Requesting advice on fairly high end gaming machine purchase.

[StaffsKieran]

£55 is pretty much what the old Xi-Fi Xtreme Music card cost, have a gander at the CPC review for comparisons.

EDIT: Ordering from OCUK isn't the problem, it's their after-sales service that's awful should anything not be right / go wrong with what you purchased.

fair enough but it still doesnt have the ram tho.....

also ive had to RMA things to OCUK and i found them actually quicker to sort it than scan has in the past.

[NightshadowUK]

fair enough but it still doesnt have the ram tho.....

also ive had to RMA things to OCUK and i found them actually quicker to sort it than scan has in the past.

X-RAM isn't used by anything yet is it?

And maybe they're not as bad as everyone says but I'd still rather not use a company with such a poor reputation.

[Zhou Yu]

Ok updated it a bit, tis a shame scan doesn't do a decent range of ram. If they did I would move the entire order to them.

I'm probably going to go for the extremegamer sound card as it is a fair wack cheaper and from what I have seen the x-ram stuff is barely supported.

Coolerwise I think I might be sticking with the zalman. There is no doubt that there are other and better air coolers out there but they are either fairly heavy (tuniq/ultra) or not in stock yet (mine). Also the zalman happens to be shmexy .

Ram wise I'm going to change to the 2gig crucial ballistix pc6400c4 set.

I think I will also go for the e6600 set after taking a look at the "overclocking c2ds" thread. It doesn't look horrifically complicated so I will have a go.

Graphics wise I am afraid I am sticking with my guns on the GTX. I have my birthday and christmas in the latter half of the year so that 24" monitor could be a possibility then.

Motherboard I am still thinking about atm.

[5aboy]

P5K-deluxe wifi i believe is the best motherboard around right now for overclocking and decent-ish features. sure its not an x38, but then that is some months away yet. no justification going for 965 over this. if you are considering a 975 board for the 32 pcie lanes then thats a different issue, but i dont see the point personally.

[Zhou Yu]

yeah am not planning on going sli as it is. Will take a look at the p5k deluxe anyway.

Also my latest crisis of confidence centers around whether to get vista or not. Xp is actually the same price atm (on scan at least) and idk whether previous versions of xp that I got with different dell computers (had three with xp) will work with a new system. Taking off vista would mean dropping the price by 65 quid as well, which would be great.

[treefingers]

This is just using OCuk as its easiest to do a quick build so if you shop around you can do it cheaper & you might be even able to squeeze in a dell 2407 for just over £1300, especially if you dont get such a flashy keyboard.


Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £304.99
(£358.36) £304.99
(£358.36)
Logitech G15 Gaming-Grade Illuminated Keyboard - Retail (967599-0120) £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £87.99
(£103.39) £87.99
(£103.39)
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer 7.1 Soundcard - Retail £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £26.99
(£31.71) £26.99
(£31.71)
Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £58.99
(£69.31) £58.99
(£69.31)
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804) £71.99
(£84.59) £71.99
(£84.59)
Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £107.99
(£126.89) £107.99
(£126.89)
Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse - Retail £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Sub Total : £881.90
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £156.25
Total : £1,049.10

[Zhou Yu]

Heya, one other small thing.

Can anyone tell me why I should get the p5k deluxe mobo over the vanilla p5k? The only major feature I can see that differentiates them is the wifi support on the deluxe and since I don't really need/want wifi I'm a touch perplexed as to why the deluxe costs a full £80 more.

Also am tempted to go with www.tekheads.co.uk for the order, the full order comes to 1.1k pounds exactly but they don't have the crucial ballistix ram I have been looking at. Instead they have a pair of: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...atid=8&subcat= for 70.64 pounds so I may end up using them instead. If anyone has had trouble with tekheads or wouldn't buy from them for one reason or another please yell.

Otherwise would there be any virtue in getting a small raptor drive for the os? I can't see 4/5ms making that big a difference in day to day running for me personally but I would be interested to hear if it is worth the money.

[NightshadowUK]

Tekheads have always been awesome with me, highly recommended.

As for the Raptor, kinda pointless for just an OS drive, they only really come into their own for games and messing with large files.

[Zhou Yu]

ah ok, I had thought that was their main use, do they provide any substantial boost in terms of game performance when the game is put on that drive?

[treefingers]

I used to love my Raptor but had to get rid of it as wife was moaning about the noise it creates

[staffsMike]

I still havn't heard one in action..are they that loud?

[NightshadowUK]

Games wise it's just load times that decrease, not really worth the premium.

As for the noise... yeah it's pretty bad under load, kinda echos through your walls / floor. It becomes a whole lot better if you put it in something like the Scythe Quiet Drive but then that's another £20.

[Zhou Yu]

Ok so I won't be getting a raptor then, too little performance and too much noise.

Otherwise can someone tell me what the diff is between
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-020-GS
and
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-013-GS
?
I can see that the first one has lower timings but then I don't see why it is the less expensive of the two.

[staffsMike]

its the micron d9 chip that are very highly regarded thats pushed the price up i guess.

[Zhou Yu]

hmmz ok, I would really like to get the ballistix tbh, but tekheads are out of stock unfortunately.

[staffsMike]

How about getting it from crucial directly.. the pc8500 is only £102 at the moment (bargains section) so im guessing the pc6400 is still around £90 or less.