Help needed for a Noddy building his PC.

I've tried to build a couple of PC's before in my time and for the most part (with a little assistance from my friends) I have been able to build one AOK. I'm now down in the West country however on a farm on me tod (no Wurzel jokes please), and I need to do the next one on my own. Before I actually start breaking components however, I would really like to pick everyones brains as to what I am about to buy.

Tops I want to spend about £420 before VAT, I will be running Win XP 32 Bit and I will be using my machine for Work (Photoshop, Outlook and the like) as well as gaming (TF2, RA3). I already have a keyboard, monitor and mouse and I will not under any circumstances be overcloking as my propensity for damaging PC's is second only to PC worlds Tech support guys.

That in mind, heres what I have so far...

Intel Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9x Multiplier, Retail 104.89 123.25
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX 64 75.2
500 GB Western Digital WD5002ABYS RE3, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms 54.92 64.51
512MB Asus HD 4850, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 1986 MHz GDDR3, GPU 625 MHz, 800 Cores, 2 x DL DVI-I/HDTV 98.99 116.31
Antec NSK-6580B Mid Tower Case inc 430w 80+ PSU, 9 Drive Bays, Front IO USB & IEEE 1394 59.99 70.49
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, DHX 49.64 58.33
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±R, 12x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM - NEW! 15.49 18.2

Total before VAT 447.92

I am perhaps looking to reduce it a little if I can do, that said, does this look like a fair spec to you? Debating dropping down to the E7400. Also I got slightly overwhelmed by the choice of Motherboards, I generally pick Asus and in the spec above, would I be better going for a seperate PSU and Case combo?

As always, any and all advice gratefully received and thanks for any help you can give.

Looks good, would consider changing your HD to the 750 or 1T samsung spinpoints. You don't seem to included any psu? If you haven't got one already any Seasonic or corsair over 400w should do. These are just my own personal prefs.

Cheers for coming back so quickly, The Antec chosen (I think!) has a 430W PSU included? Was wondering if I would be better getting them seperate

Looks like a pretty decent setup. I mess around in photoshop and am using the system in "My System" on the left, and I can run Photoshop + many other applications without problems.

However, if your running XP 32-Bit, there there is little point in you getting 4Gb of RAM, as 32-bit Operating Systems dont see more then 3 - 3.2Gb or RAM I believe.

Quote:

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Antec NSK-6580B Mid Tower Case inc 430w 80+ PSU, 9 Drive Bays, Front IO USB & IEEE 1394 59.99 70.49

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PSU included with case vicar

Save a few quid and buy an E7200 :)

Cheers guys - am assuming the stock cooler with the retail box set will be sufficient if I am not overclocking?

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Originally Posted by format

Save a few quid and buy an E7200 :)

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or an E5200. 2.5GHz and about half the price of the E8400. Although I think performance may be slightly limited.

Ninja edit: and yes, stock cooler is fine if you aren't overclocking.

I thought that Photoshop CS3 does make good use of quad core processors?? Perhaps a Q6600 maybe a good choice as it only around £10 more expensive than an E8400!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ah forget it

I've tried to build a couple of PC's before in my time and for the most part (with a little assistance from my friends) I have been able to build one AOK. I'm now down in the West country however on a farm on me tod (no Wurzel jokes please), and I need to do the next one on my own. Before I actually start breaking components however, I would really like to pick everyones brains as to what I am about to buy.

Tops I want to spend about £420 before VAT, I will be running Win XP 32 Bit and I will be using my machine for Work (Photoshop, Outlook and the like) as well as gaming (TF2, RA3). I already have a keyboard, monitor and mouse and I will not under any circumstances be overcloking as my propensity for damaging PC's is second only to PC worlds Tech support guys.

That in mind, heres what I have so far...

Intel Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9x Multiplier, Retail 104.89 123.25
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX 64 75.2
500 GB Western Digital WD5002ABYS RE3, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms 54.92 64.51
512MB Asus HD 4850, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 1986 MHz GDDR3, GPU 625 MHz, 800 Cores, 2 x DL DVI-I/HDTV 98.99 116.31
Antec NSK-6580B Mid Tower Case inc 430w 80+ PSU, 9 Drive Bays, Front IO USB & IEEE 1394 59.99 70.49
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, DHX 49.64 58.33
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±R, 12x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM - NEW! 15.49 18.2

Total before VAT 447.92

I am perhaps looking to reduce it a little if I can do, that said, does this look like a fair spec to you? Debating dropping down to the E7400. Also I got slightly overwhelmed by the choice of Motherboards, I generally pick Asus and in the spec above, would I be better going for a seperate PSU and Case combo?

As always, any and all advice gratefully received and thanks for any help you can give.

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Looks good. However, if you're using Photoshop, an nVidia card may be better now that there is CUDA GPU acceleration for photoshop on nVidia cards.



Also, if he's not overclocking, is an E5200 really a good idea?

CS4 supports the HD3*** and HD4*** series too:

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...=9809&Itemid=1

Thaks for all your help guys, currently using CS3 so not sure if that can take advantage of a quadcore processor, but I have enough here to start buying tomorrow I reckon.