Need Advice on Building a New PC

[Andaho]

It's long past time that I built a new PC as my current system is an AthlonXP 2600 with 512MB DDR400 and a GeforceFX 5200. I'm going to get new everything, so I can use my current system as a second PC (well actually a 4th.. I have a 1GHz and a 333MHz also).

I'm not interested in overclocking, but want a system that can pretty much do everything, apart from gaming, where I've decided the X1950XT is perfect for me (not interested in hearing more arguments about NVIDIA vs ATI).

I'm not on any kind of budget, but want the best value for money - hoping to spend around £1000 for EVERYTHING including surround sound speakers & keyboard/mouse.

I've got this so far:

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB @ £118.19 Inc VAT

Mobo: Need Advice - as I'm not overclocking, is there any advantage to spending ~£80 or will a ~£60 be fine? Also, do mobo's generally cost more for the quad-core?

RAM: Need Advice - Which brand currently offers the best value for money? - with quality and lifetime warranty - I've always been a fan of corsair, but they seem to be a little more expensive compared ot other brands I know nothing about like GeIL?

Graphics: 256MB Power Color RX1950 XT Arctic Cooling PCI-E(x16) @ £116.24 Inc VAT

Case: Asus TA-881 Black/Silver Midi Tower Case w/o PSU @ £20.43 Inc VAT

PSU: Need Advice - I see lots of people reccommending the Corsair 520W, but @ £64.50 Inc VAT the price alone makes it seem overkill for what I'll be putting in the system?

Monitor: 22" Samsung SM-226BW @ £242.04 Inc VAT (but will buy from somewhere cheaper)

DVD-RW: Lite-ON 20X LH-20A1S-15C @ £20.20 Inc VAT

Hard Drives: Need Advice - I need 2, an 80Gb and probably a 500Gb - what's the best between Western Digital, Seagate or Samsung?

Speakers: Need Advice - don't want to spend more than £50-£100, 5.1 or 7.1 speakers.

Keyboard & Mouse: Will probably just buy cheap crap to use on my old PC, as I'm happy with my current black Cherry keyboard and MS Explorer 4.0A mouse.


Don't think I've missed anything out. Looking forward to hearing your advice

[Sprite]

CPU - Id go with the E6750 simply for value for money factor, £50 for an extra 333MHz ? no thanks...

PSU - Unfortunately you shouldn't skimp on PSUs, you could probably get one for a tenner less but they the Corsair is an excellent PSU, very quiet, solid and modular as well

Motherboard - I would recommend the P5K Deluxe but it may be a bit steep in price for what you want, Im sure someone else will advise you and point out some Abit motherboards, haven't had a chance to investigate them myself as I stopped caring too much after I got my Gigabyte DS3

And lastly, are you SURE you don't want to OC ? It's stupiudly easy to do...

[BUFF]

Mobo: Need Advice - as I'm not overclocking, is there any advantage to spending ~£80 or will a ~£60 be fine? Also, do mobo's generally cost more for the quad-core?

what features do you need?
Usually more money buys better quality & more features.

RAM: Need Advice - again as I'm not overclocking, if I get a 1333MHz FSB processor, is there going to be a significant advantage to paying almost double for 800MHz over 667MHz? Because 667MHz dual channel = 1333MHz?

no 667 is actually 333.33x2(dual data rate).
6400 will give you more bandwidth. DDR2 isn't quite at rock bottom anymore but it's still cheap.

PSU: Need Advice - I see lots of people reccommending the Corsair 520W, but @ £64.50 Inc VAT the price alone makes it seem overkill for what I'll be putting in the system?

PSU is the foundation of your system stability - don't skimp.

[0iD]

I can only recomend what I use, so it's the Abit Quad GT motherboard (same as Buff^^), best I've had in a good few years.

Processor-wise the E6750 is more than upto the job & cheap as chips.

Ram, go for a quality brand, OCZ, Corsair, Crucial etc. If you're not overclocking the 'value' range from each manufacturer will be adequate.

PSU, again, I can only recomend the Coolermaster iGreen 600W as it's what I use & it's a solid performer.

Speakers-wise Logitech or Altec Lansing are top performers.

[0iD]

Also, looking at Asus's site, I don't think the case comes with any fans, so you may want to consider this.

Also a quality CPU cooler wouldn't go a miss, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO is a sound choice.

[Sprite]

EDIT: nvm, read that post completely wrong

BTW how is the Coolermaster iGreen 600w PSU ? THinking of getting one myself as my Hiper is dragging my performance down (My PCMark 05 score is half of equivalent systems and my PSU is the only thing I can think of messing things up)

[badger]

DVD-RW: Lite-ON 20X LH-20A1S-15C @ £20.20 Inc VAT

Try the Samsung SH-203 instead. Great drive and it's 2 quid less on Scan.

[Andaho]

no 667 is actually 333.33x2(dual data rate).
6400 will give you more bandwidth. DDR2 isn't quite at rock bottom anymore but it's still cheap.

Yes I know DDR runs at Double Data Rate, but also being dual channel, meaning it runs at double the speed again correct? - thats the whole point in dual channel? - similar to Raid Striping?

Also I just realised I haven't added hard drives in my list... I'll add them now.

[Sprite]

Yes I know DDR runs at Double Data Rate, but also being dual channel, meaning it runs at double the speed again correct? - thats the whole point in dual channel? - similar to Raid Striping?

Nope.

DDR 667 means its dual channel compatible and when it's paired up it runs at 667 MHz, so on it's own it would run at 333MHz... basically

[master811]

As a suggestion on the HDD, for a few quid more you might wanna get a 160GB one or something, you can never have too much space, and for double the size, with only £4/5 difference, its probably worth it. WD, Seagate and Samsung are all good, its probably down to personal preference in the end though, as there is no such thing as the "best" hard drive, although Samsungs are generally the quietest, but won't necessarily perform quiet as well as the Seagates/WD, but the difference will be quiet minimal.

[GSte]

Nope.

DDR 667 means its dual channel compatible and when it's paired up it runs at 667 MHz, so on it's own it would run at 333MHz... basically

Nah, the ram will always run at 333MHz actual, whether in single or dual channel mode.... dual channel just doubles the bandwidth, which often doesn't increase performance much anyway.

But OP, you won't need more than DDR667 unless you're overclocking the CPU.

[Andaho]

Nope.

DDR 667 means its dual channel compatible and when it's paired up it runs at 667 MHz, so on it's own it would run at 333MHz... basically

Nope. You obviously don't know jack about memory - DDR means that it performs 2 operations per clock cycle, and the clock is 333MHz - so effectively 667MHz - I can't be arsed trying to get more technical than that, because I need to be be quoting stuff to make sure I'm getting it correct. I've already done my research here, including having the corsair RAM Guy help with my research... if you're interested you can read here:

http://sharethefiles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=74685

[master811]

Yeah dual channel RAM doesn't mean its runs slower with just a single stick, just that when its paired up, it doubles the bandwidth available to the CPU, as far as I can tell.

[Andaho]

As a suggestion on the HDD, for a few quid more you might wanna get a 160GB one or something, you can never have too much space, and for double the size, with only £4/5 difference, its probably worth it. WD, Seagate and Samsung are all good, its probably down to personal preference in the end though, as there is no such thing as the "best" hard drive, although Samsungs are generally the quietest, but won't necessarily perform quiet as well as the Seagates/WD, but the difference will be quiet minimal.

I've always been a fan of WD, but recently read somewhere that Samsung or Seagate (I can't remember which it was) were just as fast and just as good quality... but quieter. Anyway... for the primary hard drive, I'm thinking 80GB because I was thinking of a 10kRPM?

[master811]

I've always been a fan of WD, but recently read somewhere that Samsung or Seagate (I can't remember which it was) were just as fast and just as good quality... but quieter. Anyway... for the primary hard drive, I'm thinking 80GB because I was thinking of a 10kRPM?

If you mean the 74GB raptors as they are the only 10k RPM drives close to 80GB that I know off, but tbh, you'd get better performance from 2 drives in Raid 0, and it wouldn't cost anywhere near as much.

[Andaho]

Yeah dual channel RAM doesn't mean its runs slower with just a single stick, just that when its paired up, it doubles the bandwidth available to the CPU, as far as I can tell.

Seriously, read the link I posted above if you're interested in getting deeper with understanding memory.