First build

[gambleroni]

This will be the first time I build a PC and just wanted your opinions on the components. It is a pretty cheap build and I want to double check that it will all work together and that I'm not wasting money on something that will give little to no performance increase.



To be bought from Scan:

Mobo: MSI 770-C45, AMD 770, AM3, PCI-E 2.0(x16), DDR3 1600(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX (£53)

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240, Regor Core, Socket AM3, 2.8GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 65W, Retail (£46)

PSU: 400W Corsair CMPSU-400CXUK Power Series PSU, ATX, PS/2 (£35)

Case: Coolermaster Elite 335 Black Mini Tower Case with Rear 120mm Fan w/o PSU (£26)

RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.65V (£96)

Graphics Card: 1GB Gigabyte GT 220 OC, 1600MHz GDDR3, GPU 720MHz, Shader 1566MHz, 48 Cores, D-Sub/ DL DVI-I/ HDMI (£65)

HDD: 500 GB Seagate ST3500418AS Barracuda 7200.12, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 9.5 ms, NCQ (£36)

Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-S18LBK 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, RAM x12, SATA, Black, Retail Labelflash (£18)




Total comes in at just under £400. I don't want to spend more than I have to, but I have no real budget; £400 feels about right.

I don't really play many games (Quake live mostly), but do use some rather bloated programs for work (inc office 2007...). Will have dual screen set up. I have a copy of Windows XP (will get a 64 bit OS to use all the RAM later).

Any advice will be appreciated greatly.

[Terbinator]

Looks fine to me, perhaps swap out the Seagate for a Samsung F3 but even then I'm just nitpicking. I would advise waiting to buy (if you can) until Friday as that's when Scan tend to have their best 'Today only' deals up, in addition to a wider range of deals.

[Skulltrail]

Looks solid, although the F3 is the way to go. If you really wanted to watch the pennies, you could swap out the 4GB for 3 lots of http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-H...Unbuffered-CL7. You take a hit on the speed but make up some of it in the latency, and if your only using a 32-bit OS then a gig of the 4GB will be wasted, as the GPU memory is also taken into account for the 3.5GB 32-bit limit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The graphics card the OP has chosen is overpriced IMHO.

I would look at the following components list:

AMD Athlon II X3 440 ~ £63

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-A...MHz-95W-Retail

MSI 770T-C45 ~ £46

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

4GB 1600MHZ DDR3 ~ £96

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%...-9-24-XMP-165V

Samsung F3 500GB ~ £36

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500Gb...-Cache-8ms-OEM

XFX HD4550 512MB ~ £27

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDMI

Corsair CX400W ~ £34

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

Coolermaster Elite 335 ~ £26

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...r-Case-w-o-PSU

Pioneer DVR-S18LBK ~ £18

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Pione...ail-Labelflash

The total comes to around £346 excluding postage.

You might be able to use a motherboard with an IGP though:

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

The HD4200 IGP on Asus M4A785TD-V EVO has 128MB of dedicated DDR3 RAM for the IGP and can run one monitor connected via VGA and another connected via DVI simultaneously. The IGP is meant to have similar performance to an HD3450.

If you want to play some more modern games I would get the following graphics card:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDMI

An HD4670 GDDR3 will be faster in games than a GT220 GDDR3 and cheaper too.

Once you have reached 20 posts you should be able to get free postage from Scan on your order:

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...-delivery.html

[gambleroni]

So with the IGP I would not need a graphics card?

And also with the MSI 770T-C45 motherboard, would I need DDR2 ram?

Advice taken on the F3.

[Ulti]

Unless you're playing at massive resolutions, the integrated graphics from the 785G chipset will be enough to play games such as Quake Live and run applications like MS Office easily.

The MSI 770T-C45 does indeed require DDR2, the MSI 770-C45 requires DDR3. Confusing haha, seems the moose has made a mistake

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Confusing haha, seems the moose has made a mistake

It seems so!! Doh!!