advise on my £500 computer spec plz

[reflex_182]

I am thinking of building a pc with a budget in mind of £500. Im not keen on overclocking as i am 15 and this is my first build.
This is my current spec:

Coolmaster centurion black with blue trim £40
400W Scan 3XS power supply £12
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 160Gb £54
512MB PC3200 Scan Elixir £30
120mm Cool River Water Cooling Kit £70
Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ £87
128MB XFX Geforce 6600 £78
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Motherboard £66

total: £437

Can i plz have some advise, as im new to building computers. Also if anyone knows of where i can find any of these components cheaper, could u plz tell me.

thanks

[noah]

nice machine there. first thing i'd do is ditch the watercooling kit, it may seem like a nice idea, but the money would be better spent getting a better psu, say enermax or tagan for around £35-40 and a 6600gt like this for £130ish.

everything else looks great tho, and scan are a nice shop to deal with

[owen1978]

400W Scan 3XS power supply £12
Find a better power supply

512MB PC3200 Scan Elixir £30
buy 2 x 256 sticks of ram - for dual channel

120mm Cool River Water Cooling Kit £70
Ditch this get Heat sink and fan

[Marcos]

Make sure you get a nice monitor, keyboard and mouse. After all, those are the only things you actually use to operate the computer. Pointless paying £100+ on a GFX card to see it run through a 15" curved CRT

[owen1978]

Revised your specs (i used www.overclockers.co.uk)
All prices below inc VAT

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail
Comes with Heatsink & Fan
£105.69

Gigabyte K8NF-9 nForce4
Same motherboard you chose
£72.79

GeIL 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5
£41.07

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB SATA
I find 80Gb more than adequate(sp), are you planning on downloading porn, if so you will need more Gb
£41.71

Coolermaster Centurion 5 - Black/Blue
Your own preference, but i would rather buy a Jeantech Phong for £30
£38.89

Enermax Noisetaker 370W
These PSU are very efficient & reliable
£41.07

Leadtek WinFast PCX6600GT-TDH Extreme Edition GeForce PCX6600 GT
SLI enabled for future upgradebility
£119.95 This week only

Total
£461.17
------------------------------------------------------------------

2 questions

1) Don't you need a dvd/cd drive???
2) Do i get commission

[Hans Voralberg]

Get something other than the stock cooler, but if you dont oc then it's fine. I would say keep the 160G HD, for no obvious reason i used up 400G sofar, if you're a freak (like me), better go with it.

[RDL]

That River Water Cooling is actually very good for a cheap, decent kit.

Check out Custompc this month for a look at their £500 systems to get some tips, although judging by things I think you already did.

[tom deloford]

Try komplett and ebuyer.

Or if you want to try something cool, get an X800 XT PE for about 300quid, then buy a newish cheap system for 182quid. Not sure about win performance but youll have an awesome gaming platform which you can upgrade as you can afford it.

[iranu]

Welcome to Hexus!

Check out Micro Direct , Scan , Tekheads , Aria/Overclocker for prices too. Don't forget to budget for post and packing!

Nice little system you put together. My own response to your original post echoes noahhowes and marcos.

Ditch the watercooling and use a stock cooler and put the £70 to better use - PSU and grafix card. If you are going to overclock later then a decent air cooler will set you back not very much. I wouldn't recommend water cooling for "My first build".

A good reliable power supply (which is often neglected) is better than water cooling (and a nice case) - no matter how much you want to show off to your mates!! i.e. watercooling (and a nice case) are no good to you when your cheap psu has blown up and taken your mobo, ram, cpu and graphics card to computer heaven .

PSU recommendations thread will give you some ideas.

Hard drives - 80gig = @ £40, 160gig = @ £60 so double the volume for 50% extra cost. Just a thought.

Do you need DVD Rom, keyboard, mouse, monitor, operating system etc?

[8bit]

disagree on the x800 xt pe tom. If he's getting that and a lower end motherboard and CPU the machine will be unbalanced and the other components will restrict the performance of the gfx card.

Wouldn't bother with water cooling. If you're getting the Winchester core Ath64 the stock cooler is decent enough to start with for a small overclock. I comfortably got 2.5GHz out of a 2.2GHz A64 3500 Winchester with the stock cooler, more now with my Arctic Cooling one (which if you must have a non stock cooler is a good one and cheap)

DEFINITELY get a good PSU, I have Akasa PaxPower 460w (around 60quid) it's dead stable and looks cool too.

And reflex if you can stretch to it I really recommend getting 2x 512Mb of RAM, 1Gb is the minimum I put in anything these days and the 2 sticks gives you dual channel capability, remember dual channel is only available on socket939 Athlon64's.

Your spec with my modifications is basically the same as a recent customer gaming rig I built, very nice machine, you've chosen pretty well IMHO.

[reflex_182]

Thnx for your advise guys i will take them all into account when choosing my components.


thnx again

[tom deloford]

disagree on the x800 xt pe tom. If he's getting that and a lower end motherboard and CPU the machine will be unbalanced and the other components will restrict the performance of the gfx card.

Perhaps, but I bought x800 first and stuck it in my pentium 2.8 (asus p4c800) system which was nearly 3 years old, games were excellent I was able to play fps/sims at 1280x1024 with 90% effects, cpu power was not that much of an issue. Now I have athlon 3500 I can play at 1600 and 100%.

[reflex_182]

Is the 19" TFT acer screen from dabs a gd choice at £200?


http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hard...quicklinx=3JV5

[owen1978]

Try komplett and ebuyer.

Or if you want to try something cool, get an X800 XT PE for about 300quid, then buy a newish cheap system for 182quid. Not sure about win performance but youll have an awesome gaming platform which you can upgrade as you can afford it.

Would not do this, whats the point of having a super card, when the rest of the system moves at snails pace.

[owen1978]

Perhaps, but I bought x800 first and stuck it in my pentium 2.8 (asus p4c800) system which was nearly 3 years old, games were excellent I was able to play fps/sims at 1280x1024 with 90% effects, cpu power was not that much of an issue. Now I have athlon 3500 I can play at 1600 and 100%.

The P4C800 is still the best S478 'Canterwood' mobo out there, it costs about £80 in shops.

[Butcher]

Semprons make baby jesus cry. Don't buy one for gaming.