[Gast]

Long time no speak

<---Gast in case anyone wonder. Seem to have lost my details, and cant access main PC atm since its buggered so had to make a new account to post!

Anyways, since my current PC (that bd helped me decide upon last time ) has started to bugger up due to a f****d mobo, I thought I would take the time to consider buying a whole new PC and pass my current option to my BRO who is getting is own house soon.

I have to admit, I am not really upto date on whats considered the best CPU and stuff these days, so I come (crawling on my hands and knees!!!) to a place where some so called "experts" (nudge nudge in bd's direction ) reside!

What I am looking for essentially would be

Motherboard
PowerSupply/Fan
GFX
Memory
CPU
HDDS

and possibly a sound card as well, but I can do without this just now. I guess I would like to have a PC thats capable of running the newest games etc on th emarket so I am guessing dual core and stuff is what is needed. As per usual, I dont want to spend all together to much money on this since I aint rolling in cash right now

The currently buggered PC was AMD 64 2.4ghz, 7900GTX with 2gb of RAM. So whilst this is good enough to pass on to the bro, I would be obviously looking to do better.

Any suggestions/tips/help etc would be mucho appreciated.

P.S how's every1 doing?

[BullDog]

hehe

I will put together some good shit for ya - give an idea of how tight yer ass...I mean budget is dude

[loki.pa]

lol, quad cores are the way to go if you want to future proof as much as possible.

[Gast]

BullDog, on Mar 16 2009, 6:11 AM, said:

hehe

I will put together some good shit for ya - give an idea of how tight yer ass...I mean budget is dude

haha

well last 1 u did for me was wuite the bargin, just over 700ish and that was with a monitor. Now I dont expect miracles bd (read yes i effing want a miracle ) so anything 700-1000 for the moment. Tho if I really, really, REALLY had to go over then its not impossible, just Id rather not hehe

Oh yeah, forgot to say I will prob need a new case to

[BullDog]

first effort

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £182.84
(£158.99) £182.84
(£158.99) Asus P5Q3 Deluxe @ Wifi-N Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £172.49
(£149.99) £172.49
(£149.99) Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £166.74
(£144.99) £166.74
(£144.99) Corsair HX 620W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply £114.99
(£99.99) £114.99
(£99.99) Lian-Li PC-A17B Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black (No PSU) £97.74
(£84.99) £97.74
(£84.99) Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £83.94
(£72.99) £83.94
(£72.99) OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Platinum (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) £63.24
(£54.99) £63.24
(£54.99) Zalman CNPS9500A-LED CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/LGA775) £32.19
(£27.99) £32.19
(£27.99) Sub Total : £794.92 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50 VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £121.11 Total : £928.53

[BullDog]

few words on each component and the reasons for choise.

Lian Li I think are the best of the case makers - my own one has stood me good for over 4 years now.
the Crucial psu os the one I have in mine and I have been absolutely delighted with it's performance.
gone for a DDR3 based mobo and since 4gb is dirt cheap I think it's a good one to go for.
I have the intel Q6600 in mine and it's rock solid.
zalman thrown in for better cooling - this can be ditched of course cause the intel does come with a heatsink n fan which are 'adequate'.
the sammy 1tb drive has had reviewers going crazy apeshit everywhere - 1tb coupled with 32mb cache makes for an awesome combination. very quiet drive and runs relatively cool. another can be added in the future as prices drop - or failing that throw in a solid state drive when prices come down a bit and the drive size goes up.

the only component here I am not 100% on is the grafix.

I have been nvid for quite a while now but am impressed at what you get for the £££ side with Ati.
a 1gb grafix card which also offers 'Built-in HDMI with 5.1 surround sound support' can't be bad.

the mobo has decent built in sound - if you really want to spring for a seperate sound card I can highly recommend:

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Sound Card - OEM (PCI) (30SB079200000)
£36.79 inc VAT
£31.99 ex VAT

I have been pleased with mine for the past 3 years.

I will try and do a similar spec from Ebuyer just to get a feel for price difference.

[BullDog]

attempt2:

Lian Li PC-A17 Black Aluminium Mid Tower Case - No PSU 145949 2 in stock £106.70 £92.78 £106.70 £92.78
Corsair 620W HX Modular PSU - ATX12V v2.2 APFC 114941 53 in stock £99.84 £86.81 £99.84 £86.81
EVGA nForce 790i FTW Socket 775 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard 149293 10 in stock £219.99 £191.29 £219.99 £191.29
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor 131950 82 in stock £158.99 £138.25 £158.99 £138.25
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 XMS3 DHX Memory Kit 148817 13 in stock £94.81 £82.44 £94.81 £82.44
XFX HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card 155499 38 in stock £172.49 £149.99 £172.49 £149.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache* - OEM 143288 2155 in stock £79.54 £69.16 £79.54 £69.16
Zalman CNPS9500A-LED Aero Flower Socket 478/775/AM2/754/939/940 Cooler 140478 7 in stock £37.77 £32.84 £37.77 £32.84 (click if you have changed any details) Cart total inc vat: Cart total ex vat: £970.13 £843.56 Cart Weight: 16.97Kg (with shipping offer)
Do you have a promotion code?
Enter it here then click 'Update Cart' Deliver my Order: Wed 18th Mar 2009 (Next Working Day) Thu 19th Mar 2009 (2 Working Days) Fri 20th Mar 2009 (3 Working Days) Mon 23rd Mar 2009 (4 Working Days) Within 5 Working Days (Super Saver) Sat 21st Mar 2009 (Saturday Delivery*)
Shipping Charge: Subtotal: VAT: Total: £12.40 £10.78 £854.34 £128.19 £982.53

[BullDog]

couple of changes:
mobo is the one I have in mine and it's the mutts nuts
different mem - only cause ebuyer didn't have the same as OcUK in stock.
Lian Li range is limited there so just went for one close to 100quids

the ebuyer is higher cause of the mobo.
it's a bit of a trade off really - better mobo but won't be xfire compatible - but if you only want to run a single grafix card anyways then you won't lose out.

the asus one in the ocuk quote allows for dual grafix.

[BullDog]

lastly some things to bear in mind.

unless you have vista or XP64 you won't see about 1gb of the memory offered here.

620 psu might sound a bit puny for a psu but it's ample for 1 or 2 grafix cards.
mine is powering 3 x hd's, 1x 280gtx grafix, 3x 120mm fans, card reader, 2x dvd rwr's and has never missed a beat.

I had a shitload of different mobo's over the years and have found Asus to be about the best.
gigabit are like a cheap alternate, abit are ok and evga have impressed the shit out of me with the 790i.
the reason I wanted that one so bad is purely cause of a solid state hardrive I bought.
the boot up time with an abit IP35 pro was no better than a normal hd.

I read up a bit and found that Nforce chipsets were a lot more amenable to solid state drives and before I added lots of crap to my current build it used to boot up in about 10-15 seconds.
the bar going across the screen for XP64 reached half way on it's first pass and I would be in.
seriously fast and mines only a second gen SSD.
the 3rd gen are crushingly fast but bloody pricey.

I have thought about going for an Asus Xonar sound card to utilise the pci-e aspect of things.
but the sound on the Creative Labs X-Fi is superb so decided to stick with it.

there is a trade off for ati v nvid.
ati are so much cheaper but I cannot testify personally for their performance against nvid.
I suspect that nvid still edge it almost everytime but ati impress with their features for the money you pay.

if you intending playing pc games a lot and I mean a LOT then maybe nvid is a better choice.
personally I swing from UT for online fun to GTA4 for offline excellence.
I need to reinstall Fallout3 and Far Cry 2 sometime soon - I was getting a lot of crashes before I switched to the evga mobo - need to give the games a proper run out again to see if the crashes have stopped.

[BullDog]

attempt 3 - went into the OcUK bargain area for some pickings:
Product Name Qty Price Line Total **B Grade** Gainward GeForce GTX 280 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Expre (GX-072-GW) £229.29
(£199.38) £229.29
(£199.38) Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £166.74
(£144.99) £166.74
(£144.99) **B Grade** Asus Maximus Extreme Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 £145.79
(£126.77) £145.79
(£126.77) **B Grade** Akasa AK-P085FG-BK 850W (CA-026-AK) £96.60
(£84.00) £96.60
(£84.00) **B Grade** Lian Li PC-201B Aluminium Full Tower Case - Bl £86.24
(£74.99) £86.24
(£74.99) **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM £63.24
(£54.99) £63.24
(£54.99) OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Platinum (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P13334GK) £63.24
(£54.99) £63.24
(£54.99) Zalman CNPS9500-AT CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £33.34
(£28.99) £33.34
(£28.99) Sub Total : £769.10 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50 VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £117.24 Total : £898.84


had to still pop into the normal part for cpu, mem and the zalman but ended up paying less for what is still a good system covering everything I did before and getting a 280gtx to boot

[Gast]

aaaaa bd your an absoulte star

Pretty much exactly what I was looking for, so will have to give it some thought before I look out the ol credit card. Im sure Ill have a few questions for ya pretty soon.

Cheers again, much appreciated

[loki.pa]

A few comments

The Corsair PSU is great, I've got the HX620 in my system and it's modular design is fantastic, meaning you only add the cables you need to.

GFX. I think Nvidia are still performance kings at the moment but the ATi cards have pretty much been best bang for your bucks for some time now, The 4870 is a great card and if my 8800GTX blew a gasket then that's what I'd probably pick up.

The Quad 6600 CPU's are the puppy's plums and can overclock really well providing you have a decent motherboard. Although there really isn't much point as they're pretty damn swift out of the box.

Looks like you'll end up with a really nice system there Gast