What system to buy

[PoolePaul]

Hi,

I am at somewhat of a dead end, and thought I would ask what I should do. Here's my problem. I am on a pretty limited budget (Roughly $1600), and have the following options available to me. I am looking at two second hand rigs and have found the following:

Case: Zalman Z9+ (Blue LED, digital temperature indicator and fan speed controller)
PSU: Powercool X-Viper 1050w modular 80+ Bronze
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99FX R2.0
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (Eight Core - 4ghz)
Aftermarket CPU/Heatsink AC Fan: Coolmaster Hyper 212 EVO
Memory (RAM): 16gb (2 x 8gb) Corsair 1866mhz
Graphics Card (GPU): ASUS Radeon R9 280x Top OC Edition - 1070mhz/3gb)
SSD: Kingston Hyperx 3K 240gb (Boot time only about 10/15 secs!)
HDD: Seagate 3tb 6gb/s - 7200rpm
Wireless Network Card: TP-Link N900 (802.11 a/b/g/n
Blu Ray Optical Disc Drive: ASUS BW16D1HT

This setup is roughly $1400, and comes with no monitor. In the other corner is this setup:

CASE: Thermaltake Level 10GT Full Tower
PROCESSOR: i7 2600K Quad Core 3.4GHz
MOTHERBOARD: Asus P8Z68-V Pro Intel Z68 Chipset
GRAPHICS CARD: Asus GTX 680 DIRECT CUII 2GB
POWERSUPPLY: 1000w RX-1000AE GOLD PLUS RATED
FANS: SHARKOON Silent Eagle - SILENT CASE FANS
HARD DRIVE 1: 300GB Gaming Western Digital VelociRaptor Sata-II 10,000RPM
HARD DRIVE 2: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)

This setup is about $1500, and comes with ASUS VG236 3D gaming monitor and is water cooled. I am going back and forth between both, as I think the first rig sounds good, and I have a LED TV/monitor that I could easily use. Cheers in advance for your advice

 

[zeph_yr]

If you are going to be streaming/recording games, go with the first one. Otherwise, I'd say the second one. How much RAM does the second one have?

 

[AMDRadeonHD]

i would choose the 2nd one

 

[PoolePaul]

If you are going to be streaming/recording games, go with the first one. Otherwise, I'd say the second one. How much RAM does the second one have?

I believe it has 8 gig of ram, but thats not really an issue. I will be using it mostly for gaming.

 

[zeph_yr]

If you are going to be streaming/recording games, go with the first one. Otherwise, I'd say the second one. How much RAM does the second one have?

I believe it has 8 gig of ram, but thats not really an issue. I will be using it mostly for gaming.

8gb is plenty for gaming. I think you will get the best performance from the second one (but not by much). Are you limited to just those two computers though? There are some better ones that you can get for the same cost.

 

[PoolePaul]

If you are going to be streaming/recording games, go with the first one. Otherwise, I'd say the second one. How much RAM does the second one have?

I believe it has 8 gig of ram, but thats not really an issue. I will be using it mostly for gaming.

8gb is plenty for gaming. I think you will get the best performance from the second one (but not by much). Are you limited to just those two computers though? There are some better ones that you can get for the same cost.

Hi,
I'm not strictly limited to these two, these are basically two models that are available in my area. I have toyed with the idea of new-building, but am a bit put off, as it's not something I have done before, and don't want to risk buying the parts and messing it up.

 

[zeph_yr]

I understand the pressure. It's really not too hard to build your own and there aren't many ways you could mess up, but if you aren't 100% comfortable I would buy prebuilt. Have you looked into customizing through somewhere like cyberpowerpc.com or ibuypower.com? That might be a better option.

 

[PoolePaul]

I understand the pressure. It's really not too hard to build your own and there aren't many ways you could mess up, but if you aren't 100% comfortable I would buy prebuilt. Have you looked into customizing through somewhere like cyberpowerpc.com or ibuypower.com? That might be a better option.

I haven't really considered speccing up through cyberpower. I just customized through DinoPc, and for the extra $200 I can get a pretty good rig, which is brand new, and also comes with a warranty, over buying something from a complete stranger with no warranty. So that's sorted then. Cheers.

 

[zeph_yr]

Sounds good. Let us know if you need anything else.

 

[tiny voices]

Both of the PSUs are junk. Change whichever you get to a 750w Antec, XFX, Seasonic, Corsair (not CX, CS, RM) unit.