First time building a PC

[Astreal]

Hello, I'll be building a PC soon for the first time (I hope) but I dont really know where to start and what components are recommended for gaming. I have a budget of about £1000 and plan to build it myself to get more "bang 4 buck" so I was wondering if someone could help get me started. I already have a 24" monitor to play on so that is fine and will also use my current mouse/keyboard and headset.

Thank you, Astrael

[vincent.m]

firstly what is your criteria? thats the best place to start. and do you want power or just general use?!

[aidanjt]

Something like this would do nicely:

[Astreal]

Thanks aiden, what website is that? and vincent it is for gaming

[aidanjt]

Thanks aiden, what website is that? and vincent it is for gaming

www.overclockers.co.uk - but I wouldn't recommend them much because of their poor customer service. Shop around, use froogle.co.uk to find cheaper prices where ever you can. I just use their site for quick product lookups and a general idea of current prices.

[vincent.m]

might i also recommend www.scan.co.uk you get free delivery as well since your a user on here.
but the best thing to do when your not up to date with the latest tech is to look at other people's builds. maybe consider the i7?

[aidanjt]

i7 is too expensive for a decent sub-£1k gaming rig. Also, bleeding edge hardware is always a bad idea. He'll also need a load of more posts to avail of scan's free delivery for Hexus users.

[Sputnik]

Aiden how is the J & W motherboard you have? I have one on order (790GX Extreme) but, You appear to be the only person I've seen that owns one.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Phenom II offers gooD value for money and hence I would recommend an AMD based system!!

Here is what I have specced up:

Phenom II 940:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...Hz-125W-Retail

Asus 790GX motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...A-RAID-ATX-VGA

4gb PC8500 DDR2 RAM:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...ered-CAS-5-EPP

Enermax 625w modular:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/625W-...uard-SafeGuard

HD4850X2 or GTX260 216 shader version

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152204

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDTV

2xSamsung 640gb hard drives:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158688

DVD rewriter:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159310

With Scan you can get free postage with 20 Hexus posts and Ebuyer have free Supersaver postage. Also Scan also have daily offers on hardware on their Today Only page.

With the HD4850X2 the total comes to around £870 which leaves you £130 for a case and a copy of Windows if you do not have the latter.

Of course if any items are on Today Only(and if you get free postage from Scan) you will save a bit more money!!

[aidanjt]

Aiden how is the J & W motherboard you have? I have one on order (790GX Extreme) but, You appear to be the only person I've seen that owns one.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

Well, 3 of the SATA ports gets covered by double slot graphics cards. They could have done with adding a PCIe 1x slot above the PCIe x16 slot. The BIOS has some annoying quirks, and AMDs BIOS RAID control interface is awful. I've also had some minor stability issues with it. But other than that, it's ok. Nothing spectacular though.

[Astreal]

Thanks Cat that looks awsome, why the two HDD though?

[Fuzzed_out]

Aiden how is the J & W motherboard you have? I have one on order (790GX Extreme) but, You appear to be the only person I've seen that owns one.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

oooo Do tell, ive been wondering this for a while now.

[vincent.m]

i7 is too expensive for a decent sub-£1k gaming rig. Also, bleeding edge hardware is always a bad idea. He'll also need a load of more posts to avail of scan's free delivery for Hexus users.

ok I'm bored so i will tell you what i would build for 1000. mine will probably be a combination of looks and performance. and assuming no overclocking.

This is a good guideline and is going to be able to handle games etc. but the ones i have chosen are based on the fact that your budget is very high and i chose on instinct haha!
but people here will make better recomendations.


By john_smithy at 2009-02-14

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks Cat that looks awsome, why the two HDD though?

I would install the OS and software on one disc and use the second disc for storage, virtual memory and any temporary files. Perhaps one 500gb and a 1TB disc may make more sense in retrospect!!
This should make the system faster as having multiple processes accessing the same disc will make things run slower.

[aidanjt]

Thanks Cat that looks awsome, why the two HDD though?

Stripe them up in a RAID0 array for extra game loading performance.

[Astreal]

hmmm Raid0 or one large and a smaller HDD, also how do you set up a raid0