Build me a gaming system £1000-1100

Hi

I am in the process of building a new gaming machine for about £1000-1100
I will be buying it from Scan and would welcome your comments or feedback on the following spec. Alternatively I will look at your spec or suggestions.



Case Akasa Zen/Antec P182 £30-90
CPU Intel Q6600 £160
HSF AC Freezer/Scythe Infinity £15-30
Ram 2x2gb Corsair PC6400 5-5-5-12 £70
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint 500gb £60
DVD Samsung 203 Sata £20

Graphics 8800GT to be decided £200
Motherboard To be decided £60-110
PSU To be decided £55-100
Monitor Samsung 2232BW £220
Soundcard and speakers open to sugestions

Which?
1.Graphics cards
From my research the GT seems to offer the best value for money and a single one can run any modern game? Only if you have masses of money should you go for a GTX and even then maybe an 8800GT in SLI would be better? Should I be going for a single 8800GT?

I note from the forums of noise problems with BFG and XFX. I was thinking to get the ones with Zalman cooling fans as they seem to run cooler and quieter? Gigabyte, Leadtek and MSI have these.

Does 1gb of onboard memory make that much difference or is 512mb enough?

2.Motherboard
If the person concerned wants a single card only then they should get either:
Abit IP35 Dark raider or the IP35 Pro. Alternatively the AsusP5K- Premium.

If the person concerned wanted to run SLI now or in the future then he should get Asus MN32-E SLI with a 680 chipset, which is a barebones Asus Striker? The 780 boards look too expensive?

3.PSU
I assume a Corsair 520HX would run this fine unless he wanted sli 8800gt and then he would need to go 620HX or higher? Can you suggest psus and I assume Seasonic, Enermax, Thermaltake, Tagan.Antec, Corsair are all in there.


4. Soundcard and speaker? Is the X-Fi extreme gamer worth it? I can see its how long is a piece of string and I know some of the merits about sticking with onboard sound.
I assume only worth getting if you go the whole hog and buy decent 5.1 speakers as well? Logitech 5500? For the people who have gone the whole hog was it worth the plunge? Any suggestions on a worthwhile soundcard/no soundcard but speaker combination is welcome.

Many thanks for your views.

For £200 drop the GT and get a new GTS. They can all be had now for around £200 and they are superior to the GT in every way.

I bought the BFG 8800GTS G92 a few weeks back and its extremely fast and very quiet. Going for around £190 atm i think.

Note: There ya go: Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK just a shade under £200

It's pretty much up to personal taste with the last couple of items, personally I heard a lot of good things about the aBit boards, plus the errors seemed well documented with plenty of places to find fixes. What put me off Asus boards was the fact I heard some of their cooling solutions didn't work inverted and the fact their support website is frequently inaccessable.

PSU: For single card, the HX520 is fine if you want modular, if you want normal cables, anything by Seasonic. For SLI I'd err on the side of caution myself, and streach to that Enermax 720w Inifiniti's that Blitzen recomends highly.


If you get the aBit board, I'd wait with regards to the soundcards and use the onboard. I've got a pair of fairly unimpressive Creative 2.1 speakers (unimpressive in the amount of tweaking I had to do to get the sound right) but once I've was done it's fine.

You can get that monitor for £191 here Samsung SYNCMASTER 2232BW 22 WIDE FORMAT TFT SCREEN (2 MS) review cheap prices SYNCMASTER 2232BW 22 WIDE FORMAT TFT SCREEN (2 MS) Samsung best buy discount online uk shop.

I'm getting mine tomorrow or tuesday.

Thanks Mick. I noted that.make sure you have a dvi cable as they said it doesnt come with one. I will tell the person concerned but they might wnat to get everything from 1 place.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mick84

You can get that monitor for £191 here Samsung SYNCMASTER 2232BW 22 WIDE FORMAT TFT SCREEN (2 MS) review cheap prices SYNCMASTER 2232BW 22 WIDE FORMAT TFT SCREEN (2 MS) Samsung best buy discount online uk shop.

I'm getting mine tomorrow or tuesday.

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Thats one of the last places on earth i would shop.
Its in Franc and their customer service is shocking.

Pay the extra and get it from the UK.

At £200, it is definitely better to get a GTS. However, shop at little and you will find a 8800GT for under £150 (possibly even with a dual slot cooler), and that's very hard to beat from a performance/cost perspective. The most attractive 8800GT I've seen from a low noise perspective would be from ECS with the Arctic S1 pre-fitted (note that they have two versions, one with Arctic S1 and the other without, make sure you get the right one) which go for about £170 and capable of going full passive. The GTS is about 12.5% (+/- 2.5%) faster, I'll leave it up to you to decide if you think it's worth the premium. In any case, forget the 1GB version, 512MB it only really improves at unplayable settings.

Personally, I am a big advocate of a discrete sound card. You will hear the difference with most quality headphones and even with multimedia speakers (to a lesser degree). The Xtreme Gamer is a good all-rounder from a price/what you get perspective, and the card I would go for if I was building for a friend who is not much of an audiophile but want a versatile multimedia/gaming card. The X-Fi (any of them including the Prelude), generally pairs well with the Gigaworks S-series in my experience. But please note that they do not have 5.1 optical out (except perhaps the Prelude), so they are not a good match for setup without analogue in. From a sound perspective though, I do prefer the Gigaworks to the Z-5500 (which has the advantage in terms of connectivity).

While I am at it, I have to say that I find headphones more tiring for long period listening, yet much better sound wise than a similarly multimedia speakers.

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Originally Posted by Blitzen

Thats one of the last places on earth i would shop.
Its in Franc and their customer service is shocking.

Pay the extra and get it from the UK.

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Argh crap! I thought the shop was in the UK when it is a co.uk site :surprised:

Are you sure the cable won't come with the monitor? I didn't order any.. which one should I get? Is this one okay? Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blitzen

Thats one of the last places on earth i would shop.
Its in Franc and their customer service is shocking.

Pay the extra and get it from the UK.

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I got my 226BW from pixmania, delivery took a couple days longer than I was expecting, and if I was going to buy another I'd get it from there again.

mine came with both a VGA and a DVI cable in the box.

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Originally Posted by Andaho

I got my 226BW from pixmania, delivery took a couple days longer than I was expecting, and if I was going to buy another I'd get it from there again.

mine came with both a VGA and a DVI cable in the box.

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You got lucky then.
What would do for an RMA if it all goes wrong?

Spend a small fortune shipping something back to France.

I think the extra £15-20 buying from a reputable company is worth the cash tbh

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blitzen

You got lucky then.
What would do for an RMA if it all goes wrong?

Spend a small fortune shipping something back to France.

I think the extra £15-20 buying from a reputable company is worth the cash tbh

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Not an extra £15-20 though... it's £30+ if it's £190 from pixmania including delivery and £220 at scan excluding delivery.

If something went wrong I'd directly call samsung - officially the goods are sold as in the UK... because pixmania don't ship directly from france... they have a ship bring over huge crates of orders, and then sort and send them by parcelforce from a UK warehouse - I'm just guessing at this, but mine was sent by standard UK mainland parcelforce 24, not by a euro service.

Even if that's not the case and you did have to send something back to france, if you check ebay for parcel courier booking agents, you can send something upto 30kg to europe zone 1 for around £15 who will come collect it from you. - Most fools would spend more than that sending it by royal mail standard parcels within the UK! - the booking agent I use charge me £6.45 for parcel force 48 uk delivery.

They are about £210 from ebuyer. Pays your money and takes your choice.

This guy says the monitor comes with cables Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW - Review - Brilliant Monitor

So I guess we don't have to buy an extra one.

8800GT for £140 inc. VAT..

nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI-E - Aria Technology

or the 512MB G92 8800GTS for £176 inc. VAT

nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 512MB PCI-E - Aria Technology



:D

Thanks for all the feedback guys and I have adjusted the system as follows.



Case Antec P182 £90
CPU Intel Q6600 £160- no time to wait for the E8500
HSF AC Freezer/Scythe Infinity £15-30
Ram 2x2gb Corsair PC6400 5-5-5-12 £70
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint 500gb £60
DVD Samsung 203 Sata £20

Graphics 8800GT to be decided £200
Motherboard IP35 Dark Raider £70 or Asus P5N32-E SLI if he wants SLI
PSU Corsair 520HX if a single card and am asking Corsair about capacity of 620HX to run SLI. I would have preferred an Antec Quattro or cheap Thermaltake Toughpower 750.
Monitor Samsung 2232BW £220
Soundcard and speakers I am suggesting he tries onboard sound. Asus comes with a reasonable soundcard. He can upgrade easily at a later date maybe an x-fi gamer and some Logitech z5500.

Which?
1.Graphics cards

Ok the research and latest Toms hardware review suggests the 8800GT and they are about £165 with the Zalman cooler. He wants to play Crysis so have suggested going for this

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

because it comes with free crysis which is worth £30 to him. Evga also have 10 year guarantees. In effect he can have a gts for about £15 more. I know the performance gains are small, but they are larger in higher resolutions, so I think it makes sense otherwise I would have gone for a GT . he can always upgrade later.


2.Motherboard
If the person concerned wants a single card only then they should get either:
Abit IP35 Dark raider at £70
If the person concerned wanted to run SLI now or in the future then he should get Asus MN32-E SLI with a 680 chipset, which is a barebones Asus Striker? The 780 boards look too expensive? These boards are about £120.

3.PSU
I am going for a 520 hx or 620hx if he only envisages single card and no upgrading depending upon what Corsair say about capacity for it to run GTS and ocd 6600 or if the 620 can run 2x gts in sli. Otherwise Scan are limited and I’ve told him to consider Enermax Infiniti.I said he could sell the psu easily. I wish scan sold some themlatake toughpower 750s at 75or Antec Quattro 850 at £110.


4. Soundcard and speaker have told him to wait. X-fi extreme gamer if not satisfied and the Logitech z5500 or similar.


Any further views welcome..

Pretty sure the 520w HX would run GTS's in SLi if you felt the need. Don't bother with SLi though. Dual GPU like the ATi 3870X2 might be worth considering but if you have £400 for graphics card(s) get a £200 card now and then a £200 in a year or so if the old one is running out of steam.

The monitor does indeed come with both dvi and vga cables. I had no problems with pixmania.

If you are spending over £1000 on what is supposed to be a gaming system then I'd prioritise the graphics a little more. Yes, a 8800GT can play almost everything today, but might you want to plays games tomorrow too perhaps? You'd be pissed if a game released in the summer brings your £1000 system to its knees...

At the moment, it appears that 9600GTs in SLI are offering fantastic bang per buck.

GeForce 9600 GT SLI Performance

AnandTech: Bringing Competition to Midrange: The GeForce 9600 GT Raises NVIDIA's Sub $200 Bar

so it may be worth considering that, which could easily be covered by your budget. Maybe even go the whole hog and get 2 8800GTs ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EarlGrey

If you are spending over £1000 on what is supposed to be a gaming system then I'd prioritise the graphics a little more. Yes, a 8800GT can play almost everything today, but might you want to plays games tomorrow too perhaps? You'd be pissed if a game released in the summer brings your £1000 system to its knees...

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Lowering graphics settings isn't the end of the world ;) no game is going to bring it to it knees by any means.

There's no point wasting money on SLi boards and 2+ graphics cards .. trust me I made that mistake :rolleyes:

Listen to staffsMike, he mentioned to me not to get SLI as I was going to get 2x 8800GTS. I decided to do more research on the matter.. I found that SLI was not all what it should be and if you were thinking for going with x2 GT then should consider 1x ASUS 512mb EN8800GTS.

Its factory OC'd and out performs a lot of GTX's.

Also for MOBO, you should look at the reviews for the Asus P5K Premium, this out performs the Darkraider for £30 extra.

Monitor, the Samsung SM-2232BW is one of the better ones also.

In the past, I've always been pro-single card. And to an extent, I still am, if only because of the limited choices in motherboard. But the idea of SLi/Crossfire is making more sense as days go by. From an absolute performance perspective, I do not doubt at all that the 8800GT SLi will outperform an overclocked an 8800GTS in games that supports it (but it will also cost more). In the past, game support was a big concern but, but this seems to be changing.

The newly released 9600GT in SLi has been shown to beat the 8800 Ultra more often than not. Look at EarlGrey's first link - it also shows the 8800GT next to the GTX and the Ultra. The 9600GT has never lost to the GTX, and only lost to the Ultra in one instance. In all instance, where it beat the Ultra, and it does so by a margin that can't be matched by any single card (even the X2) is capable of.

And two 9600GT is only about 10-15% more expensive than one GTS (£20-30)... if it wasn't the motherboards. AMD/nVidia are seemingly backing multi GPU (I think it works cheaper than making an 'Ultra' GFX card with the fastest GPU core/memory), and like CPUs, which is no longer measured solely on who gets the fastest single core, I expect GPU to be headed that way. Anand also did a recent review of the X2 in Crossfire (4 GPU), and we can see that 2 and even 3 GPU scales extremely well (other than Crysis - no wonder the 3x Ultra did so poorly too) - probably better than most people would've anticipated.

Of course you could wait for the 9800's !?

9800's when are they out then!!!

If you do get a EVGA card make sure you register online for the warranty otherwise it defaults to 1 year warranty if I remember correctly.

How fast is the 9800 and how much will it cost? £250 get you an X2 or 2x9600GT and they both scale a lot better than when SLI/Crossfire came out. The 9800 will need to be a total monster to be competitive. If they can make something that's twice as fast as the 8800 GTX for £300, then I think the 'single faster GPU' approach will last another generation - assuming it is a single GPU solution. Incidentally, the only speculation I've heard regarding the 9800 is that it will be two G92 GTs.

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Originally Posted by TooNice

How fast is the 9800 and how much will it cost? £250 get you an X2 or 2x9600GT and they both scale a lot better than when SLI/Crossfire came out. The 9800 will need to be a total monster to be competitive. If they can make something that's twice as fast as the 8800 GTX for £300, then I think the 'single faster GPU' approach will last another generation - assuming it is a single GPU solution. Incidentally, the only speculation I've heard regarding the 9800 is that it will be two G92 GTs.

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yes its two G92's man. so SLI/crossfire is usable now? before it made little to know difference due to poor drivers and no games takinga dvantage of it. has tiems changed now?

I may be jumping the gun here - but if some of the recent tests are anything to go by, we are at a turning point, and card manufacturers seem to be pushing toward that direction. The only thing that stands in the way may be the range of motherboards.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TooNice

I may be jumping the gun here - but if some of the recent tests are anything to go by, we are at a turning point, and card manufacturers seem to be pushing toward that direction. The only thing that stands in the way may be the range of motherboards.

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With the new X48s on the horizon this should help?

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Originally Posted by nerdgeek

With the new X48s on the horizon this should help?

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How?
The X38/X48 are basically the same and they are the ones with PCI-E 2.0. Thats the only real difference for the GPU's

Not to mention, they are Crossfire. (Pimped SLi drivers will no doubt arrive soon enough though).