[SOLVED] Snog, Marry or Avoid ?

[Pooler]

HI All

I have the chance to buy this spec at £1249, it seems a great spec for the price with a great CPU, GPU and big SSD. It is an HP Z1 Tower G5

Only issue I have with it is that the motherboard is an Intel Q370 and I understand those motherboards are limiting for gaming ?

To be honest though, I have never overclocked a PC in my life and certainly won't be adding a 2nd graphics card so am not a performance freak and just want a PC that will run everything, especially VR

Does this sound like a good deal for £1249 or should I avoid it and look to build my own based on a budget of £1299 ?

Brand	HP
Memory	16GB DDR4
Storage	2TB, 512GB (SSD)
Processor	i7-9700K
Product Type	Workstation
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Graphics Card	NVIDIA RTX 2080 8GB Graphics

 

[madmatt30]

It's an OK deal but you have no control over parts used when you buy an hp prebuilt.

That 2080 will be a reference style blower, I'd rather have an aftermarket 2070 super with good cooling than a blower style 2080 perosnally. Performance difference is about 5% between them.

 

[tennis2]

Although I'm generally not a fan of OEM machines, the price for the components seems good, but you're going to get VERY basic quality components.


PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£294.00 @ Technextday)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 35.14 CFM CPU Cooler (£19.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock B365M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£76.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Team T-FORCE DARK Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory (£56.99 @ Box Limited)
Storage: ADATA Ultimate SU800 512 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£56.54 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Toshiba P300 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£51.00 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB AMP MAXX Video Card (£633.86 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cougar MG130-G MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£37.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.14 @ CCL Computers)
Case Fan: Corsair 67.43 CFM 140 mm Fan (£4.99 @ Corsair UK)
Total: £1291.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-21 15:24 BST+0100

The above list is more just intended to match the component list of the HP machine whilst not sacrificing ethics by recommending bargain basement stuff.

I DON'T think the 2080 is worth the extra £163 (35%) compared to the 2070 Super for the <10% performance improvement

 

[Pooler]

It's an OK deal but you have no control over parts used when you buy an hp prebuilt.

That 2080 will be a reference style blower, I'd rather have an aftermarket 2070 super with good cooling than a blower style 2080 perosnally. Performance difference is about 5% between them.

Thanks mate

Yes the case is pretty small and there are limitations on second graphics card and overclocking because of the chip set used. I think the 2080 and 512mb SSD attracted me for the price.

I know PC Specialist custom build gaming PCs and PCWorld have pre-built ones, like this one here

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/compu...0-super-2-tb-hdd-256-gb-ssd-10196471-pdt.html

I can get 10% cashback at PCWorld so would bring it down to the same price as the HP - would you say that it is a better shout than the HP ?

 

[geofelt]

Looks reasonable to me, but I do not know your prices.

Nothing wrong with Q370 other than the inability to overclock.
Here is a reference to what you get with different chipsets:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151

I would prefer a graphics card with a blower in a case with limited ventilation.
They get gpu heat directly out of the case.