PC Spec Help

[Pringle68]

Hi All – hope I’m posting this in the correct place

I’ve built a couple of PC’s before – always on a tight budget – and they’ve always “worked.”.
I want to spend more on the next one – and want to get it right first time!

After a day researching I’ve come up with the following spec – and would really appreciate any feedback / thoughts.

I’ll be using the computer mainly for video editing with some after effects work & I like to have several applications running at the same time

Hardware (minus monitors) is comming in at just under £1100






Mother Board
Asus P5N32-E SLI NF680i SLI Intel Quad core
£125.00 microdirect

Processor
Intel CPU Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600
£140.00 microdirect

ram
OCZ 8GB (4x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Quad Channel Platinum Low Latency XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P8008GQ)
£111.00 overclockers

Graphics Card
Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 1GB DDR3 Cool Pipe 3 Edition PCI-E, Dual DVI HDTV Out, Retail
£180.00 microdirect

Hard Drive 1 - for os and CS3 etc
Western Digital 150GB Raptor SATA 10K rpm 16MB cache Hard Disk Drive
£130.00 microdirect

case
NZXT Case Lexa Blackline Black / Blue ATX midi tower
£64.00 microdirect

monitor 1
TBC
£0.00 TBC

monitor 2
TBC
£0.00 TBC

power
OCZ 700GXS Sli -UK nVidia Sli Ready 700W Power Whisper Technology Active PFC
£77.00 microdirect

dvd
ony DVD Writer DRU-190A IDE Super Multi RAM 20x
£20.00 microdirect

card reader
Akasa All in one 21 Function 5.25"Panel Multi Memory Card Reader
£28.00 microdirect

Hard Drive 2
Samsung 750GB Spinpoint F1 SATA II 300 7200rpm 32MB
£70.00 microdirect

Hard Drive 3
Samsung 750GB Spinpoint F1 SATA II 300 7200rpm 32MB
£70.00 microdirect

Hard Drive 4
Samsung 750GB Spinpoint F1 SATA II 300 7200rpm 32MB
£70.00 microdirect

[jeffel]

Hi welcome to the forums.To be honest there is no point in the raptor drives since the new 750gb and 1tb hdd's are fast as the 10,000rpm drives.



The gfx card at £180 is very costly.U can get them under £130 @scan,ebuyer etc
or here
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 - AWD-IT.CO.UK

Graphics Card
Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 1GB DDR3 Cool Pipe 3 Edition PCI-E, Dual DVI HDTV Out, Retail
£180.00 microdirect

I dont particulary like the mobo either.

[Fraz]

Agree totally with the above

Raptor 150 Gb is a waste of money IMHO. Not to mention that the new 300 Gb update of that drive the "Velociraptor" is due to come out imminently.

If you're really planning on spending £180 on a graphics card, you should be getting a 8800 GTS 512 or a 9800 GTX. Having 1 GB of ram on a 8800 GT is just a waste of RAM - not to mention money.

Wow - that's a lot of disk!

[Pringle68]

Hi jeffel & fraz–thanks for the advice

So re Graphics card, (and please excuse my ignorance here)

swapping the
Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 1GB DDR3

for the equally priced
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XT Edition 768MB DDR3

or spending £20 more on a
XpertVision GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB DDR3

Would be a good move?


And thanks for the advice re HDD

And yes Fraz it is a lot of disk space – I’m sure I’ll fill it with video within weeks!

[jeffel]

Hi i would get the the 9800gtx.But i will more than happy with the gtx to be honest.

swapping the
Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 1GB DDR3

for the equally priced
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XT Edition 768MB DDR3

or spending £20 more on a
XpertVision GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB DDR3

Would be a good move?

[hibby]

Having just had to make the choice between 8800 GTX and 9800 GTX, I went for the 9800 because it runs cooler. See if you can get a BFG or eVGA card if possible for a lifetime guarantee (well, the BFG is 10 years outside North America) - the eVGA warranty even covers any overclocking!

Edit - on second thoughts, I think XFX also do some form of lifetime guarantee which can also be transferred (once) to somebody else if you sell it.

[Fraz]

Hi jeffel & fraz–thanks for the advice

So re Graphics card, (and please excuse my ignorance here)

swapping the
Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 1GB DDR3

for the equally priced
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XT Edition 768MB DDR3

or spending £20 more on a
XpertVision GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB DDR3

Would be a good move?

Depends really. They are both very good cards. The 8800 GTS 512 would also be a very find choice, and I believe you can pick them up for ~£160. The 8800 GTX (with it's 768 megs of frame buffer) will have the advantage if you've got a truly enormous monitor (as in 30"). Otherwise, I'd think the 9800 GTX 512 MB or 8800 GTS 512MB would be the better choice.

Basically, just don't get a 8800 GT with 1 GB of ram onboard. If the more powerful 8800/9800 GTX doesn't need that amount of ram, then a 8800 GT certainly doesn't.

You might want to try and get a wider opinion on your motherboard. The 680i chipset is pretty old these days. However, I don't know much about it.

If you need a lot of disk, I'd get a 1TB drive for your OS disk. It'll be cheaper and give you more storage; and the performance margin of a Raptor is minimal against a 1TB drive.

[vhero]

I agree with all said on here you should definetly go for a large disk rather than the raptor and now 1TB drives have finally dropped (it used to be 2 500gbs were cheaper than 1tb) its definetly worth investing in