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Please help me select a matx mobo, cpu, memory combination

D

dodonpachi

n00b
Joined
Aug 7, 2012
Messages
61
1) What will you be doing with this PC?

Graphics work - Photoshop, Illustrator, minor video editing, general multimedia

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

approx £250

3) Which country do you live in?

UK (England)

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget?

motherboard, cpu, memory, cooler if needed

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing?

mini P180 case, Antec EarthWatts 500W 80%+ Efficiency PSU - 80mm Fan 4x SATA 2x PCI-E, SSD, HDD, 1080p monitor, 4670 if needed

6) Will you be overclocking?

no

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?

1080p

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

now

9) What features do you need in a motherboard?

Things I would like, none of which are vital:

On-board video although although i can always use my old 4670 and upgrade in future, although keeping fan noise down would be nice.

T.I based firewire for audio interface.

A decent amount of sata connections. Esata would be nice.

...I'm more concerned with getting the "best" card for my budget in terms of speed/reliability rather than specific features.


10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?

yes 64bit




My computer has been fine for 3 years or so but is now somewhat temperamental after my girlfriend did some over enthusiastic hoovering by it and I suspect the mobo or memory so I'd like to do a modest upgrade anyway. I presently have Gigabyte GA-EG43M-S2H iG43, 2GB DDR2, Quad Q8200.

I would like something to make CS6 suite run decently I don't do anything with video beyond fairly basic editing. Mostly I need it for graphic design/vector work.

I would like it to be fairly painless and have been looking at i5 bundles that seem to come with 8GB usually. I don't know much about motherboards except that I need a matx one.

Are either of these any good?

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/30099...refer=PCSH&searchfilters=s{i5+bundle}+c{420}+

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Core-...1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1344202714&sr=1-2

or something from here?

http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs-overclocked-bundles

If not can people make suggestions for something i5 based that is good value? I would be buying from Amazon, Ebuyer, Overclockers, Play etc.

Thank you.
 
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Your links don't work. Please re-answer question 9 without violating forum rules. Also, which Antec 500W PSU do you have?
 
I can't recommend any of those combos for two reason:
1) Considering your usage scenario, you shouldn't go for mobos with only two DIMM slots which means you're looking at 8GB of RAM max with those combos.
2) They don't list what RAM models comes with those bundles. That's important because it lets us know what voltage the RAM is rated at. If the voltage is higher than 1.5V, it's unsuitable for an Intel CPU. So that piece of info is important.

Anyway, CPU wise, go for the Core i5 3450 or 2400 CPU, whichever is cheaper.

As for the motherboard, if you're actually fine with 8GB of RAM max, then this cheap Gigabyte will be fine:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-3gb-s-pcie-20-(x16)-d-sub-(vga)-dvi-i-micro-

RAM wise, I recommend this:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...0-(1333)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-9-9-9-24-150v
 
so:

Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H
Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3
Core i5 3450/2400 CPU

Is all on budget for me. Is there a decent after-market cooling fan you would suggest for this combination?
 
One more question (sorry).

Is there anything I would need to change in the BIOS that wouldn't be correct by default? ...I imagine this possibly isn't the place to ask that.
 
I just finished a couple of builds with GA-B75M-D3H motherboards, and the one thing I needed to change was the SATA controller mode. IDE mode is selected by default, but you may want to change it to AHCI, depending on whether you were using it on your old system.
 
Jaxon_s said:
I just finished a couple of builds with GA-B75M-D3H motherboards, and the one thing I needed to change was the SATA controller mode. IDE mode is selected by default, but you may want to change it to AHCI, depending on whether you were using it on your old system.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I had AHCI enabled on my old board. Now new parts are installed, I am doing a clean install of win7 x64. When I enable AHCI my install hangs at "expanding files ..24%" ...

When I then went back to IDE in the BIOS and tried to reinstall it hangs again around the same point and gives "windows cannot access installation sources" error message.

I have a OCZ vertex 2 as the system drive (only one plugged in at the moment) in SATA port 0 and my SATA DVD drive in port 1.

Can anyone help?
 
If you have a spare HDD, try installing Windows on that.
 
I really hate to point out that it's an OCZ drive. Do as Danny suggested though so we can eliminate it as the problem. If it still fails at the same point, then it's possibly a problem with the media, disk drive or something could be whack with the SATA controller.
 
I reinstalled using a 500gb Seagate that hasn't seen too much use, in AHCI mode. Windows installed fine. Thank god for this place. Are OCZ SSDs generally a poor choice then? I ask because I might try and install it on my slightly ageing Panasonic R7 notebook. Is there a good SSD I should get for my desktop?

One other thing. When I boot I get no BIOS screen whatsoever, it goes straight from blank screen to Windows splash screen (takes only a few seconds). I can access the BIOS via delete/f12 etc but otherwise it doesn't show by default. In the BIOS features "full screen logo show" is enabled, so I would have thought something would show before the Windows screen.

Should I be concerned by this?

Thank you all for your help.
 
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Old OCZ SSDs based on a version of the Sandforce controller aren't all that reliable. OCZ as a company isn't very honest with their customers either. Therefore we generally avoid OCZ at all costs. With that being said, I would probably just chalk up that OCZ SSD as a loss and move on.

The BIOS screen should load, could be that your monitor isn't coming on quick enough to catch it. Try disabling the "full screen logo show" to see if it shows the BIOS POST screen. I wouldn't be too concerned about it honestly.

Two highly recommended SSDs are the Crucial M4 series and the Samsung 830 series. With the 830s being the slightly better choice, but also cost a little more. If you can afford the 830s, go with them if not the M4s are not a bad choice either. Performance between the two are only really noticeable on synthetic benchmarks anyway.
 
The blue LED on my monitor stays on indicating that it's active, but when I reset or boot from cold I just get a black screen for a few seconds, then Windows screen, it's disconcerting.

Turning "full screen logo show" on or off seems to make no difference either way, it was doing this from the start despite its default "on" setting. Is this worth returning a board over?
 
Are you connecting the monitor via HDMI, Displayport or DVI?
 
DVI

Edit: The same thing happens with HDMI

Looking closely there is a blinking cursor for about a second, that's it.
 
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Unless it really bothers you, I really wouldn't worry about it. Though you could try contacting the motherboard manufacturer and talking to them about it. Checking to see if you have the latest BIOS wouldn't hurt either. Though IMHO, I would ignore it.
 
Looks like I should just get over it. I am really happy with how quiet my computer is now and all cores idle around 30c.

What GPU is recommended that is under £100 that will be OK with my PSU?
 
Thanks Danny.

Final update: After attaching a couple of my storage drives internally and one via esata the BIOS screen briefly showed, I guess these extra drives caused it to take slightly longer to boot.
 
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