Help on new gaming rig any advise greatly appreciated

Hi all hope someone can help I'm looking to build a decent spec pc for Games here's what I've outlined below, could someone give me some pointers as I don't know enough about them really. Thanks in advance

Budget really is £1500 quid I could save by only getting 1GIG of Ram so lose £118, and I could also drop the Raptor drive so and just have a big standard one normal speed one.

Really don't know bout the graphics card though, wouldn't want to spend anymore than £300 quid.



Case
Evesham iQ-eye Silver Alumininum case £74
must have front usb's for my internet and joysticks or have loads at the back.

Processor
AMD Athlon 64 3800+Socket 939 / 2400MHz512KB L2 Cache £253
I've seen some processors that are 90nm and some that are 130nm what is this and whats the best ?

Motherboard
Asus A8N SLI DeluxeHyperTransport / DDR400nForce4 Ultra SLI chipset PCI-Express - SLI ready £113

PSU
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Silent PSU (CA-000-TG) £64

Heat Sink
ThermalRight XP-90 (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-018-TR) £25
Hard Drives
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-015-WD) (Games HD) £123
300Gb Maxtor DiamondMax 10 7,200RPM / 16MB Buffer (Other HD) £119

Looking to install WIN XP pro and the WIN XP64 bit, which drive should I install them both to ?
Whats a Raid is this something I should set up, I don't know the advantages or disadvantages.

Ram
Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL Platinum TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2 (MY-049-CS) x2 for 2GIG TOTAL = £236
1 GIG Total is £118

should I go for 2GIG of Ram or leave it at 1GIG for now.

Graphics Card
Haven't got a clue, would like a top of the range taking advantage of PCI express etc but don't know if I should go for

Nvidia or ATI, always had Nvidia in the past.

Sound Card
Do I need one or should I just use the onboard sound that comes with the mobo, eventually I'll be getting surround sound

speakers ?

Monitor
Benq FP71E+ 17" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-006-BQ) £205
Benq FP91E 19" LCD Monitor - Silver (MO-011-BQ) £331
Hyundai Imagequest L72D+ 17" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-022-HY) £213

not sure which to go for really, is 19" bettet than 17" when it comes to TFTs ?


budget really is £1500 quid I could save by only getting 1GIG of Ram so lose £118, and I could also drop the Raptor drive

so and just have a big standard one normal speed one.

Really don't know bout the graphics card though, wouldn't want to spend anymore than £300 quid.

What are you doing with CPU/Mobo? The motherboard willl determine what the onboard sound is, but generally a sound card is the way to go, although you could always add this later, and as for speakers I personally have Logitech X-530s which cost £45, and those I find are pretty good, but the more you spend, the better they'll be. 1 Gig of ram should be fine for most things, especially with quality corsair stuff, but again, you could add more later.

For £300 the best graphics you could get would probably be an X800XT PE, or an X850XT PE from dell for £265 if you can get access to a dell business account. If you want an SLI set-up though, the 6800GT is probably the one to buy, as you can add another one on at a later date.

I have never used a Raptor drive, so I can't comment on that, and the monitor is personal preference; 17" should be fine, but look for a good brand with a lowish response time (sub 16ms) for gaming to aviod ghosting. The iiyama prolite 435 17" TFT has a 10ms response time, and I'd happily reccommend that, but check out the bargain forums, there is a good 19" TFT for under £200 :)

sorry missed of the first part of the post have alook now

cheers

Go for a Venice core 3800+, its 90nm, which means its cooler and uses less power...get one in stock: http://tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=604587

Good PSU. Your motherboard is a solid choice, but it won't overclock too well, and the onboard sound is okay. Being SLI you'll probably want a 6800GT so you can add another graphics card later...XFX do a good bundle and are well priced

Edit: You'll need a fan for your heatsink too...

with regards to cpu, 90nm is better than 130nm. make sure you buy the 'venice' core 3800 though, as this new core has an improved memory controller which will benefit you as you plan to use 4 ram dimms.

that heat-sink doesnt come with a fan, so you'll have to get one extra. look for something realatively quiet with a good cfm.

you wont be able to RAID those drives, but you can use the speed of the raptor for windows, games, and apps, whilst having the diamondmax as a second drive for storing files, music, videos etc. whether that configuration is worth it is up to you. most people manage just fine with a single, normal drive, even for gaming rigs.

i would buy 1 gig ram, and then another later if you want.

gpu: an X850 XT would be nice, but if you want to add another card at a later date, then the 6800GT is the way to go.

i wouldnt bother with the sound card straight away. i would see how you fine the on-board sound to begin with, and think of adding a sound card later.

thanks that all makes sense.

I'f im looking at overlclocking what mobo should I go for ?

Question is would I want to overclock something like that, it should cope with most stuff id have thought.

will look for a decent 6800 GT, what are the most important aspects of a graphics card ?

cheers again

get a Gainward golden sample 6800GT or XFX 6800GT. My opinion anyway

why dont you check out our Isotope system i recently took mine to Acon5 and it worked a dream. worth a look at least

A little overclocking is definately worth doing, and you'll have adequate (sp) cooling for it with your XP-90. For overclocking, the MSI K8N NEO is a good board, but the best overclockers are the DFI socket 939 boards, however these do have lots of bugs, and take a lot of time to tweak to the best settings. The Abit Fatality AN8 is also a good board, but lacks SLI.

As for gfx cards, the XFX 6800GT is good, and the gainwards are even better, but I have a feeling the coolers on the Gainward cards mean that they wont fit on most mobos in SLI.

Edit: The isotope system does look damn cool :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Steve A

why dont you check out our Isotope system i recently took mine to Acon5 and it worked a dream. worth a look at least

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Is that allowed?
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GEt the x850xt pe from dell, its a great deal at £260 , thats £100 cheaper than normal! If you phone dell you should be able to get it delivered to a home address. Also the dell 1905 19" TFT at £250 is a good choice. Get a DFI Nforce4 mobo and i would get the 3700+ with the 1mb cache over the 3800+ with 512kb.