Attempt to build my first PC with £1500-£2000 budget

[Dreaming]

If you really want to spend £2K then buy a reasonably priced PC and spend to rest on a top of the range monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers.

24" Dell 2407 Monitor - £420 (heck, you could even get a 30" cinema display)
Logitech Dinovo Edge Keyboard - £100
Logitech MX Revolution Mouse - £60
Logitech Z5500 5.1 Speaker System - £220

Good peripherals make a noticeable difference, an Intel Extreme over a Core 2 does not. Same goes for DDR3, SLi, SSD and countless other overpriced technologies.

Yea, I noticed the other day that my e6300 at stock (that's 1.83ghz) to overclocked (2.8ghz) makes no noticable different to framerates in any of my games (oblivion, c&c3 etc.). Didn't try it with supreme commander though where it could potentially make a difference.

I think;
Montor
Keyboard
Mouse
Case
External HDD / Backup
Sound

are underrated, because people always want the most powerful 'under the hood' PC. But a keyboard will (or should) last you years, as will a mouse / good headphones / good monitor.

[staffsMike]

@staffsMike: I just found the 64GB Mtron at £1175 for pre-order (not as bad as I expected actually, considering that the 32GB version is said to cost $1500 - and we all know about UK mark-up). That leaves £825 for everything else.

CPU: £160 (Q6600)
Cooler: £23 (Scythe Min&#233
GFX Card: £200 (8800 GTS)
PSU: £65 (HX520)
Case: £70 (Antec 900)
RAM: £ 70 (4GB Geil Black Dragon - I ripped that from you, but probably would've gone the Aria Special on OCZ if it was in Stock - even though the timing is a bit worse - almost £20 of saving to be had)
Sound card (I insist): £50 ('real' X-Fi OEM)
Motherboard: £110 (Abit IP-35 Pro) I know that the IP-35 is much better value, but I'd pay for µGuru™, eSATA.

That leaves £77 for a 500GB storage drive and a DVDRW (forgot last time).
A Samsung T166 (£60) and a Samsung 203d (£17)

Just managed. I actually had to cut corners by going Miné. I originally intended to go Ninja, or Thermalright Ultima 90i + Scythe Flex, but that wouldn't leave enough for the DVDRW (it would be easy if you step down on the motherboard or drop the sound card, but I didn't want to do either). The only thing I neglected is the delivery cost of the Mtron. But if the motherboard can drop towards £100 on a Today Only deal, that should just about cover it

haha are they really that much!!?

Nice build though

are these any good?
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

[chobits]

hey everyone, thanks for all the advice so far, very welcoming, so much i have to think about.

the only demanding thing ill be doing is playing the latest video games, multi-tasking, tabbing in and out lol. i wont be doing things like video encoding and stuff like that.

now this is going to sound geeky but because i take CSS (counter strike source) quite seriously i need a perfect screen size, my current laptop screen is 15inch, so an upgrade to 19 or 21inch would be a huge difference. im worried if i go any bigger than that it'll be too big? I wouldnt mind HDTV, quick response times and all that stuff.

so until those new chips are out i guess i could decide on what case, monitor and optical drive to get...

what do i need to consider when choosing a case? water cooling is the better option for overclocking i've heard.... but it is difficult to maintain? Ive checked dimensions on full towers and mid size ones, and i guess i'd rather have too much space than too little. from the little knowledge i have on cases the thermaltake kandalf seemed pretty good, comes with intergrated water cooling system... is this a bad choice?

oh and about sound, i almost always use my headphones, my walls are quite thin lol so i wont be getting speakers.

[McPhee]

I'd skip water cooling, yet again it's expensive without a great deal of benefit. It's also heavy, so you'll have difficulty shipping it to LANs

For a case you want to look for:

Weight (probably the most important if it's going to LANs)
Good Airflow
Number of drive bays (for DVD drives, card readers, Hard Drives etc.)
Aesthetics (you need to like the look of you're case, you'll probably have it for years)
Removable motherboard tray (a bonus rather than a necessity)

Also keep form factor in mind, portable machines tend to be mATX so you'll need an mATX motherboard. Desktop machines are normally ATX, the motherboards tend to have more features and expansion slots but the cases are bigger, and thus heavier.

Try this case: HEXUS.net - Review :: SilverStone SG-03 - WORLD EXCLUSIVE! : Page - 1/11

It's small, light and you can still fit full-size components in there. Cooling-wise it'll cope fine with a 45nm CPU and a G92 8800GTS, especially if the extra cooling fans are installed.

[directhex]

here's a rundown of the wife's new system, which we built together on Friday. it's pretty fecking powerful, and just needs monitor/keyboard/mouse to finish it:

* Shuttle SG31G2
* 4GiB PC6400 DDR2 RAM
* Intel Core 2 Duo E6850
* GeForce 8800GT
* Samsung 500GB SATA disk drive
* Samsung DVDRW
* Akasa memory card reader
* Vista Home Premium

total cost: £750

it's more than meaty enough to be paired with a nice (24") monitor and run pretty much anything on high detail, and would still wind up well under your budget

[staffsMike]

That 8800 is going to get seriously toasty in the shuttle



This is what I have cramed into a Silverstone TJ-08 so far

You can fit a hell of a lot into a small space like that and in that case you actually get very good temps. The side of the case has space to stick an 80mm or 92mm fan without really modding it to cool the graphics card that eventually goes in

There are some decent uATX motherboards coming out now, for overclocking etc..
Asus P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 Micro-ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
nice one there

and this one
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
which I think will prove a decent overclocker

[directhex]

That 8800 is going to get seriously toasty in the shuttle

honestly, i've been pleasantly surprised. the machine has shown zero signs of stability issues (including typical heat issues), and seems to simply kick the gpu and/or cpu fan into full swing on occasion, for a minute or two, much like a laptop. oh, and it's one of those overclocked bfg cards too.

[staffsMike]

nice can you fit double width cards in?

[directhex]

nice can you fit double width cards in?

not on that model of shuttle. SOME boards have the slots the "right way round" to allow it, but this one doesn't. i'll try and find a list of double-happy shuttles.

[directhex]

dual-slot-happy AMD shuttles:
Shuttle Europe - SN27P2

dual-slot-happy Intel shuttles:
Shuttle Europe - SX38P2 Pro (Prima Series) (also supports crossfire single-slot cards)
Shuttle Europe - SP35P2 Pro (Prima Series)

[TooNice]

@staffsMike: I am not all up to date with SSD, but AFAIK, the Mtron is the fastest and will outdo the Raptor in almost every single area. There is one significant problem with the drive though, it's that it doesn't play nice with Intel ICH9 and ICH8 chipset. It's still fast enough to beat all competition I know of, but the 680i/780i platform will be a better motherboard choice for them.

I've not seen reviews of the 64GB version of the Samsung, but their 32GB version trailed behind the 32GB Mtron by a significant amount (i.e. RAID-0 the two and the Mtron is probably still faster). Edit: Nope, doesn't look that amazing. I am not Tom's biggest fan, but if that's anything to go by, the Raptor will definitely have it's share of wins as an all purpose performance HD over the Samsung.

Anyway, if we are now getting into peripheral, my opinion is that the Gigaworks S750 is still the one to beat when it comes to multimedia speakers, from a sound quality perspective (the Logitech do win connectivity wise and, the amount of 'boom' you can get out of the subwoofer - nice in CoD, but less for music IMHO). But.. I reckon that a good X-Fi + an AKG 701/Sennheiser HD650 will actually be better for gaming, movies and music than every multimedia setup I've tried, and frankly, even a few decent speaker system. Not an option if you want to share the sound, but that's why I go good MM speakers (a good deal cheaper than those B&W) and a nice headphones

[McPhee]

I was merely making a point with the speakers not suggesting that he buy that particular model

If the OP is serious about sound then an Amp/Speaker combo cannot be beaten. My suggestion would be to buy a set of Jamo A102 speakers and an Onkyo TX-SR505E Amp. Should be around £450 for the lot.
The Onkyo TX-SR605E is better, but you're paying for Dolby True HD support, something which no current PC soundcard supports. Worth looking at though if you'd upgrade the soundcard if/when Creative release a TrueHD X-Fi

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