New build specs - your opinions please.

[robtotheb]

My colleague at work has about £1200 to burn on a new PC and wanted some advice on his choices so far:

CASE: CoolerMaster Cosmos Silent Gaming Tower Case w/ 420 Watts Power Supply
CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache 64-bit
CD: SONY DUAL FORMAT 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER
FAN: ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler
HDD x2:500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI & QX9650/Q9770 Support) Asus P5N-T Deluxe nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR2 3 x PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Value Select or Major Brand)
NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: 630 Watts Power Supplies (Hiper 630W Type-M SLI/CrossFire Ready Power Supply
SOUND: Creative Labs SB Audigy SE
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 16X PCI Express
WNC: PCI Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps Network Interface Card

Any advice would be very welcome

[Crevan]

The case seems to come with a power supply already. Might change to something else, unless you want your friend to have a spare (and probably useless, given its power and his specs) PSU. Also, I've been told that Hiper PSUs aren't that good, though don't know myself.
Not sure you would need a discrete sound card, since the mobo has an integrated one. Might save a few tenners.
Memory's cheap as chips (hehe) now, so you can get a great kit for about £60, OCZ, Corsair and Crucial are all major companies producing high-quality stuff.

Also, I'm pretty sure you could squeeze a GTX260 or ever 280 into that price range, but GTX+ is still good.
And ask your friend does he really need Vista Ultimate

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at the WD 640GB hard disk which is supposed to be quite fast:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144339

Also I would replace the PSU with something like a Corsair HX620W or 650TX:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114941

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135514

The HX series have modular cables and the TX series are not modular but are cheaper!

I would also go for some memory with better timings too:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132904

You can get an HD4870 for around £170 and a GTX260 for around £200 which are better choices for gaming. Vista Ultimate is a bit OTT IMHO as Vista Home premium is around £60 for an OEM DVD whereas the former costs around £105.

[wzix]

I would of thought as well that as memory is so cheap at the moment, you might as well go for the next corsair model up with the heat pads on

[Crevan]

Your current build, with a 620W Corsair PSU and a pair of WD 640GB drives, and minus the case, comes at about 900 quid. So if you want to crank some things up, you might as well do that. Like change the GPU, as mentioned.

[Olmy]

Here is what I would change

Case
Antec P182, good for quiet computing, well built and has great cable management.

CPU Cooler
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 or OCZ Vendetta 2 - they cool an overclocked Q6600 well so either should handle your cpu. The OCZ Vendetta 2 fan is apparently quieter though.

Harddrive
Alot of people recommend the Samsung Spinpoint drives as they are quiet and fast.

Motherboard
I wouldn't personally bother with an nForce board, and would instead get an X38 board (edit : or an X48 board, which seems to have better availability now). Either have proper Crossfire support which I'll get to next.

Graphics Card
The ATI HD-4850 is as good as the 9800 GTX+ in most benchmarks, and often beats it. In addition ATI's driver support has improved alot recently and supports linux now. Another benefit is you can buy a second 4850 later on if you find newer games become too demanding for one 4850. Crossfire allows them to run in tandem, which the X38 supports with both PCI-E lanes running at X16 and it has been shown to perform better than SLI. Keep in mind you usually get less than double the performance with two cards in crossfire mode.

Graphics Card Cooler
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev 2 cooler. With the turbo fan module which you clip on to it, this would keep the HD-4850 graphics card very cool while keeping noise to an absolute minimum.

Power Supply
The Corsair HX 520 is a modular power supply which reduces cable clutter as you only plug in cables for devices you have installed. In addition its quiet and the supplied power is very stable. This PSU should handle two HD-4850's without any problems - but if anyone wants to correct me... Edit: Actually considering your budget, maybe go with the HX 620 so that you have plenty of headroom for more components later on.

[shadowcreaper]

case:good case though VERY large, have you thought of maybe a hypid anubis case it looks amazing and very good while not being stupidly large.

motherboardO NOT GET NVDIA. lots of stable issues with them, i suggest like someone else said getting a P5 X38 INTELL board sinse intel boards a lot more stable then nvdia ones, which tend to fail or get badly performance in many reveiws i seen.

HD:get samsung T1 spinpoint of 750 spinpoint, sinse like someone said they very good.

CPU:cooler:: get maybe a 120extreame thermite, or scyth zinpang which very good.

graphics::4870 best card for value and could have crossfire with x38

[richieuk]

HD:get samsung T1 spinpoint of 750 spinpoint, sinse like someone said they very good.

ATM, theres alot of hype about 640GB drives of 320/333GB Platters... There are Spinpoints with 1TB with 3x 333GB platters, but 640GB models are much easier to identify.

Coniderably faster than other drives, with correct partition management, they can rival a Raptor drive.

[staffsMike]

Intel Q6600 ~ £110 + Scythe Ninja ~£30
4GB PC6400 ~£55
Asus P5Q-E or Abit X38 ~£100 - £120
2x 640GB Western Digital AAKS ~£105
Antec P182 ~£85
Corsair 520W HX ~£65
Geforce 280GTX ~£250
Samsung Optical ~£15
Vista Home premium (unless you know why you want ultimate there is no point imo) ~£60

£875 total

That will be damn near silent, fairly cool running and if overclocked easily a match for the Q9450 in most tasks

Really though it depends on his tasks.

If it's gaming what sort of resolution is he playing at because the 280GTX is overkill for pretty much anything but anything less than 1920 x 1200 it's a total waste.

[NightshadowUK]

My colleague at work has about £1200 to burn on a new PC and wanted some advice on his choices so far:

CASE: CoolerMaster Cosmos Silent Gaming Tower Case w/ 420 Watts Power Supply
CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache 64-bit
CD: SONY DUAL FORMAT 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER
FAN: ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler
HDD x2:500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI & QX9650/Q9770 Support) Asus P5N-T Deluxe nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR2 3 x PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Value Select or Major Brand)
NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: 630 Watts Power Supplies (Hiper 630W Type-M SLI/CrossFire Ready Power Supply
SOUND: Creative Labs SB Audigy SE
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 16X PCI Express
WNC: PCI Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps Network Interface Card

Any advice would be very welcome

Here goes!

CASE - this is personal preference, just make sure it's got good airflow.

CPU - I'd be tempted to save some green and buy the Q6600 as it's pretty much guaranteed to reach 3GHz on stock voltage.

DVD/CD - Last time I checked Samsung were making the most stable drives.

HSF - Go for one of the Scythe range (Ninja / Mugen) or if budget allows (which it looks like it does), a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme with a good 120mm fan. The Asus Silent Knight 2 is nothing special and the OCZ Vendetta 2 is so large it blocks the motherboard memory slots.

HDD - The 640GB WDAAKS is all the rage at the minute, you can't go wrong with a couple of those.

MOBO - Stay away from nVidia based S775 boards! I'm a fan of Abit so I'd be looking at the IX38 QuadGT.

RAM - 2x2GB PC6400 by a well known brand and you'll be laughing.

GPU - ATi HD4870 without a doubt.

Hope that helps a bit.

EDIT: Beaten to it by Mike, it's what I get for taking a snack break.

[staffsMike]

EDIT: Beaten to it by Mike, it's what I get for taking a snack break.

You see I took a break from something far more enjoyable than that

It's a commitment thing you see

[Mithrandir]

I would get the Xonar DX sound card instead of the Audigy SE.

[staffsMike]

I would use onboard

[Mithrandir]

I would use onboard

Quite true. As some of the higher end mobos have X-fi or similar grade chipset. It'll save a few quid.

[NovaSphere]

Intel Q6600 ~ £110 + Scythe Ninja ~£30
4GB PC6400 ~£55
Asus P5Q-E or Abit X38 ~£100 - £120
2x 640GB Western Digital AAKS ~£105
Antec P182 ~£85
Corsair 520W HX ~£65
Geforce 280GTX ~£250
Samsung Optical ~£15
Vista Home premium (unless you know why you want ultimate there is no point imo) ~£60

£875 total

That will be damn near silent, fairly cool running and if overclocked easily a match for the Q9450 in most tasks

Really though it depends on his tasks.

If it's gaming what sort of resolution is he playing at because the 280GTX is overkill for pretty much anything but anything less than 1920 x 1200 it's a total waste.

Even if he has the money I wouldn't go for the GTX280, it's really overpriced, for a little more money better get an SLI GTX 260 if you wan't an Nvidia card, or just stick with a single GTX260 lol

[staffsMike]

£250 isn't bad for 280GTX now.

It depends what you need it for. Most of the new cards are horrific overkill for most people but since he has such a huge budget, seems like a nice way to use some of it

Think of it this way, when the original 8800GTX and 8800GTS 640mb were released they were both the best cards available. I eventually got an 8800GTS but you can now buy cards which are better for £60-£70. The 8800GTX is still awesome performance wise now.