Advice needed on new PC.

[Biscuit]

But that review is from august last year and the performance on GTX cards has improved since then + it doesnt factor in idle power usage which is pretty important i would say.

Fan noise is true unless you prove otherwise . Plus to properly tame the temps of the GPU you need to crank the fan speed up. Just because the GPU isnt dying because of the heat doesnt mean its not an issue, think about how much heat its radiating throughout the rest of the case! makes the rest of the cooling just that little bit more challenging.

Cuda - didnt say it was relevant to graphics acceleration but if other software starts using it then it could be extremely useful

But have you tried the new UI for photoshop in comparison to the old ones? no way could i go back to using an older version, the new interface speeds my productivity up 2 fold over say CS or CS2. Acclertation is supported by ATI too but its supposed to be better with NVId cards.

[Stapo]

Thanks all this has help me a great deal. I wont really use photoshop or cs4, it be just used for getting the most out the latest games for about 12-18 months. With my budget I will be put part on finance and rest in cash, so it needs really to be with one company and since I live near scan I can collect it. I've slightly increased my budget by about £50 and this what I've come up with:

MB: £88 (couldn't see the one CAT-THE-FIFTH recommended)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...A-RAID-ATX-VGA

GPU: £189
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-A...-DL-DVI-I-HDCP

CPU: £190
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...Hz-125W-Retail

PSU:
I like the one CAT-THE-FIFTH recommended but its waiting an ETA so it leaves me about £70 to find an alternative if it doesn't come in to stock why I buy the other items

Oh and my case is Cooler Master Praetorian 731 (I will upgrade this eventually) and I will defanilty get another stick of memory to make 4GB

So what do you think have I gone overboard on anything?

Thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would go with a 790GX motherboard at that price:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Biost...-SATA-RAID-ATX

The graphics card is a bit cheaper on Today Only:

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

I would personally get the graphics card off Novatech and save £20. This extra cash could be put towards the PSU.

This PSU may do the job for under £70:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/600W-...-120mm-Fan-PSU

[Nobull]

I would also go for a 790GX board y not just get a Phenom II 920, they're £160 on scan or often £155 on the 'Today Only' Section, you can get a good 790GX board for £100, that would come to roughly the same as 940 and 790G board suggested earlier and arguably be more future proof with most of the 790GX boards being Crossfire capable and its supposed to be the best chipset for the Phenom II

[Nobull]

That would be my choice of mobo at £102 with plenty of features...

[Biscuit]

+1 on the GX board

[Stapo]

Okay thanks I ll swap the MB for the Asus one Nobull recommended its on Today only a £96.

Also I noticed scaryjim & cat-the-fifth talked about the Phenom II X3 720 just wondering if the 940 is worth the extra £70?


Thanks again
Chris

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It depends if you are overclocking or not. If you are not the Phenom II X4 940 makes more sense. Also it has an unlocked multiplier so if you decide to overclock it should do better than the Phenom II X4 920.

Games and applications which make use of multiple cores will run faster on a quad core rather than a tri-core.

With regards to gaming I would personally go with the Phenom II X3 720 and spend the extra £70 on a HD4850X2 or a GTX280. I would overclock the Phenom X3 to at least 3.2ghz. The X3 720 has an unlocked muliplier and if you are very lucky some of them have a functional fourth core!!

You could spend the rest of the money on the extra stick of RAM you need and the PSU.

I would look at the following PSU:

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

It is expensive but seems to be a great PSU.

So the rough cost will be:

Phenom II X3 720 ~£125

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=965904

Asus 790GX motherboard ~£100

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

1gb DDR2 RAM ~£16

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-C...d-CAS-5-5-5-18

PSU ~ £100

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

HD4870 1gb ~ £190

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-A...-DL-DVI-I-HDCP

Without any Today Only discounts this should bring the total cost to just under £550!!

[Nobull]

That's £50 over the OPs budget though. I would say that the PSU is overpriced for a £500 build. This 580W Hiper should be sufficient and is only £52 so would make him bang on budget along with CAT-THE-FIFTHs other recommendations...

P.S. you can get the 1GB 4870 on OCUK for £163 atm so thats what, ~£170 with p&p, saving an extra £20 which if you wanted could go towards a P2 920 instead of the 720 OR could go towards amore expensive PSU, altho I do think that Hiper would be fine. Very trusted brand with good efficiency.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OP increased the budget by £50 and wants to biuy everything from Scan as he/she lives near to them.

[Nobull]

My bad, I missed that post! That PSU I linked WAS from scan though? I know the GFX wasn't but it still makes sense to buy it seperately from OCUK if you can save £20 regardless of the fact the postage from scan would be free.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I did tell the OP about buying the graphics card from Novatech but I get the impression that they want to get everything from Scan to reduce the hastle.

[Pob255]

Not in stock currently but is supposed to come back in today
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/JandW...Board-Graphics

I would say 4870 1gb vs gtx260 is a tight call, the cards are neck and neck in terms of performance. the ati has a slight edge on cost and more importantly possible upgrade potential due to crossfire.
However I doubt you be disappointed by ether.

[TooNice]

- Radeons come out ahead. Thus, even if performance is hard to pinpoint, power efficiency goes in favour of ATi.

Only if you never idle. Much as I enjoy playing games on my PC, I spend more time on other less graphically intensive tasks. This generation's Radeon seem to do considerably worse than nVidia's offering when it comes to idle power consumption.

[Stapo]

Thanks all you've been a great help, ordering the PC tomorrow and I've got another budget increase of £100 (won some money) so its now £650. So this what I thinking off:

MB £98 (today only price)
Same Asus mb

CPU £122
AMD X3 720

PSU still not sure which one to take, what do you look for when you buy a PSU as there looks some good deals on PSU in today only?

GPU thinking of going for the HD4850 x2 but shall I go with the 1gb or the 2gb card or do pick another card?

Will also be picking up another stick of memory for £14 (today only price) and replacing one of my DVD drives for Samsung SH-223f for £14 (today only price). So I'm left with about £400 to spend on the graphic card and psu.

Thanks again all
Chris

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Make sure that the RAM stick is of the same type you already have.
If you are going for an HD4850X2 then get the 2gb version. Alternatively you can get a GTX280 1gb for a similiar price. In games where the crossfire scaling works the HD4850X2 will be faster than the GTX280 otherwise the latter will have the lead.

I should think that the 625W Enermax I linked to would be enough for either a GTX280 or HD4850X2.