think resolution does matter. You certainly want to aim for 1080p minimum which is 1920x1080. Since you seen my monitor recently, the resolution on that is 1920x1200 That extra 120 rows helps me a lot with my coding work, but I guess it may not be important to you.

Worth spending extra on a good monitor, it will outlast the PC.

[Cursed Shadow]

If you got some extra money:

Fractal Design R4 <3

DJ, I know you said you have a case, but this is an item of beauty.
I love my case, it's super quiet, airflow is fantastic and they have thought of everything.

It's also dipped in price, and is at its cheapest:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/frac...amazon-1653988

I'm running:

CPU: i5 3570k
GFX: 7870 Tahiti LE
PSU: Corsair CX600M
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB
SDD: Samsung 840 Series Pro 128GB (It's enough, and it's awesome for the price)
MB: AsRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard

Reasonably priced kit, and it's powerful for my requirements.

I recommend the site: www.aria.co.uk for PC Components, they usually have some nice deals.