Help me build my i7-2600 desktop computer

tech321

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Hi there,

I need some help building my i7-2600 desktop computer.

I've decided to get the Dell XPS 8300 but just need to know which combinations of RAM, hard drive and graphics card work best together and anything else I need to consider before I place my order.

Many thanks in advance.

 

tech321

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Please could someone tell me if the below components are compatible?

My computer will be used for web design, spreadsheets and email, there will be some multi tasking involved so I need something that's quick and reliable.


PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB) Edit
OPERATING SYSTEM English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT) Edit
SYSTEM RECOVERY OS Windows® Recovery Media Not included Edit
SERVICES AND SUPPORT 1Yr Collect & Returns Warranty – No upgrade selected Edit
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP DataSafe Online Backup 2GB - 1 year licence Edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word & Excel w/ads. No PowerPoint or Outlook Edit
PROTECT YOUR NEW PC McAfee® Security Center 30-Days trial version Edit
MONITOR Display Not Included Edit
MEMORY 12288MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096 + 2x2048] Memory Edit
OPTICAL DRIVE Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) & 16X DVD+/-RW (Win 7 Only) Edit
HARD DRIVE 2TB Dual Hard Drive RAID 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7,200 rpm) Edit
GRAPHICS CARD NVIDIA® GeForce GT 545 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card Edit
KEYBOARD Dell™ USB Entry Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY) Edit
MOUSE Dell Optical Scroll USB (2 buttons scroll) DUAL TONE Mouse Edit
SOUND SOFTWARE Sound : Integrated 7.1 with THX® TruStudio
 
You can't mix RAM sticks. I'm not sure why it's giving you that option. You'd be fine with just the 2x4gb.
That's an outdated graphics card. What are your options? A 6770 would be nice and ~$100.
I stick by my above comment.
 

tech321

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Hi, thanks for your message.


Options below:


Processor

Intel® Core™ i5-2400 Processor (3.10GHz, 6MB) [add £75.00]
Intel® Core™ i5-2500 Processor (3.30GHz, 6MB) [add £91.67]
Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB) [add £300.00]
Make new things possible !
Intel® Core™ i3-2120 Processor (3.30GHz, 3MB) [Included in Price]

Operating System

English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT) [Included in Price]
English Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate (64 BIT) [add £100.00]
Dell Recommended

Memory

3072MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [3x1024] Memory [Included in Price]
4096MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x2048] Memory [add £33.34]
6144MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x2048 + 2x1024] Memory [add £83.34]
8192MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [4x2048] Memory [add £141.67]
8192MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096] Memory [add £141.67]
12288MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096 + 2x2048] Memory [add £208.34]
16384MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [4x4096] Memory [add £291.67]
Better for multitasking

Optical Drive

DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with Roxio and DVD Burn software [Included in Price]
Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) [add £83.34]
Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) & 16X DVD+/-RW (Win 7 Only) [add £116.67]
Dell Recommended
6x Blu-Ray Disc™ RW (BluRay/DVD/CD read & write) Drive [add £150.00]
6x Blu-Ray Disc™ RW (BluRay/DVD/CD read & write) Drive & & 16X DVD+/-RW [add £175.00]

Hard Drive

500GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive [Included in Price
1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm) [add £50.00]
1TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x500GB - 7200rpm) [add £58.34]
2TB Dual Hard Drive RAID 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7,200 rpm) [add £116.67]

Graphics Card

Graphics : Integrated Intel® HD 2000 [Included in Price]
NVIDIA® GeForce G405 512MB Graphics Card [add £66.67]
NVIDIA® GeForce GTS 450 1.5GB DDR5 Graphics Card [add £191.67]
NVIDIA® GeForce GT 530 1GB DDR3 Graphics Card [add £91.67]
Dell Recommended
NVIDIA® GeForce GT 545 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card [add £150.00]
NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1.25GB GDDR5 Graphics Card [add £308.33]
Graphics : 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450 [add £50.00]
AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card [add £266.67]


Here's the link: http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=d00x8301&c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1&model_id=xps-8300
 

scapegoat_44

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Hefty Prices !!! They are taking you for a RIDE !!!

The memory is sub standard ; memory sticks with 1600 MHz is the way to go .

If the RIG is meant for gaming i wouldn't settle for anything less than a GTX560Ti or AMD HD6950 .

You could also drop the processor to an i5 2500K if its going to be a gaming only RIG ..

Mobo : Get yourself a nice z68 board with PCIe 3.0 Compatibility

Watch some tutorials on the Youtube , may be rope in a friend and build the machine yourself . You could add another graphics card with the $$ you saved !!

GL
 

...

I'd build you one if you're in the New York area!
What kind of "web design" are you doing? What application(s) are you using? You may be totally fine with an i3-2100.
 

Petrofsky

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I'm pretty sure you can. If you have four slots, two are A and two are B. As long as the two A's match and the two B's, you're OK.
 
The 2600k is a great CPU .... whether you need it, will depend upon whether the apps you are using are multi-threaded. If the answer is yes, the 2600k or 2700k would be on my buy list. If not, then there's a good argument to drop down to the 2500k.....you have to decide whether the extra $100 is worth the 0.1 GHz speed bump. Each of your options however has no "K", I would not buy the non K versions.

I'd suggest limiting ya RAM modules to 2 at this point......though I don't have much experience in this regard w/ SB, with the I7-9xx series, you oft would have ya CPU OC's gimped a bit when filling that 2nd set of RAM slots (unless ya dropped RAM speed amd / or timings) .... and always best not to mix RAM sizes. And I wouldn't get less than DDR3-1600 ..... and 8 GB is sufficient for the apps you stated..... RAID won't help unless ya spreadsheets are H U G E.....an SSD will reduce ya Windows boot time from like 21 w/ a good HD to 16 seconds w/ the SSD.

For optical I'd suggest a combo BR Player DVD-RW....recording media for BR is too expensive.

The 560 Ti is the best card there.... if you into gaming ..... or if any of ya apps use CUDA.

Here's a recent build I did for a web design guy who also had video editing / gaming interests .... he needed all the peripherals, including monitor KB, Mouse , OS .... Total was $ 2,185 or about 1,4000 GBP w/o those price would be $1,600 or 1,030 GBP

Case - $ 115 - Corsair 500R White http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139010
PSU - $ 90 - XFX Core Edition 850 PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139022
MoBo - $ 210 - ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131790
CPU - $ 300 - Intel Core i7-2600K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070
Cooler - $ 42 - Hyper 612 PWM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103103
TIM - $ 5 - Shin Etsu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150080
RAM - $ 50 - (2 x 4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 (White) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233199
GFX - $ 230 - Asus GTX 560 900Mhz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121425
GFX - Later - Asus GTX 560 900Mhz Same
HD - $ 240 - Barracuda XT 2TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148506
SSD - $ 210 - Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120 GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226236
DVD Writer - $ 58 - Asus Model BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135247
Card Reader $ 50 AeroCool FP-01 55 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820314001
Monitor $ 290 ASUS VG236HE Black 23" 120 Hz Monitor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236104
Keyboard - $ 95 - Logitech G510 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126100
Mouse - $ 60 - Logitech G500 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104318
OS - $ 140 - Win 7-64 Home Professional http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116992
 

tech321

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Thanks everyone for your replies!

I'll be using applications such as Wordpress, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Apache, PHP & MySQL. Please could someone advise which components matter the most?

I won't be using my computer for gaming.

 

Petrofsky

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Those programs are not demanding at all. They wouldn't tax any decent rig. Except maybe Photoshop sometimes, where an SSD and 16G of RAM would make things go in the blink of an eye. You have to decide whether it's worth several hundred dollars to avoid a few seconds' wait now and then.