Advice on new PC purchase

[Disneymum]

Greetings

Earlier this month my son’s PC was stolen and we have just received the payout from the insurance and are looking at buying him a replacement and under the advisement of a friend have come to your little think tank to seek advice.

His previous machine was from overclockers.co.uk and was the following spec

Q6600 overclocked to 3.2Ghz
4x1GB Crucial PC8500
500GB Western Digital Hard Drive
800w OCZ PSU
Leadtek 8800 GTX
Antec 900 Case

The insurance payout was £1000 and we are going to put £300 towards that to buy him a PC which he mainly uses for gaming and has to last him at least 2 years.


Now we've done a little research although not as much as I would like and the following is a list of things we would like to try and have in the machine

1/ Quad core cpu from what I’ve read not so important now but with newer games being released supporting quad core processors there seems little point in a dual core for a “future proof” machine

2/ Efficient PSU one of those new Cooler Master silver 80 plus rated psu’s would fit the bill but I don’t think there out yet, at least I can’t see them anywhere.

3/ GTX280 Graphics card. We see little point in the additional cost of the 4870x2 even to future proof the machine as he only has a 22” monitor and most of the benchmarks we’ve looked at show the GTX280 on par or better than the 4870x2 with a monitor of this size, not only that, it’s also cheaper and 100w less power to run.

4/ A Western digital 1TB Black Hard drive from checking reviews appears to be fast and low power.

5/ Must be a pre built machine and pre overclocked

Thus far I have found the following that sort of fit the bill

From Overclockers.co.uk
Q9550@3.2Ghz
2x2Gb Corsair
P182
OCZ 1000w PSU < -- not overly keen on this PSU
GTX280 OC ( think it’s a BFG )
Seagate 500GB HDD
Vista Home Premium
X48 Asus Rampage
£1386

From Scan.co.uk
Q9550 overclocked 0-10 % ( anyone able to advise what sort of overclock you get from 0-10% and 10-20% on average ? )
2x2GB Corsair
P182
Corsair 620w
Asus Maximus II Formula
XFX GTX280
Samsung 500GB HDD
Vista Home Premium
£1337

Can anyone help us by commenting on either of these machines or even help by advising alternative.

Any comments, advice or other forms of wisdom are gratefully received

Kind regards
Doreen

[TAKTAK]

Greetings

Earlier this month my son’s PC was stolen and we have just received the payout from the insurance and are looking at buying him a replacement and under the advisement of a friend have come to your little think tank to seek advice.

ouch, theres too much scum around these days

His previous machine was from overclockers.co.uk and was the following spec

Q6600 overclocked to 3.2Ghz
4x1GB Crucial PC8500
500GB Western Digital Hard Drive
800w OCZ PSU
Leadtek 8800 GTX
Antec 900 Case

nice rig aswell

The insurance payout was &#163;1000 and we are going to put &#163;300 towards that to buy him a PC which he mainly uses for gaming and has to last him at least 2 years.


Now we've done a little research although not as much as I would like and the following is a list of things we would like to try and have in the machine

1/ Quad core cpu from what I’ve read not so important now but with newer games being released supporting quad core processors there seems little point in a dual core for a “future proof” machine

2/ Efficient PSU one of those new Cooler Master silver 80 plus rated psu’s would fit the bill but I don’t think there out yet, at least I can’t see them anywhere.

3/ GTX280 Graphics card. We see little point in the additional cost of the 4870x2 even to future proof the machine as he only has a 22” monitor and most of the benchmarks we’ve looked at show the GTX280 on par or better than the 4870x2 with a monitor of this size, not only that, it’s also cheaper and 100w less power to run.

someones been doing their homework...

i would get a corsair/enermax/seasonic PSU

4/ A Western digital 1TB Black Hard drive from checking reviews appears to be fast and low power.

i personally would get 2 smaller drives (2x 640GB WD AAKs') as that way you have things spread accross two drives (i.e. you only lose half in the event of a corruption )

5/ Must be a pre built machine and pre overclocked

are you 100&#37; steadfast on this? as you can save a bundle if you build it yourselves (especially on such a high spec rig) and building a computer nowadays is childsplay (everything is color coded and only lets you connect it one way around...

Thus far I have found the following that sort of fit the bill

From Overclockers.co.uk
Q9550@3.2Ghz
2x2Gb Corsair
P182
OCZ 1000w PSU < -- not overly keen on this PSU
GTX280 OC ( think it’s a BFG )
Seagate 500GB HDD
Vista Home Premium
X48 Asus Rampage
&#163;1386

yup
yup
yup
nope, tis way overkill (and you've said your not keen yourself ) i would put a corsair HX620w or TX650w (well respected power supplies)
yup *drool*
i would get a WD (but there is not much difference nowadays.. a 640gb drive would theoretically be faster 2x320gb platters)
yup
wouldnt be my personal choice (i would be getting a DFI but again.. it is personal preferance as that board is fine)

From Scan.co.uk
Q9550 overclocked 0-10 % ( anyone able to advise what sort of overclock you get from 0-10% and 10-20% on average ? )

there are no guarantees as every chip is made differently, you may get a good chip that overclocks to 20% or a not so good one that clocks to 5% etc but generally the latest intel chips are good clockers so you will probably hit the 10% overclock TBH... no guarantees thoguh

2x2GB Corsair
P182
Corsair 620w
Asus Maximus II Formula
XFX GTX280
Samsung 500GB HDD
Vista Home Premium
&#163;1337

*salivates*
and a perfect price tag for a gaming rig (although it is a bit on the pricy side...) i would expect you to be able to build the same rig yourself (if you wished to) for around &#163;1000 ish
but i am guessing your time is worth more than money so that is why you are getting prebuilt? (which is entirely understandable)

Can anyone help us by commenting on either of these machines or even help by advising alternative.

Any comments, advice or other forms of wisdom are gratefully received

Kind regards
Doreen

the only thing you may want to think about is that intel is about to move on to a new socket (with the release of nehalem (i7) at the end of the year... at which point i7 will be the new market leader and gaming platform, and possibly dropping prices on other platforms... but i7 is likely to be VERY expensive on release and you require ddr3 etc etc but if you can wait then it may be a good idea to (obviously it might not be a good idea to either.. and you may just have lost a couple of months of gaming) but with i7 you will get all of the latest technology benefits (and niggles).

also with the upcoming i7 it may be worth considering buying a cheaper build for now... i.e. something to tide you through until the market stabilises. (and you may have noticed that tech prices have slowly crept up a little bit recently [i am presuming to defy economic downturn by marking prices up slightly])


and finally, welcome to HEXUS , and i hope i made a little bit of sense... (you'll probablly get more [better] opinions from people tomorrow [tis 1AM afterall ])

[Salazaar]

If he only has a 22" monitor then even a GTX280 is probably overkill, a 4870 would be more than enough and cost &#163;100+ less.

[Zadock]

Blimey! I wish my mum&dad had been more like you! lol! i used to end up with whatever my dad could get from this dodgy computer shop in Swindon.

Have you thought about looking at yoyotech.co.uk for a pre-built system? they do a couple of nice ones that are great for gaming but not OTT on price or spec.

[MSIC]

HI there, TakTak is basically right so i can't add alot.
Salazaar however is also right. But you could argue that for all future games a GTX280 would be more 'future proof'.
I'd strongly advise, from a performace / value perspective, either a new GTX260 (with a few extra cores) or a Radeon 4870.
Power consumption.
Performance.
Of course, performance depends on the game, but at 1680 x 1050 resolution (which a 22" monitor would be), any of these class of graphics cards will wipe the floor with any game.

[Disneymum]

Firstly many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to try and help us. Secondly apologies if I mess this quote malarkey out.

I personally would get 2 smaller drives (2x 640GB WD AAKs') as that way you have things spread accross two drives

One drive is fine I have an external drive I use to make fortnightly backups of both my sons computer and my works laptop

are you 100% steadfast on this? as you can save a bundle if you build it yourselves (especially on such a high spec rig) and building a computer nowadays is childsplay

Not 100%, the main reason was as you say time, but also if there are any problems in the future we only have the one company to deal with rather than fault finding and varied warranties with various companies. ( and yes the prospect of building did seem daunting ).

It was my son that wanted a pre over clocked system to get the best bang for buck, if we were paying for a pre built we might as well find one that will for and extra £50 make it faster then it made sense, especially as it was under warranty.

Apparently he says that he understands the host clock speed / multiplier / voltage adjustments with the cpu in bios but does not understand the memory adjustments nor their relation the memory adjustments. ( ok that last paragraph was a little over my head )

intel is about to move on to a new socket (with the release of nehalem (i7) at the end of the year... at which point i7 will be the new market leader and gaming platform, and possibly dropping prices on other platforms... but i7 is likely to be VERY expensive

Two problems here is would I be able to build one of these new tech systems for around £1300 quoting your "very expensive" as if not then this is probably worth ignoring for the time being.

and finally, welcome to HEXUS

Thank you very much, and thank you for your advice.

Blimey! I wish my mum&dad had been more like you

The fact of the matter and the reason I am here rather than my son is his father, my husband died 4 years ago and since then he has had a number of mental health issues. Without going into to much detail my son has two things that help him pass the day ( and when one of your problems is agoraphobia, believe me you need things to pass the day ). The first is a love for decorating and the other playing computer games and designing websites.

He has done alot for me the past few years and I just want to make sure our money is best spent on something that will be a good quality machine that will last and keep him happy till I can afford to replace is in a couple of years.

yoyotech.co.uk

I have been looking at other comanies this morning at work with the help of our resident I.T < insert geek > tech guy and I am yet to find one good review out of the 1000;s of bad reviews about them. However I have found a company chillblast.com

A machine I found there is as follows

Lian Li V1010
Q9550 @3.4ghz
Asus P5Q-e or Asus rampage ( rampage is £80+vat extra )
Unknown brand 4GB PC8500 ( doesn’t state brand and its 4x1gb, I'm sure I've read somewhere 2x2 is better as something effects performance filling all memory slots ? )
Unknown brand gtx280
Unknown brand 500gb Hard drive
Thermaltake 750w PSU ( My son's not happy about this brand for unstated reasons )
Vista home premium
2 years collect & return warranty
£1176.18
Or if the motherboard is changed to the rampage its £1270.18
( I've just sent an email to chillblast requesting more details on the components such as memory, hard drive and graphics card )





Now our tech guy here in the office helped me to work out a rough "own build" as follows

q9550 £ 223.10
2x2gb Corsair pc8500 £86.77
BFG gtx280 oc £299.50
Western Digital 1tb black £125.00
650W Seasonic £76.36 or 625W Enermax PRO82+ £92.81
Case ??? ( I know he's a big fan of Lan Li ? Cases, thats something I would have to check with him but for the sake of this will allow £100 for the case )
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 £143.34 or Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 £191.51
Noctua NH-U12P £42.17

Going with the cheaper options that works out at £1100, say £1150 to cover any accessories purchases such as cables and postage costs.

Now the main question on this last "own build" is what is the real world difference in performance from
a Q9550 and pc8500 at stock compared to a Q9550 at say 3.2ghz with overclocked memory ?

Again thank you everyone for your help and advice.

Kind regards
Doreen

[0iD]

I'm not letting my kids see this thread, they'll all want one
Still, have you checked out PC World? Their range of PC's and prices are competative, even if some of their staff are a bit lacking in knowledge. Plus, their support package at &#163;7 a month, where they come to your house to fix it is not too bad. My in-laws blessem (septugenerian techno junkies that they are), call them out regularly, even if it's just to install some software.

And in my opinion, unless you benchmarked it, you'd not be able to tell much difference between a Q9550 at stock speeds and one at 3.2ghz.

[Webby]

Real world performance will really depend on what the system is used for, so if it mainly for games then (with a few exceptions) any CPU speed over 2.4GHz is enough and games tend to be GPU bound (performance depends on the graphics card rather than CPU) especially at higher resolutions.

If however he is likely to venture into video encoding, editing large design work, CAD etc then faster CPU speeds will become evident.

As to buying pre-overclocked or not, overclocking is easy to do on the current Intel based motherboards and people here will be only too happy to help you if you decide to do it yourself, so what I'm trying to say is don't pay a huge premium for it. Oh and the memory part of overclocking is easy enough to understand if your son has got his head around the CPU side of things then the memory should be no problem with the proper explanation.

[Disneymum]

Still, have you checked out PC World? Their range of PC's and prices are competative, even if some of their staff are a bit lacking in knowledge. Plus, their support package at &#163;7 a month, where they come to your house to fix it is not too bad.

I myself bought an advent PC back in erm, well not sure when but it was a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz so someone should be able to date it from that. The machine had problems almost from day one and it took 11 months to get someone to come and look at it. Literally 2 weeks before the warranty expired. I lost count of the cost involved of phone calls mostly to premium rate lines as everytime I contacted the hardware people they said the fault was software.

Turns out the thing had overheated and the repair guy was unable to remove the cpu or memory from the board at they had literally welded themselves to the board.

I would rather drop &#163;7 a month down the drain rather than pay it to PCWorld for support, let alone purchase a system from them.

Real world performance will really depend on what the system is used for, so if it mainly for games then (with a few exceptions) any CPU speed over 2.4GHz is enough and games tend to be GPU bound (performance depends on the graphics card rather than CPU) especially at higher resolutions.

If however he is likely to venture into video encoding, editing large design work, CAD etc then faster CPU speeds will become evident.

Thank you, so knowing this then looking at the cost difference in a pre build overclocked machine and a home build, it looks like its time to start working on a shopping list for a DIY project.

Thanks again everyone I’ll see what we can come up with tonight and post some ideas for your scrutiny.

[0iD]

I myself bought an advent PC back in erm, well not sure when but it was a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz so someone should be able to date it from that. The machine had problems almost from day one and it took 11 months to get someone to come and look at it. Literally 2 weeks before the warranty expired. I lost count of the cost involved of phone calls mostly to premium rate lines as everytime I contacted the hardware people they said the fault was software.

Turns out the thing had overheated and the repair guy was unable to remove the cpu or memory from the board at they had literally welded themselves to the board.

I would rather drop £7 a month down the drain rather than pay it to PCWorld for support, let alone purchase a system from them.

Fair enough then, luck of the draw. But personally it saves me going round there so much and doing it, which is solid gold

Good luck anyhoo, you're in the right place for help.

[TAKTAK]

something that you may want to have a gander at: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=15525

[Cornholio]

Where abouts are you located ? i know myself if you lived close to me i would happily build it for you. Might be worth asking around on here ( once we know your location ) as you can save a lot of money building it .

[Pob255]

Personally speaking a budget of &#163;1300 (not includeing monitor) is a bit execessive, at lower specs it'll still perform well for a good while to come.

I'll break it down a bit.
graphics card
gtx280 is pritty much top end but on a 22" is fairly overkill, a gtx260 or HD4870 would perform just as well and cost less (both in money and power requirement) heck a 4850 or 9800gtx+ would also be fine.

motherboard, a p45 based chipset is probably your best bet here, getting a x48 is only realy of use if you are going for a crossfire setup (2 ati graphics cards) or going for some extreme overclocking (we're talking 50&#37;+ here not 10%)

memory, well depends on cpu and overclock, for the majority of the time you can still get awya with cheaper pc6400 and still get a reasonable overclock out of the cpu (without haveing to overclock the memory) running memory faster than the cpu really doesn't give much benefit with an intel cpu (it's amd cpu's that like the memory to be faster)
Quick note here about overclocking and FSB, the fsb quoted on cpu's is quad pumped, ie it's listed at 4x (rounded up) the actual fsb of the motherboard is running at, Memory speed is double the fsb.
So for example
Intel Core2Quad q9450 is listed as 1333mhz fsb, 2.66GHz
So 1333/4 = 333.25 = rounded down = 333mhz
333 x8 (q9450 has a x8 multiplier) = 2.664 = rounded = 2.66ghz
pc6400 is listed as 800mhz
So 800/2 = 400mhz
This means that in effect you could run the actual motherboard fsb at 400mhz, giveing you 3.2mhz on the cpu (+23%) and not even overclocking the memory (many quality brands of memory will overclock higher)
pc8500 is 1066 or fsb 533mhz, or with a q9450 533x8 =4.26ghz (+64%) before overclocking the memory (note to get that high is going to need very good cooling and voltage tweeks)
The upshot is, you can do fairly easy +20% overclocks with out major difficulties or needing to go as high a pc8500 on the memory

CPU, toughy here, a good core2duo is plenty for games at the moement, it've very hard to say at this point, if quad core is going to become a major factor in games in the future and how long it will be before they are.
I will note here that qurd core still do use&need more power and produce more heat than dual core.

Hard drive, does he really need 1terrabyte? generally if you're going over 250gb then:
A) stop downloading so much crud
B) Clean it up, uninstall thoes games you don't play, burn thoes movies *cough* sorry "p2p files" onto dvd's, if you want to watch them again then they'll happly play off the dvd drivem, if they didn't then we'd not have dvd's in the first place games and movies are the two things that take up the most space, you could probably put the entire british libary onto txt files and store them all on a 250gb drive.
If you really find yourself needing more space then extra hard disks are easy to fit and will probably of come down in price.

DVD drive, a dvdrw is dirt cheap these days and probably always part of a new build, however Blueray drives are still fairly pricey (&#163;60 vs &#163;20), so if you don't want to watch blueray on your pc, don't bother.

Power supply, tricky one here, numbers don't say it all here, actual manufactor and model are often the key points, but these also change.
Take Thermaltake PSU's as an example, they are all actually made by CWT however there is a big differnce between there budget TR2 model and there top end Toughpower model.
Added to this is the fact that most of us massively over componsate on the PSU power (I don't think I'd be far wrong to say that 80% of people's gameing pc's could be powered by a good 450w psu)
A single gpu + core2duo should only pull ~300w max from the wall.
However that number is also deceptive, as it's which vlotages that are involved that can change things, the two bigest power draws are high end Graphics cards and CPU, everything else is fairly small
Another thing to consider is ageing, PSU's lose power as they age, the amounts vary depending on the quality of the psu (low quality psu's tend to use cheaper components that age worse)
All that said a good 550w PSU is more than enough for a quad core + high end graphics card and will last a good while.

Case is a very personal thing and hard to say, if these are prebuilt, then go with what you like the look of, as it's someone else who'll have to do the building.

OS, vista 64bit, especially if you plan on using 4gb or more, 32bit is pointless as it cannot use that much memory

I had a look at the Chillblast web site, no idea what they are like.
Looks good at first, however I have some reservations.
I was looking at the Chillblast Fusion Supernova and cost after configureing

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz with overclock (up to) 3.6GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Asus P5Q Pro P45 Motherboard
8GB PC2-6400 Memory
Chillblast Geforce 9800 GTX 512MB
500GB 7200RPM Hard Disk
Samsung 20x DL DVD&#177;RW
High Performance 650W PSU
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit OEM
Windows Vista Optimisation Service
Total Price inc.VAT: &#163;1,172.04 (still a bit pricey for my likeing, but could probably cut another &#163;100 off it)

That should be a natty gameing rig that should last a good while yet.
Now what has me wondering about them is:
I looked at the memory, the pic they show is the same as the GSkill memory they sell, it ok AFAIK half decent if I remember correctly (but it can depend on the chips used and you need to look up exact model numbers for that) however even with the overclock they shouldn't need to run it faster than spec so not a problem. Looks good so far.
The graphics card pic's are BFG, very nice
The un-named PSU . . . the pic is an Enermax Liberty modular psu, very nice However on the box you can just make out 620w and it gets worse, look at the details of the thermaltake options and it shows the same pic so I wouldn't like to bet on that 650w being an enermax.

Looking through there range the components they sell (not part of a system) and it's quite small and gets even more odd.
the old quad cores they sell are q6600 and q6700
There range of graphics card is even more strange, the best nvidia is the 8800gts 512mb and the best ati is the now rather old and naff HD2900XT

If you go with this place, then I'd definately advise contacting them first and getting clarification on these unlisted components to find out excatly what they are.

One other note, on the quad core systems they only have the option for the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro cooler, while a fine little unit, good on a core2duo.
However they are not the best, especially with a hot cpu under them.
I used to have one on my old 3ghz pentium D (which was the same temps (95TDP) as the q9550 at stock speeds) and the fan on it would run fast to keep it cool and running fast it's not that quiet.

[AdamAnubis]

If you are worried about building it yourself, do what i do. Sit down, and read through all the manuals, but mainly the motherboard manuals before you start. They explain everything in simple terms, and it's how i learned to build a PC

Is he thinking about going into animation at all? Like graphics design and coding etc? If so, it might be worth leaning towards nvidia as they tend to have CUDA, PhysX, and all that kind of stuff behind them.

[lippy]

If you are worried about building it yourself, do what i do. Sit down, and read through all the manuals, but mainly the motherboard manuals before you start. They explain everything in simple terms, and it's how i learned to build a PC

Ya and whatever you do DONT HURRY! I did that mistake, instead of testing the hardware, I just stuck it straight into a vapochill, completely invalidating my warranty, and my mobo turned out to be faulty. Once again, don't get to excited and completely rush it!