New PC. Componants opinions.

[Anseur]

Looking at building a new PC. Will be used for excessive gaming ofc. ~£1,500 budget. (Not including the monitor I've chosen) I've selected what I wanted from scan, and I wanted to check 2 things:

1) Loosly followed the PC market since I build my last PC in 2002. Not as much as I would of liked however, so there is the possibility of me making some silly mistake when choosing componants. (X dosent work with Y etc) So I will post my choice of componants and if anyone could point out any obvous errors I would appriciate it.

2) Assuming there are not any fubar componant choices, tell me if you think componant X should be replaced with componant Z and why.

Bear in mind, when suggesting componants, there is a few conditions;

- AMD CPU. Yes, I guess I'm a bit of an AMD fanboy due to the last 3 PC's I've built using them and having no issues. Sue me.

- No overclocking. I like my warranty intact thankyou, and I dont have the experiance, nor intend to gain the experiance at the expence of a smoking CPU.

- No Watercooling. See above.

- No Crossfire/SLI - From all the reviews and benchmarks Iv'e seen, SLI/Crossfile just cannot be justifiyed for the (in most cases) double cost when it does not give double the performance. An ideal 'Money no object' choice perhaps, but not for me.

- No crazy lights, neon side pannels, or that kind of #!;%^. It dosen't interest me. The case I've chosen for now, happened to have a plain side window in it, but that's not why I chose it. It just happened to have one.

So without any anymore blabber, the current spec:

Mobo
Sapphire PC-AM2RD580

CPU
AMD AM2 FX 62 Windsor Core

RAM
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2 Pro, DDR2 PC2-6400

GPU
512MB Sapphire Radeon HD 2900 XT

PSU
620W Corsair HX Series Modular SLi PSU

HDD
150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise

CASE
Silverstone TJ09B-W (Black) TEMJIN Aluminum Supertower Case

DVDRW
Optiarc (Sony/NEC) AD-7170S-0B 18x DVD±R

DVD-ROM
Asus E616A3T DVD-ROM x16 SATA

MONITOR
22" Asus MW221U, Widescreen LCD

Total (Inc Monitor): £1,684.53

[Flewis]

I would seriously reconsider your cpu choice, not going for the intel chips just doesnt seem a good choice. The intel E6700 is roughly £200 and would beat any amd cpu.
Whether the 2900XT is worth it or not is up to you, the initial reviews have not been hugely promising, for less money the 8800GTS would perform roughly the same, but for not a huge amount more the 8800GTX would kick ass.

Finally, i wouldnt bother with the pro ram, you said u didnt want flashing lights etc. and that is all the adavntage the pro would give. They are the same chips as standard XMS2 but have different heatsink with led's.

Otherwise some sound choices.

[kalniel]

Quite a high end build obviously, first query is with the motherboard -while I'm sure it's fast, I'm not convinced by AMD chipsets to be honest. I think the NVidia chipset boards (NF590 or something) would probably be better.

Something like the Abit Fatality board might be good if you're going for premium. Think the Asus Crosshair is also good, though if you're not overclocking you could save a bit and go for a less bling motherboard.

GPU... I think you'd be better with NVidia here as well, unfortunately If you could save the money elsewhere and splash for a 8800GTX you'll be rewarded.

[b0redom]

For the price of the Radeon, you can have a 640MB 8800GTS, which would probably make more sense - more established drivers - similar performance.

For less than the price of the FX-62 chip you could have an E6700 or almost a quad core. I suspect that either of these chips would smoke the AMD one.

[acrobat]

You would be absolutely insane to buy that CPU. Fanboy or not, you get a faster, cooler, better CPU for less money, if you go the intel core 2 duo route. I could give you a million hyperlinks to prove it too if you wanted. You would also maybe even save enough by doing that, to end up with an 8800GTX.

As for that graphics card, have you done thorough research to check that its better than an 8800GTS? I don't know much about it yet so I couldn't tell you. If I was you though, I would shuffle this all around to end up with an 8800GTX.

As for the case, you could save about 60 quid getting something not quite as good. The cooling in that thing is nice, but is it really necessary? I personally would rather something else, and my priority as a gamer would go into the CPU and Graphics Card.

Everything else looks great though.

[Marcvs]

any particular reason for choosing the fx-62.. seems pointless when C2D is around.. unless you wanna upgrade in which case get a 5600 or somethin

[kalniel]

Could always go for a quad fx motherboard and processor if you cut back a bit elsewhere.

[acrobat]

I'd go with an E6700 and an 8800GTX if I was you, no matter what. And if that saved money, id put that towards 4gig of RAM either now, or for later in the year. I know a few games that are going to make use of it, so it would be worth having if you had enough left over. 2gig is good enough though anyway, but the CPU and GPU are the priority.

You could also improve on that monitor, although people's opinions would differ on that. You can get a better looking screen, but it would likely be 20 inch instead of 22 inch. I went with a better looking 20 inch, but my friend went with the bigger 22inch ASUS. Both have their pros and cons, so its up to you really.

[doddsy]

And if you *must* go AMD, the 6000+ is £120ish cheaper and 200mhz faster.

[kalniel]

And if you *must* go AMD, the 6000+ is £120ish cheaper and 200mhz faster.

Good call.

[Anseur]

Thanks for the replies.

So, so far, I'm to understand there's nothing here thats not going to work, it's just a case of finding some replacement parts that will give a better price/performance ratio.

Going with the suggestions so far, if I were to change;

Mobo:
XFX MB-N680-ILT NF680i LT SLI MCP, S 775, PCI-E

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, Socket 775

GPU:
768MB Gainward 8800GTX Bliss PCI-E

RAM:
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2

Now brings the Total to £1,599.28 inc monitor. You would say this is a better build for slightly less?

[kalniel]

That's a lot better build.

[Clunk]

Apart from the motherboard.

[faz]

you could save some more and get the e6600 it will clock just the same as the e6700 with no problems at all look at the 2 chips there the same with different clock speeds ie fsb on e6700 is higher

[arthurleung]

you could save some more and get the e6600 it will clock just the same as the e6700 with no problems at all look at the 2 chips there the same with different clock speeds ie fsb on e6700 is higher

He said he does not want to overclock. Well if he doesn't need to overclock, the XFX motherboard will do the job fine

Overclocking does not void your warranty (unless you go to the extreme, i.e. sub-zero cooling or poping the IHS off)

[Anseur]

Apart from the motherboard.

What would you consider a better choice? All I did was look on scan for one with the correct socket type, and one that takes the RAM I had chosen, as well as having onboard sound. It's got to ofc have the SATA controler too, but thats a given with most mobo's.