Suggested system please

[xathras]

Hiya guys, I have around £800.00 to spend give or take. I am looking for a system that is exclusive of a monitor since I have recently purchased a 17" TFT 12ms, which I am more than happy with.

I currently have a 2600 XP, 1.5GB PC2700 MEMORY, Asus AV78X-X Motherboard, Scorpian Blue Case, 5.1 Creative Sound Card, 120Gb 7200RPM HDD, 60GB 7200RPM. With 420 Watt PSU and Aero 7+ Jet Cooler.

While this is an ok setup I am looking to replace due to a few factors, mainly the fact that I have the case to spare.

I probably plan on selling of my parts or system so please assume that unless i have something brilliant, which i doubt that i will be getting rid of it.

Oh I don't care if its intel or AMD. ATI or Nvidia. As long as its quieter than my current noisey machine
Please let me know.

[FatBoab]

Well you don't say what you use your system for, so it's hard to be specific, but...

I'd recommend going A64, Socket 939 and PCI Express. By doing this you'd be as future-proof as it's ever possible to be in this game.

Specifically (I know, I said it was hard to be specific ), I'd say an A64 3000+ or 3200+, preferably Venice cores - these should overclock to the same level as the 3500+ quite easily. I'd make sure the mobo you get is A64 X2 ready, but I wouldn't recommend going dual-core just yet. My feeling is that the price premium isn't worth it yet, but on this point it really depends on what applications you tend to use (if they're already multi-threaded then dual-core is the way to go).

RAM-wise, I'd recommend at least 1GB of PC3200, 2x512MB in dual-channel -- go 2x1GB if you need it for big games or apps, but definitely use the dual-channel goodness. I personally would be happy with fairly standard stuff from a reputable manufacturer (e.g. Corsar, Kingston), CL 2.5 or better. Getting the high-spec, low-latency stuff will cost you more and improve performance by 1-2%, no more.

If you're a gamer, then graphics is a big choice, and probably a big part of your spend as well. Personally I'd recommed against SLI (controversial, I know) -- the same real-world experience can be had from single graphics cards at the moment, and the chances are that you'll be upgrading more than just graphics by the time it really makes a difference. I think the current sweet-spot still lies with the ATI X800XL, but this is likely to change really soon -- NVidia's introduction of the 7800GT will eventually drive down 6800GT/Ultra prices, and ATI's new Radeons should be launched next month. It's a tough time to make a call on a graphics card...

Storage isn't my forte, I'll let others pontificate there.

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[xathras]

Sorry about been very unspecific in regards to my needs. I am a moderate gamer, i.e. when I have the time really or for example when a good game comes out like doom3.

I do some programmic in visual basic, some basic web development and database stuff for my uni work.

Apart from that I do a lot of researching on the net for my final project, reading of news, forums etc.

So we aint talking something that will look after NASA yet at the same time will be an investment that I ain't going to regret in a year and a half.

[xathras]

How about this, let me know what you think.

Your Basket
QTY Price (ea) Ex VAT Total Inc VAT Remove
LN10546 AMD Athlon 64 3000 32/64Bit CPU S939 "Venice" 90nm Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty £87.30 £102.58

LN5528 1Gb (2 x 512 Mb) Corsair TwinX, DDR, PC3200C2PT, Cas 2, Lifetime Warranty £74.75 £87.83

LN9865 256MB AOpen Aeolus PCI-E 6800GT Tv/DVI Retail £179.95 £211.44

LN11067 Abit AN8 Ultra PCI-E S939 NF4 DDR400 SATA RAID Gbit Lan 1394 USB2 7.1Ch Audio £66.66 £78.33

LN11073 LiteOn SOHW-1693S-23C 16x16x beige Retail (also includes black bezel) £28.26 £33.21

LN7661 AOpen Chameleon (Blk/Silv/Ivory Bezels) 16x DVD-ROM + 48 CD-ROM IDE £14.55 £17.10

LN6240 Mitsumi FA402M 1.44 Ivory FDD+Int Combo 7 in 1 Card Reader (SM/MMC/SD/CF/MD/MS) Fits in 3.5" FDD Bay £10.69 £12.56

LN10432 200Gb Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 10 (7200rpm,8MB) SATA NCQ - Lead Free £48.94 £115.01

LN11453 550W Akasa AK-P550FF Quiet ATX12V/EPS12V v2.01 aPFC PSU with Sanyo Denki Fan SLi/Crossfire Ready £67.00 £78.73

LN8282 Akasa Eclipse-62 Midi Tower Case - Hi-End £72.89 £85.65

LN9036 120mm Akasa Amber Case Fan, 3 Pin, 2 Ball Bearing , Ultra Quiet and Long life £8.49 £9.98

If you change any quantities, please re-calculate your basket
Scan Finance - Buy Now Pay May 2006
Pay £85.00 deposit and then NO payments for 9 months, then settle the balance and pay NO interest.

Scan Finance - More Sense Than Money


Net Total £708.42

Carriage £15.00

V.A.T. £126.60

TOTAL £850.02

[plesuvius]

I'd recommend you do exactly what Fatboab says! Sounds like he specced my last upgrade lol.

Seriously good advice there.

The list above also looks nice though i guess you wont need all teh CD stuff and the case and maybe the PSU. And the 6800 might not be quite worth the price any more...

[xathras]

I'd recommend you do exactly what Fatboab says! Sounds like he specced my last upgrade lol.

Seriously good advice there.

The list above also looks nice though i guess you wont need all teh CD stuff and the case and maybe the PSU. And the 6800 might not be quite worth the price any more...

I intend to build from scratch

[xathras]

Does anyone have recommendations on a motherboard, storage, case and psu please

[sawyen]

if your doing alot of programming.. VB or Java with multiple threaded loops will crucify that 3000+

I'd say a 3800+ X2 will be much MUCH better..

The rest of the list looks fine.. you might want 2GB kit instead as Java are well known for chewing up memory..

[xathras]

That would be well out of my budget

[sawyen]

480w Tagan m8, really reliable but won't burn a hole in ur pocket..

You might also want a few tubes of arctic silver 5, I know the thermal pad that came is not too bad... but arctic silver is always better (in my opinion).. some spares just in case u mess up positioning the HSF... or a few months later when u decide to change to some more exotic cooling.

[sawyen]

then 3200+, you at least get a decent multiplier to overclock (10x).. I still strongly recommends 2Gb if ur heavy on VB and Java

[xathras]

Looking at the reviews of the X2 chip i may push the boat out but it means giving a slight delay to my project. I guess something to take into considering but i saw that for an extra 100.00 i can get a 3200 X2 Processor that outperforms a standard AMD 64 4000.

[FatBoab]

I'd agree with Sawyen that 2GB is a good idea if you're going to be using the rig for development and database work. Not sure that you'll need dual-core though -- it's not like you'll be running Linux kernel builds every day. For uni-project-level development a single core should see you through okay

Your mobo will handle dual-core, so if you decide you need it you can easily upgrade just the CPU and flog the old one on ebay.

Other than that your list looks good.

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[leachy86]

I disagree on programming requiring high memory bandwidth and dual core.

If you are an advanced software developer who has the skills to write demanding, multi threaded applications such as complex games or large applications, then having a dual core processor may help when testing the application on a dual core system to see speed increases for clients on dual core based machines.

He say's he'll be working with databases, more likely just setting up a database object in Java or VB and then getting recordsets from an Access database using SQL, which is hardly demanding. I could understand if he said he was using his machine as a Microsoft SQL server host and had hundreds of simultaneous connections performing complex stored procedures, but he doesn't, he's just a student.

Any machine with an average spec (1.6ghz, 512mb RAM) will let you do all of your Uni work, be it report writing to coding up fox and rabbits simulation in Java.

[sawyen]

I did varsity work on continuous distillation profile simulations using VB and HYSYS simultaneous coding... killed my 3200+ barton and me m8s 3.2Ghz northwood when I went on a 3 million config loop.. every set requires 6 hours to complete and you can NOT touch anything... anything from MSN message pop-up would end up with a non-converging loop.

Tried using a dual processor to do the job, 2 hours and with time to spare for a cuppa. Me 3500+ single core almost died retrying my final year project... so i presume a 3000+ would be literally crucified under these circumstances...

EDIT: 1.6Ghz with 1/2 a gig would be fine if you're not doing any loop calculations. Also, he's a student.. he will come up with really bad and inefficient codes tbh, I did it before.. don't tell me you wrote perfect coding for all ur programming on the first try. bad programming would chew up your memory like an indian seeing curry..