My new PC from Scan - A full review

[matt_hobson]

Hey,

Well here it is, for those that are interested here is my story about what happened from placing the order… to having the PC completely installed. Firstly I want to say a great thank you to all that have helped me with this, i have been using both the PC Format and the Hexus.net forums, the threads showing my progress can be seen below:

http://forum.pcformat.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=18250 - Looking to buy

http://forum.pcformat.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=18474 - Now i am making - what to get

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=15137 - SATA Hard Drives

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=16344 - Sound Cards

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=15907 - PSU

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=16570 - Audio + PSU help

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=17016 - More Audio Help

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=16774 - IDE Configuration

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=16286 - Finalising questions

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=16761 - I have ordered!

Please remember that this is the first time that I have ever made a PC, so if I have made any trivial errors then try and refrain from the pointing and the laughing. OK, well the order was placed with Scan on Friday 26th March 2004. We were notified on Monday 29th by Scan that due to a large number of orders we were unlikely to get the goods on Tuesday – expected delivery date was now Wednesday. As said all things arrived on Wednesday at approximately 2 pm. I checked that everything was there, and it all seemed brilliant – we even got a free Packard bell keyboard!

We didn’t start until about 10am on Saturday 3rd April. We opened up all the bits, and on closer inspection there were a few problems. One of the rubber feet on the Wavemaster case was broken. The foot is screwed into the case, with rubber soles, and one of those soles was broken. We managed to superglue it back together, but intended on getting another one sent through by scan. Also the back plate for the graphic card was bent! And the CD for the Graphics card was very scratched! Bit concerned that something like this could happen, especially when I spend £310 on a card – again something to voice with Scan.

One major difficulty of the morning was putting the back panel in – it fit inside the case fine, but was very difficult to fit to the motherboard. After about half an hour of playing we got it in – is this just me? Do any other people have problems with this?

By 12 we had the Motherboard and the PSU in the case, the CPU and memory on the motherboard, and were just about ready to watch Man U beat Arsenal. A brilliant break from the work saw Man U win 1-0 over Arsenal – GREAT!

Back to business, we put all of the other parts in without any major problems – the hardest thing then was trying to keep the case tidy! The manual (ABIT) was brilliant as it stepped through all of the installation, including all of the BIOS options very carefully and clearly. And by about 4 that afternoon I was ready to format the drive. It would only format to 130GB which was later sorted (http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=17119)

Windows went on fine (in the end) and I am currently installing all my software!

I phoned Scan this morning about the problems and they were great. They are sending me out a new foot for the case, and a new CD for my Graphics card, and have noted the fact about the plate being bent, for if there is a problem later. So I have to say that so far I am very impressed with their after sales – which is pretty much a first for me!

A summary of my opinions of all the parts can be seen here with a rating out of 10 (All the bits came from www.scan.co.uk, apart from the mouse which was from www.ebuyer.com:

CASE (Coolermaster WaveMaster TAC-T01 Aluminum Case (w/o PSU)):- Brilliant Case, Excellent build quality, worth the extra, mobo tray brilliant as made installation very easy, broken foot but being replaced (10)

PSU (450W CWT + SATA Quiet Dual Fan AMD/P4 App Active Fan Control Active PFC):- Easy to install, loads of wires J, SATA ready makes it very quick to install (10)

CPU(3.2GHz (PG-800FSB) HT *Retail* Intel Pentium® 4 CPU 512k Cache):- Retail so came with thermal heatsink, easy to install (10)

MEMORY (Corsair TwinX 1024Mb C2 3200 Low LatencyProSeries (2x512MB PC3200 MATCHED PAIR DDR LL)) :- Simple to install, nice little flashing lights J, working great! (10)

MOTHERBOARD (Abit IC7 Max3 i875P Canterwood 800fsb DDDR400 Gbit Lan 4+2xSATA/133 USB2x8 6Ch Audio Spdif):- Again easy to install, manual very detailed, possibly could have gone into more detail on some installation aspects (back panel) (9.9)

GRAPHICS CARD (Abit 256M ATI A9800XT-VTD Tv/DVI) :- Brilliant card, works great, came with bent back panel and scratched CD but working fine, Free half life 2 voucher, (9.5)

SOUND CARD (Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 71 THX Retail) :- Great card, very easy to put in, box manuals not as detailed as they could be, came with 2 top free games! (9.8)

HARD DRIVE (160Gb Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA (ATA-150) (7200rpm, 8MB Cache) 1yr):- very easy to put in, very fast and quiet, exceedingly happy! (10)

CD/RW (Sony 52x32x52 IDE BLACK Drive):- Very easy to put in, looks great, very quick (10)

DVD/RW (Sony DWU18ABK 8X DVD +/-R/RW Black):- Very easy to put in, looks great, very quick (10)

FLOPPY (1.44Mb Sony Black Floppy Disk Drive):- It’s a floppy drive for £4.90! (10)

MONITOR (19" Iiyama CRT Vision Master Pro 455 (MM904UT) Hightbrightness Unipitch):- Great monitor, couple of black lines that are barely visible – I think they are the tube wires, need to phone Iiyama to check. [EDIT] These are meant to be there[/edit/ (9.6)

SPEAKERS (Creative Labs i-Trigue 2.1 3300 Speakers):- These are amazing! They sound fantastic! A brilliant purchase (10)

KEYBOARD (Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard) :- Brilliant, some excellent functions on this, love it to bits, only thing it misses is a calculator button, but I can program one! (9.8)

MOUSE (MX 500 Optical USB/PS2):- This mouse is fantastic, again some really useful buttons, came with chipped CD - will phone Ebuyer about this! (9.8)


Some misc info:

Black optical drives + floppy look great on the Silver case – much better than having different shades of silver.

Plenty of room inside case

Bring on high FPS!


If anyone want any advice on anything I have bought then please email me at hobson_matt@hotmail.com as I am more than happy to help. I know how hard it can be to get started with this sort of thing, as I have done it!!

[ed^chigliak]

MONITOR (19" Iiyama CRT Vision Master Pro 455 (MM904UT) Hightbrightness Unipitch):- Great monitor, couple of black lines that are barely visible – I think they are the tube wires, need to phone Iiyama to check. (9)

Definately the tube wires on the Iiyama Pro that you can see and is the same with my Pro 450 monitor and is perfectly normal for this type of screen.

[matt_hobson]

Definately the tube wires on the Iiyama Pro that you can see and is the same with my Pro 450 monitor and is perfectly normal for this type of screen.

Yea, cheers, just checked the manual and it is there as well,

Looking good then!!

[Clstrphbc_donut]

I have a 17" Iiyama CRT, and i also have (2) black lines, although they are very thin and un-noticeable after a while. It may be just how Iiyama's are. But they are extremely good monitors, and run high resolutions and refresh rates. Benchmark your PC, let's see how it does!

[matt_hobson]

where do i do that??

[steve threlfall]

Use programs such as 3d mark to assess graphics performance of your rig...

Very nice setup you have there mate

[Agent]

Now thats a post.

Very nice mate

[Raz316]

Man, that is some system!

I am currently ebaying the parts to build myself a new PC, im such a cheapskate

[0iD]

Nice rig m8!
I love Iiyama VM screens, hard to fault. Look forward to see those benchmark results.

[Stoo]

rather than worry too much about scratched or chipped driver install cd's, just download the drivers from the relevent web sites, and slap them onto a cd yourself, the drivers on driver cd's tend to be quite old and out of date anyway

[BlackSheep]

rather than worry too much about scratched or chipped driver install cd's, just download the drivers from the relevent web sites, and slap them onto a cd yourself, the drivers on driver cd's tend to be quite old and out of date anyway

true - I can't remember the last time I used a driver install CD - probably when I didn't have an internet connection, but even then it was a CD I'd previously burnt from the latest drivers.

Drivers are out of date as soon as they ship them

[matt_hobson]

yea, i normally install from CD then update from the web.

Just the point really tho, spend good money, want good things....

[kushtibari]

wow! beautiful system you've put together there, it's got the looks of a well planned job thats come together very nicely.