New computer - help and advice appreciated

[Alsatian]

So, my current PC is a piece of shit and can barely run anything. With new games such as Skyrim and BF3 coming out - games which I desperately want to play - I thought it was about time I got a better setup. So, I've been looking at this site: http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/index.html and with a budget of around 800 pounds (could possibly stretch to 900) this is what I've put together. Any advice on where I need to get something better or where I could save some money would be greatly appreciated.

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500 (4 x 3.3GHz) 6MB
CPU Heatsink: Intel Heatsink & Fan - Low Noise
Memory: Corsair 8GB XMS3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (2x4GB)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 - 2 GB
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 LE (Intel P67) (I seriously have little clue about motherboards, and the selection I've made here is probably shit, lol)
PSU: Corsair 700W Gaming PSU - Low Noise
HD: 1 TB (1000 GB) SATA-II HDD 7200 RPM 32MB
Optical Drive: Samsung 22x DVD Re-Writer/Reader /- RW- Black - (SATA)

So this comes to 862.16, including VAT. Is it good enough to run the latest games? Could I save money buy downgrading on a certain component, or do I need to upgrade in certain places? Again, any help and advice is greatly appreciated.

[Ted]

More than enough for the latest games and it would last you for quite some time. The areas where you could save money would be Hard drives and optical drives. Depending on the quality/age of your current hard drive you could reuse it and no harm would be done. The same can be said for the optical drive. You can't go wrong with that motherboard from Asus either especially for the price although you can get equally great motherboards for much less.

[Clone]

If you can afford it, go for an SSD!

[Alsatian]

The areas where you could save money would be Hard drives and optical drives. Depending on the quality/age of your current hard drive you could reuse it and no harm would be done. The same can be said for the optical drive.

I'll have a look at my current hard drive and see how much storage it has - I don't think it has a suitable amount for the demand that games these days require. Hard drives are relatively cheap anyway (at least on the site I was looking at) so I'm quite happy to go with a 1TB one.

As for the optical drive, my current one is completely wrecked and randomly opens and closes itself and all sorts, so I doubt I'll be reusing that any time soon. 

You can't go wrong with that motherboard from Asus either especially for the price although you can get equally great motherboards for much less.

Could you provide some examples? As I said, I have little to no knowledge when it comes to motherboards.

If you can afford it, go for an SSD!

I want have at least 500GB, preferablyy 1TB, of storage space, so that is completely out of the question - no way I could afford that on top of all the other components.

[9r2e5i3k]

I'll have a look at my current hard drive and see how much storage it has - I don't think it has a suitable amount for the demand that games these days require. Hard drives are relatively cheap anyway (at least on the site I was looking at) so I'm quite happy to go with a 1TB one.
[...]
I want have at least 500GB, preferablyy 1TB, of storage space, so that is completely out of the question - no way I could afford that on top of all the other components.

Buy a SSD for the system and a HDD for mass storage.

[Alsatian]

Buy a SSD for the system and a HDD for mass storage.

I've been looking into it but the price is a bit of a problem.

Guys, what GPU would you recommend? Keep in mind that on that site I'm trying to keep (with the rest of the configuration kept the same) below or around 800 pounds. Would a GTX 550ti suffice for the latest games (on generally high settings) and last for a few years?

[Julio.]

Well, a GTX550Ti would run modern games at pretty high settings, but GTX 560 would be preferable.

Also, Harddrives are frequently the 'bottleneck' in a computer. Doesn't matter how fast the Processor is, if the Harddrive isn't fetching the data fast enough you may as well have a Pentium 3.

[9r2e5i3k]

Also, Harddrives are frequently the 'bottleneck' in a computer. Doesn't matter how fast the Processor is, if the Harddrive isn't fetching the data fast enough you may as well have a Pentium 3.

kind of invalid statement.
Hard drives make a difference actually only in booting/loading times and when saving large amounts of data on it. Nowadays PC's have enough RAM to not use page swapping from the hard drive at all, so you can just disable that.

[Bilbo]

Swap the power supply to a 550W (XFX or Super Flower, I work with these and they are VERY reliable), which is far more than already necessary and you can cut off quite a bit off the price. And with that extra money, I'd swap into a better graphics card, such as the 560 Ti or if your budget allows - straight for a 6950 1GB, which is the best performance/price ratio GPU on the market at the very moment. (plus you can easily mod the card with another BIOS into a 6970 - where you can save up to 100EUR)

[Julio.]

kind of invalid statement.
Hard drives make a difference actually only in booting/loading times and when saving large amounts of data on it. Nowadays PC's have enough RAM to not use page swapping from the hard drive at all, so you can just disable that.

Saying that if a Harddrive cannot access the information as quickly the PC is just as fast?

NAAAAH Mate.


And Technically the best Value for money for performance is the ATI Radeon HD 4890.

[9r2e5i3k]

Saying that if a Harddrive cannot access the information as quickly the PC is just as fast?

Applications and computed data reside in RAM. Only difference a drive makes is when loading stuff from the drive to RAM, or saving GIGANTIC amounts of data to the drive, like recording something in full HD with a high framerate.

[Julio.]

NoNo, what you are saying is that the computer will not slow down at all if you have a slow Harddrive?

[Ted]

If you wish to can go with a lower end motherboard such as this http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?model=h61m/u3s3 it's really a great motherboard to be honest to say it's a H61 chipset. You still have Usb3 and SATA3.

[9r2e5i3k]

NoNo, what you are saying is that the computer will not slow down at all if you have a slow Harddrive?

Too general question for a certain answer.

If you wish to can go with a lower end motherboard such as this http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?model=h61m/u3s3 it's really a great motherboard to be honest to say it's a H61 chipset. You still have Usb3 and SATA3.

>Supports Dual Channel DDR3 1333
Also, integrated graphics = not needed (not wanted even) if getting a graphics card anyway.

[Aldo]

NoNo, what you are saying is that the computer will not slow down at all if you have a slow Harddrive?

No only when it loads a program data from the HDD which it then stores in the RAM for faster access