New PC

[Anders]

Right, sure this type of question gets asked all the time. I’ve looked through past threads as best I can to get this far with the spec. I’m putting this PC together for friend who has around £800 to spend. Prices I’ve put are the rough prices (probably excluding delivery) I’ve seen around, as stores vary on each product by a matter of pounds. I wish places would make delivery charges easier to find. Comments and recommendations on these parts would be very much appreciated, please.

Mobo:
Abit NF7-s v2.0 (~£80ish)

Processor (either or):
Barton XP 2500+ (~£70ish) OR
Barton XP 2600+ (~£77ish)

HDD:
Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 SATA 8MB cache 7200 RPM 80GB (~£72ish)

RAM:
2 x Twinmos 256MB DDR PC2700 (~£70ish for pair) OR
2 x Twinmos 256MB DDR PC3200 (~£75ish for pair)
Seems worth getting PC3200 for £5 extra?

Graphics Card:
128MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro DDR DVI+TV-OUT Retail (~£140ish)
OR
256MB MSI Nvidia FX5600-TD DDR 8XAGP TV-OUT Retail (~£135ish)

Case:
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case including 380 Watt TruePower PSU (~£75ish)

Monitor:
Eeek, no real idea, but he can’t afford a TFT or anything fancy like that, what would be the best that could be got for say £100ish? I’ve got a Hansol, which I’m pleased with and they seem cheap. CTX and Samsung also seem cheap.

CPU Cooler:
Zalman Flower CNPS6000-Cu Silent Socket A CPU Cooler (~£30ish)

The pieces I’m having most trouble with are the monitor (as you can see above) and the graphics card, ATI or Nvidia, also does the manufacture of the board matter, e.g. MSI, Asus, Hercules?

I want to get the important parts right first, but any recommendation as to CD-RW etc, are very welcome.

Thanks,

Anders.

[SilentDeath]

Abit NF7-s v2.0 (~£80ish) = good
Barton XP 2500+ (~£70ish) = there re magic clocking ones, id get one of them
Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 SATA 8MB cache 7200 RPM 80GB (~£72ish) = good, though id get a smaller version of same drive for boot and a 120gb for storage (do they make 40gb sata ones, for cheap?). also u geet 3yr warrenty ONLY on maxtors over 120gb, with 8mb cache, which is a good reson to spend a bit more imo.
2 x Twinmos 256MB DDR PC3200 (~£75ish for pair) = good, try get sticks with winbond, or samsung chips. both clock well but winbond u wont have to sacrifice timings as much.
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case including 380 Watt
TruePower PSU (~£75ish) = v good, includes decent psu.

Zalman Flower CNPS6000-Cu Silent Socket A CPU Cooler (~£30ish) = dont know how good these are, im using slk800 + tt smartfan2, id recommend sk-7 + smartfan2 probably

the most important part is gfx, get the radeon, they r uber.
128MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro DDR DVI+TV-OUT Retail (~£140ish) = these are as low as £120 now, and dont suck at dx9 like nvidias cards (9600p beats the 5900u in dx9 generally - good card if u want to play HL2) drivers for ati cards are perfect btw, no bugs left that i can complain about (though i use www.omegacorner.com versons, as they have usefull bundeled clocking apps)

[fondie]

i'd recommend you get a Zalman CNPS-7000A-Cu over the 6000 series, it's just as quiet and has much better cooling capabilities, can be had for less than £40, definately worth it.

an iiyama visionmaster 1451 is a fine budget 19" crt monitor, can be had for a shade over £100.

cr-rw, can't go wrong with a lite-on 52x32x52x for under 30 notes.

definately take the xp2500+ barton.

everything else you've mentioned looks good

[Anders]

Cool, thanks for info. Any idea how to recognise which chips are on the sticks? Or maybe you could point me in the direction of a good place to by them (if that’s allowed)?

I was looking at the TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit (MY-006-TM) from overclockers.co.uk but it makes no mention of the chips on it.

[fondie]

www.komplett.co.uk sells twinmos sticks with winbond chips (it's where i got mine from), but they are more expensive than those that aren't named as having winbond chips (presumably using twinmos chips). that's not to say other places don't sell twinmos with winbond chips, but i don't know of anyone but komplett who state so on their website.

oh, and in response to your original question, it's definately worth spending the extra £5 to get pc3200 over pc2700, even if you don't fancy spending more on getting sticks with winbond chips from komplett.

i'd suggest if you're on a budget then the sticks you mentioned in the previous post 'TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit (MY-006-TM)' are a fine choice, though you may as well get yourself 2 of these TwinMOS 256MB DDR PC3200 CAS2.5 (MY-000-TM) and save yourself £1, they're in stock as well.

[SilentDeath]

id say its worth ur money more to get winbond/samsung pc2700 over other pc3200 chips.my samsung pc2700 is running nicly at 200fsb

one thing i forgot: ur gonna want a dvd rom drive, and a cd-rw, but dvd-rw r getting very cheap now (though not as cheap as i got mine yet, £37.99 due to them giving me a pioneer 105 4x dvd-rw instead of a liteon 52x cdrw). dont bother with a dvd+- combo drive. dvd+r is less compatable and has many features ull never need.

[Austin]

NF7-S v2.0 is a good solid mobo, it has its downsides IMHO but every mobo does I guess (and nothing truly major). You could save £40ish and get a non Dual Channel nForce2 (400 non-ultra), it only loses you 3-5% perf, I'd suggest the ultra myself but do consider the otions.

XP2500+ is definitely the CPU to go for esp if you want to o/c (even some point in the future). You should find a 10% speed boost from o/c'ing disgustingly easy and XP3200+ speeds are not uncommon.

The Maxtor SATA would be my best choice but I would go for the 120GB model, I'd suggest the 7200-8 ATA133 120GB over the SATA 80GB easily ... probably 7200-2 too. Not that capacity is all important but it costs so little to get 120GB now and makes a LOT of sense.

TwinMOS is great although there are alternatives. PC2700 isn't overly limiting in the real world BUT prices are so close it makes MUCH more sense to get PC3200. Obviously you want 2 sticks for Dual Channel, 2x256MB is more than enough for almost all home users and with RAM pricing I'd suggest going that route. The only downside is that when more RAM is req'd you'll probably have to lose 400FSB to run with 3 sticks so may need to chuck your 'old' RAM for 2x512MB.

Rad9600PRO is easily superior to the FX5600, even the FX5600ultra V2 isn't much better at all esp when you consider both pricing and o/c'ing.

Monitors have come a long way, even the budget ones are better than many top offerings of a few years ago. I would suggest 19" if he has the room as they can be had for £120 and can easily do 1280x1024x32 @ 85Hz with 1600x1200x32 max res. I prefer Shadowmask to Trinitron type technology, not only is it cheaper but you avoid the horizontal lines many people find annoying.

Zalman Flowers are great and quiet coolers, the all copper one is preferable esp if you may want some o/c'ing. There are plenty of other great alterantives which also come in cheaper, the £15 Volcano 11 leaps to mind.

For the CDRW I would rec LiteOn although all brands are pretty good now, you may want to look to a DVD combi drive as you no longer have to compromise. Little things like decent speakers, keybd and mouse which all look part of a set should not go unnoticed and are more important to non-techies. Also consider things like a TVcard, scanner or decent printer as these all add acres of extra fun!

[Bleek]

XP2500 is my next purchase and probs the best AMD processor to get at present.