First PC build, quick approval would be appreciated :)

Hey folks,

It's my birthday coming up and I'm going to build a new pc to replace my senile P3 500, GeForce 2 system (which is actually physically falling apart)! This also means that I pretty much need everything except mouse, keyboard, speakers and monitor. As you can imagine, I'm pretty darn excited. I can muster about £500ish from donations etc, maybe a little more, so it's a pretty budget-conscious affair.

It'll be used for gaming (Orange Box, Bioshock, maybe Gears of War - not interested in Crysis), but if I'm honest it'll mostly be used for web; college work; learning Blender and 3DS max; and the occasonal GIMPing. So essentially an all-rounder.

So far:

Abit IP-35E, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 667/800, SATA II, ATX £60.97

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, S775, 2.2 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £73.38 (Plan to overclock as much as is reasonable.)

Akasa AK-965 x3 Copper Heatpipe Cooler Intel Core2Quad/Duo with 92mm side blow fan, Intel push pin £11.74

2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £41.10

512MB Sapphire RX1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1400MHz, GDDR3, GPU 580MHz, 36Pipes CrossFire Master/Slave £89.88 (Would this be up to Bioshock and possibly Gears of War?)

Samsung SH-S203N/RSMN 20xDVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6, SATA,Lightscribe, Black, Retail inc Nero £21.14

320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ Spinpoint T166, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 9 ms, NCQ £48.00

450W Corsair VX Series PSU, ATX, PS/2, UK Version, 80 PLUS® certified £43.35 (Is this sufficient?)

Antec NSK4000/Mini Tower case without PSU , Black/Silver £28.19

Asus WL-138g V2 54G Wireless PCI Adaptor £11.68

IcyBox IB-861-B 50 in 1 FIXED Multi Card Reader & Multi Port Panel - Black £15.16

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £64.93


Total - £524.31 from Scan.


I plan to overclock the E4500 as much as is reasonable (the Hexus guide makes overclocking look a lot less daunting). Will the 450W PSU run all this? I'd really appreciate any suggestions, or just someone a little more experienced to say that it all looks ok! :)

Thanks,

>> Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, S775, 2.2 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache,
>> Retail £73.38 (Plan to overclock as much as is reasonable.)

would an e2140 or e2160 not be as good, seeings how they can OC to over 3GHz ? the cache won't have too much of an effect, and they can be had for around £35 to £40 on ebay.

>> 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC
>>Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £41.10

I'm not sure how much better cas 4-4-4-12 will be over cas 5-5-5-12, but i do know the 5-5-5-12 version is under £30 at cclonline.com, although if you're buying nothing else from there then postage will bring it up. but otherwise seems like a good choice.

>>SH-S203N

17.99 shipped from play.com, or the non-lightscribe version is 15.99 (search for s203).

>>Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £64.93

are you / anyone in your house in education? if so, £55 shipped from ebuyer.com. although it's the upgrade 32bit verion, you should be able to install without upgrading anything but if you want 64bit you may have to pay around £6 to ms to send you one. though i'd stick with 32bit myself anyway.

>>Antec NSK4000/Mini Tower case without PSU , Black/Silver £28.19

there's some cheaper cooler master cases around atm, dunno if you'd be interested though. the elite 330 / 331 / 332 can be had for about £22.


and how much is an 8800 GT ?

Everything looks fine.

The Corsair Vx should run that lot with no problems.

Not sure I'd go for the Akasa AK-965, I'd go for the Arctic cooling Freezer 7 Pro for £15.73, Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK ,natch atm it's over due for delivery.

I wouldn't advise buying from EBay for core components (and I haven't even found it cheap).

What you can buy from there is an Upgrade version of Home Premium for the same price as you are paying for the OEM version. That means you can upgrade later without having to buy a new copy of the software. Obviously an Education version, which you would appear to qualify for, is cheaper still. There is a trick that allows you to install an Upgrade from scratch, so you don't even need an existing OS.

As far as 64-bit versus 32-bit, the advantage is the ability to use 4Gb RAM. The disadvantage is that some old software won't work.

I'm with you on the CPU, apart from the cache, that chip starts at 2.2 compared to 1.6 of the 2140. That's because it has an x11 multiplier compared to an x8.