Building my first PC

[Bobness]

What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

Gaming, film editing and vfx.

What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

£1,500 - £1,600

What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

UK

IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.

I'm not too fussed about branding

What resolution will you be using?

1080p

WHEN do you plan to build it?

As soon as possible.
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I won't be using any of my own parts, and I don't intend to overclock either I've got a copy of windows ready, I just need to start purchasing/ building. I've done a bit of reading here and there on choosing PC parts but I decided it would be better to ask, so any help would be much appreciated

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Do you care for noise?

 

[Bobness]

Not that much. I almost always use a pair of headphones for gaming/working anyway so it would be the least of my concerns

 

[lehtv]

Just to be clear (the sticky is vague about this) do you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse and if not are those part of the £1500 budget?

 

[Bobness]

Yes I already own a monitor keyboard and mouse, thanks

 

[lehtv]

OK. £1500 is a lot to spend on a 1080p gaming machine. You can build an 1080p gaming beast easily for less than £1000, and any extra spent is not going to have a tangible impact on 1080p gaming performance. So what would be the best way to spend leftover budget, or should you spend it at all?

For your purposes, I would highly recommend a Dell U2711 monitor for £520. Extremely good image quality and 2560x1440 resolution on a 27" IPS panel. You're going to love it for video editing, and obviously it'll be awesome for gaming as well unless you're all about competitive online gaming (120hz would be better for that). The downside is that the resolution requires a bit more firepower to run smoothly, but a single GTX 670 will handle it pretty well, and you can spend a bit on SLI compatibility so that you can buy another 670 later if one is not enough.

On your budget I'd also recommend considering overclocking the CPU. It would benefit video encoding speed and it would also minimize bottlenecking with GTX 670 SLI at that resolution. Here's a build for you:

CPU i7-3770 £224 @ Amazon or i7-3770K £257 + Scythe Mugen 3 £40
Mobo Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H £120 @ Amazon
RAM 4x4GB Mushkin RAM £75 @ AriaPC
GPU Gigabyte GTX 670 £328 @ Scan
SSD Samsung 830 128GB £78 @ Scan
HDD Seagate 2TB 7200RPM £77 @ AriaPC
DVD Samsung DVD-RW £13 @ Scan
Case Antec Eleven Hundred £90 @ Scan or Cooler Master HAF XM £102 @ AriaPC
PSU XFX 650W £56 @ AriaPC

= £983 to £1068 (depending on CPU, CPU cooling and case)

+ Dell U2711 £520

= £1503 to £1588 + shipping

You could also sell your existing monitor on eBay and save it towards a second 670.

Also, what kind of headphones do you have? You would probably like this sound card.

 

[mfenn]

Lehtv's build looks great to me.

If the video editing and visual effects work doesn't take a huge part of your day, I would recommend getting the i5. You forgo Hyperthreading, but that only helps on the editing and effects tasks. Even without HT, its not like the i5 is slow for those tasks, the i7 is just faster.

 

[lehtv]

True. If gaming is a priority, getting an i5 would make it easier to afford a second 670.