Help me spend £3900 on a computer

[Spunkey]

Dual Monitors? Triple Monitors?

*mmmmm Surround Screen Gaming* </homer>

[neonplanet40]

also with ethos one u should go to www.over-clock.co.uk and look at dangerden watercooling bits or nventive phase coolers for silence

PyRo

[Sifter]

I have been approched by a good friend who has £3900 to spend on a computer system. I have some good ideas myself but am not too aware of what branded systems are being sold i.e. Alien/NEC. He needs an answer to tell his sponsors by tomorrow evening.
If you could reply in two paragraphs; one with a homemade system and one with a branded company (possibly with links?)

So folks what ideas have you got?

Promethia? VapoChill? You have to be joking. Those things have all the style, grace and acoustic performance of a Russian army helicopter. They're terrible. If you've got the money, get the Zalman TNN 500A case from Quiet PC. The case itself is about £600, but it's entirely passively cooled. No fans, no noise. Bliss.... (Looks a bit like an evil radiator, but hey...) Either that, or maybe Zalman's new quiet water-cooler the Reserator....

[daniel_owen_uk]

Promethia? VapoChill? You have to be joking. Those things have all the style, grace and acoustic performance of a Russian army helicopter. They're terrible. If you've got the money, get the Zalman TNN 500A case from Quiet PC. The case itself is about £600, but it's entirely passively cooled. No fans, no noise. Bliss.... (Looks a bit like an evil radiator, but hey...) Either that, or maybe Zalman's new quiet water-cooler the Reserator....

No offence m8 but I think there will be a fair few people disagree with you about the acoustic abilities of both prommies and vapochills, ok the vapo cases are ugly but just get a lian li prommie base unit if you want asthetics!

[IBM]

Save the money on the pc hardware, get everything one step down from bleeding edge (FX51 > 64 3400+, ATI 9800XT > 9800 Pro, etc - keep dual Raptors in RAID 0, they're choice), and put what's left to a great 21" or greater TFT monitor...seriously, you pay all that money in premiums and you get a 10 % increase in performance over a machine which is already bloody quick. What's the point? Speaking from experience here....

[Korky]

Id wait for r420 and nv40, nforce3 250 etc, its goin to cost a bomb but with £3900 ur going to afford it :->

[Ady168uk]

I know the budget is £3900 a PC...but I personally would just spend about £1500 on top spec system with a 17", the rest of the money on 42" plasma or 40"LCD...then again maybe its just cos I am a media freak.

[Proplus]

Owning a Vapo myself, I can say that it doesn't run real quiet.

I'd go with what Etho said, but maybe change the case to a full tower Lian-Li like the PC70, and then get a decen water-cooling kit and have it run silent.

Plus take the case to http://www.extremeprometeia.com/acatalog/Lian_Li.html and have it coloured!!!

[Leo]

Intel Pentium 4 "Northwood" 3.4GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology - Retail £259.95

ThermalRight SP-94 (Socket 478) Cooler £32.00

Vantec TD9238H Tornado 92mm fan - Retail £11.00

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £5.75

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe "Canterwood" (Socket 478) Motherboard £109.00

2 X Corsair 1GB DDR XMS4000PT TwinX (2x512MB) Platinum CAS3 £428.52

Plextor PX708A 8x DVD±RW (Black) - Retail £101.00

Plextor PX-116A 16x48x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £25.00

Plextor PlexWriter Premium 52x/32x/52x CD-ReWriter (Black) - Retail £52.00

PowerColor Radeon 9800XT 256MB & Half Life 2 Bundle - Retail £236.00

Arctic Cooling REV3 VGA Silencer £9.95

2 X Western Digital Raptor 74GB Serial ATA 10000RPM - OEM £270.00

Western Digital Caviar 250GB Special Edition 8MB Cache Serial ATA - OEM £130.00

OcUK Value Floppy Drive (Black) £6.50

Lian Li PC 71 Aluminium Full-Tower (No PSU) £125.00

Antec TrueControl 550 Watt ATX12 power supply w/ front control panel £84.50

2 X Viewsonic VP171B Pro Series 17" TFT Monitor - Black £666.40

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 THX - Retail £71.40

Creative MegaWorks 2.1 250D THX® - Retail £95.12

Logitech diNovo Media Desktop £125.95

Asus WiFi-b Wireless Add-on-Card £14.00

Creative PC-CAM 880 £82.06


Subtotal £2,941.10
Shipping (Amtrak Next Day (Mon-Fri) - UK Mainland) £34.25
VAT £520.72
Total £3,496.07

[ERU]

Cheers for the help guys. It is honestly very much appreciated. Heres what hes gonna get and hopfully i will be building it to save him money:

CPU AMD Athlon64 FX51
Motherboard Asus SK8V
Memory 2Gb (2x 1Gb) Corsair ECC DDR400 PC3200
Graphics Card Asus ATI Radeon 9800XT/TVD 256MB & Half Life 2 Bundle
Sound Card Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Raid HDD 2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB Serial ATA 10000RPM (Raid 0)
Storage HDD 1x Western Digital Caviar 7,200rpm - 200Gb SATA
DVD Writer Plextor DVD+/-RW 8x
Case Coolermaster Wave Master - Black (No PSU)
PSU Antec TrueControl 550 Watt ATX12 power supply
Monitor Samsung Iilyama 19" TFT
Speakers Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Surround Sound speakers
Keyboard/Mouse Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop v2.0 - OEM

As for the case I would also have a look at a Prometeia Mach II (I'd deffo have one!!!) at about £450. Have a look here - http://www.extremecooling.co.uk/s/category?category=108. I would also get a Asetek Waterchill kit VGA/Northbridge watercooling kit to go with it.
A Vapochill LightSpeed Phase-Change Cooling system is also worth looking at.

As for the DVD-RW 8X +/- plextor are releasing soon a 12X DVD-R Burner w/ SATA , you might want to wait and although the Radeon 9800XT 256MB is the best atm (you might wanna wait for NV40 in like 3/4 weeks..)

Whatever the cpu if your HDD doesnt fly then youre wasting your money. Raid 0 setups of SATA drives arent the best choise if you got such a budget so it might be worth looking at SCSI. I guess it depends on what others bits you want.

Not sure what you want with the monitors and whether you want a dual setup – i.e. do you need it? But just try to get the biggest/badest TFT you can

The Logitech Elite Keyboard w/ Logitech MX510 Mouse or Razer Viper is also worth looking at and get a FunC Surface 1030 mousepad.

For branded systems have a look at these sites:
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Systems.html
http://www.savrow.com/site/products.html
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/tek_panel/
http://www.oceanuk.com/
http://ecomm.dell.com/dellstore/bask...=detailViewTab