New System Spec

[camalbitboy]

OK, so I've just ordered my new pc and thought that I'd post its specs so that people can criticise my choices, and let me know how they'd spend the money better in traditional Hexus style

Mesh Matrix Titan Blade Hexus Special Offer
Case: MESH Praetorian 732 ATX Aluminium MidiTower - Silver
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
Motherboard Features: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Mainboard - DDR400, Dual GB LAN, IEEE 1394, SATA 3GB, PCIEX16, SLI Ready
Processor: Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core
Memory: 2048MB PC3200 DDR (400MHz)
Hard Drives: 250GB Serial ATA (150MB/s) Ultra Fast HDD with 16MB Buffer
Video Card: 2x 256MB nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX - TV Out + DVI - PCI Express - SLI
Monitor: 19'' Viewsonic VX912 TFT (8ms response) - DVI & Analogue
Optical Drives: 16x DVD-ROM + SONY & 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
Sound: Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality
Speakers: Creative Labs Inspire T7900 - 7.1 Surround
Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech Cordless Desktop Keyboard & Mouse
Wi-Fi: ASUS 54MBps 802.11G Wi-Fi PCI Card
Warranty Options: Classic Warranty - 3 Years On Site - Parts & Labour (Mainland UK only - Terms Apply)
Delivery: Insured Del within Mainland UK Free for Hexus Members


Price Including VAT + DEL: £ 2019

By the way, I already have a Dell 2405 that I'll use as the main monitor, the new 19" will be used with my old pc to replace a 19"CRT.

So what do you think? Let the criticism begin

[andyjhill]

Only thing is will xp home allow you to use both cpu cores.I though that only xp pro could use more than i cpu core

[shaithis]

Might be just me but that sounds pricey......biggest change I would have made? I would have built it myself

Change XP Home for XP 64!

[holy god of nil]

Everyone's going to say i would have built that myself, i could make it cheaper etc, but to be honest those are SERIOUSLY good specs and in my opinion its a pretty decent price.

[BUFF]

Only thing is will xp home allow you to use both cpu cores.I though that only xp pro could use more than i cpu core

No, Home can run a single CPU with multiple cores but you need Pro for multiple CPUs.

Oh & v. nice camalbitboy - only criticism is that you are having it delivered to you rather than me

[camalbitboy]

Thanx for feedback so far.

Andyjhill - You really scared me for a min that I had missed something with the Xp home vs Professional comment!! Thought I'd have to confess to requesting the wrong operating system on a Hexus forum. Very embarressing! Thanx Buff for clearing that up. Any point in running Prof instead? Will cost me about £40 extra, anfd i haven't thought about it really.

Shaithis - Looked into building it myself. Means I would have got the exact spec I was looking for (eg 2x Raptors) but it came out more expensive just to build the same spec as this. Plus it wouldbe the first time I built a pc from scratch, and £2k is not the time to start learning.....

[sgoaty]

Not much you can say except awesome. Only thing I would have done differently is Buy the X2 4400 it would save £200 and 10 minutes in the bios would have it at 4800 or beyond speeds

[Tobeman]

Get ready to RMA your mobo when the chipset fan dies Unless they've sorted that issue now? Get a passive heatsink for it anyway, or a replacement one before the inevitable happens

[camalbitboy]

Get ready to RMA your mobo when the chipset fan dies Unless they've sorted that issue now? Get a passive heatsink for it anyway, or a replacement one before the inevitable happens

Heh, thats why the onsite warrenty. If/when it dies they need to send an engineer to me, rather than me rma it to them. They'd be daft to have not sorted the chipset fan probs by now surely!

[kalniel]

Very nice, top spec all round.

Is the memory 2x1gb, or 4x512? Make sure it's the former.

The only thing I would consider upgrading is the hard drive - you've paid for top spec on everything else, so unless you've suddenly hit the bottom of the wallet, I'd upgrade to a raid 0 pair of drives. If you've really got the money then a pair of raptors in raid 0 would give an even bigger performance increase.

edit: but I see you considered that in your self build version I suggest ringing them and seeing if they can do that for you anyway - you're providing a good chunk of custom so they should be keen to please you.

[camalbitboy]

Very nice, top spec all round.

Is the memory 2x1gb, or 4x512? Make sure it's the former.

The only thing I would consider upgrading is the hard drive - you've paid for top spec on everything else, so unless you've suddenly hit the bottom of the wallet, I'd upgrade to a raid 0 pair of drives. If you've really got the money then a pair of raptors in raid 0 would give an even bigger performance increase.

edit: but I see you considered that in your self build version I suggest ringing them and seeing if they can do that for you anyway - you're providing a good chunk of custom so they should be keen to please you.

Its 2x1Gig sticks

Really wanted 2xRaptors, but Mesh don't do them, so went for a 16Mb cache 250 Gig drive instead. Best they could do (I don't need more space than that) Pity though. Not even like its worth swapping them out myself as it would kinda void the warrenty/support at a guess

[kalniel]

Why would it void the warrenty? PCs are designed to be upgradable and doing so does not usually void the warrenty of other components. The only thing that will happen is that whatever you replace them with won't be covered by the mesh warrenty (but their own instead). So if it goes tits-up swap back in your mesh drives and see if works again. If not, call out mesh, if it does, send the raptors back to who you got them off.

But I can appreciate the ease of having one support call for everything, sure.

[camalbitboy]

Why would it void the warrenty? PCs are designed to be upgradable and doing so does not usually void the warrenty of other components. The only thing that will happen is that whatever you replace them with won't be covered by the mesh warrenty (but their own instead). So if it goes tits-up swap back in your mesh drives and see if works again. If not, call out mesh, if it does, send the raptors back to who you got them off.

But I can appreciate the ease of having one support call for everything, sure.

Good point. So longer as I kept a note of the Bios settings for any changes needed for the Raptors in RAID0 (although I'm not sure I'd need any?) I could just slot them in alongside the Mesh drive and select them as the bootable drives maybe?

Only downside with that plan is the extra £300 odd needed for the drives and another version of XP.....

[kalniel]

You can use the same version of XP surely?

[|{££|"]

you could.but legally it would require another licence... i think?

[camalbitboy]

The system will come with OEM XP so no install disks, just a recovery disk, or recovery files on a partition or something. Even if I had disks, not sure of the legality of installing it on 2 different hard drives. Anyone know?