My proposed system build

[Blackspeech]

Hi Guys,

After much deliberation, and multiple sessions online (ebuyer, komplett, scan, microD, CCL) I have picked the parts that will make up my new rig. Plan on ordering today - just need to work out how to get my User ID - tried instructions but couldn't get it. Have PM'd Steve @ Scan.

Anyway - spec below - what do ya think? The HDD is only to replace those in older system.

System Spec
Part Description Solution Price Scan codes
RAM Crucial 2048Mb PC2300 151.56 Crucial Direct
Graphics Card: XFX 256 GTX Extreme 349.9 Scan LN 10984
PSU Tagan Easycon TG480-U15 64.61 Scan LN 1132
Motherboard Asus A8N-E 67.55 Scan LN 12330
Case CoolerMaster Centurion Silv 38.65 Scan LN 9072
HDD WD 40Gb Caviar 7200 41.11 Scan LN 4137
CPU AMD 3700 San Diego 162.58 Scan LN 10608
FDD Sony 1.44 Blk 4.69 Scan LN 5291
Cooling Fan Cooler Master Alumin. 21db 8.17 Scan LN 12517
DVD Drive DL NEC 3550A DL 30.98 Scan LN 11813
Total 919.8

If the free delivery sorted eveything but the memory (already bought) goes through Scan

[Thorsson]

That's a very small HD you have there.

[ocvn]

Expand your HDD m8.
Only 40GB cant keep all ur stuff like movie, game...
XFX 256 GTX Extreme ??? Wat that m8? 7800GTX?

[sawyen]

Expand your HDD m8.
Only 40GB cant keep all ur stuff like movie, game...
XFX 256 GTX Extreme ??? Wat that m8? 7800GTX?

I guess its pretty obvious its a 7800 GTX, probably just lazy to fill in 7800 in there

and ditto with the guys, 40GB is peanuts.. an OS + 3 recent games, and you wont have enuf space to even swap apples during BF2

[kempez]

Ditto on the HDD

Plus I'm assuming that your getting PC3200 RAM

[DeludedGuy]

Looks like a good system apart from the hard drive. I have 300gb total hard disk space and im running out....

I suggest at least 120Gb

[Blackspeech]

I keep trying to convince meself that size isn't everything!

Apologies for the confusion. I am removing the other XP Home, 200Gb WD Cav disk from old system and using that in the new one. Plus a very old HDD running Office and NT which I got from work for free (it was in an old IBM Krakatoa).

The 40 GB is just to keep the other running for now - I will sell it in due course.The old one is complete with DVD-RW, Athlon 64 3000+, Gainward 5700 Ultra GS 128Mb, PSU, MSI K8T Neo FSR rev.1 effectively a working system.

I also have an external 250Gb drive - again WD.

On the card - it is a XFX 7800 GTX Extreme - it was late when I completed my excel sheet with build on.

Also, I would like loadsa kudos for this pls - I moved the wife from me getting some new RAM and a 7800 GT to the spec you see above. In football terms (Long ball, tall guy up front, pressure on defence, knocks it down, back of the net by a true poacher)

I am thinking of giving lessons if interested - and Mrs Black is no push over.

[dannyboy83]

are they SATA or PATA(IDE) drives?

[Blackspeech]

Dannyboy - they are IDE.

Recent article on SATA in CustomPC did not convince me that SATA was the way to go. My drives spin up fine now - so I don't feel the need really.


Kempez - I hadn't clicked quote:' Plus I'm assuming that your getting PC3200 RAM' - absolutley well it was 01:10 or something when I posted

[5aboy]

hi,

id personally cut back on the graphics card and get 2 decent sized disks to RAID0 them - get amazing speed - theres no point getting a 7800gtx if you got a poor hard disc so your cpu got to wait ages to load all the textures and stuff!

plus, 200gb is also peanuts (not quite as miniscule wrt the 40gb, but small nonetheless) - you want 2 of those, and a 7800GT instead (you can overclock it to get near-GTX performance, or buy one of the pre-clocked ones!)

you just need to make sure you order the retail cpu with the hsf, and when you get more money, get ANY thermalright hsf - xp 90/xp90c/xp190/si-120 - all will blow your socks off!

hope ive helped!

[sgoaty]

hi,

id personally cut back on the graphics card and get 2 decent sized disks to RAID0 them - get amazing speed - theres no point getting a 7800gtx if you got a poor hard disc so your cpu got to wait ages to load all the textures and stuff!

plus, 200gb is also peanuts (not quite as miniscule wrt the 40gb, but small nonetheless) - you want 2 of those, and a 7800GT instead (you can overclock it to get near-GTX performance, or buy one of the pre-clocked ones!)

you just need to make sure you order the retail cpu with the hsf, and when you get more money, get ANY thermalright hsf - xp 90/xp90c/xp190/si-120 - all will blow your socks off!

hope ive helped!

Dont mean to offend but your talking rubbish. How can you fitting better HDDs be any sort of compensation for choosing a lower card all the HDDs will affect is load times. Also why order the retail CPU if you want to replace the cooler?

[nvening]

You will want to replace the cooler, trust.

Also, its up to you but i would get a nicer case, its like having a rolex made from plastic.

[5aboy]

i can justify that quite clearly!

the money you will be saving by chopping off those extra pipelines that come with the 7800GTX (great card, fantastic performer) will justify buying a faster disk subsystem.

surely you, like myself, do realise that the difference between the 7800GT and GTX is present, but not THAT great enough to justify skimping on something as important as good hard discs.

im sure that the computer will be used to be turned on, and other things, and the difference in load times between a nice fast raid0 system and a single-disk system (unless raptor74gb) is substantial. if the pc in question was a super-duper PC (ie opteron 175/dfi lp/7800GTX SLI) whose aim was solely to play fast games fast and keep the best benchmarks then sure a hard disc would make a little less impression on the overall scores.

i dont think im talking rubbish, but kudos to you for thinking that way!i just think that in ANY situation of speccing a PC surely if you have poor desktop performance due to high load times, theres no point spending the amount of money being mentioned!

i said to ensure that he oredered a retail cpu as i couldnt see a hsf on there, and also added that the thermalright heatsinks are the best in the market, bar none and should be considered in a pc of this sort of quality.

[sawyen]

hi,

id personally cut back on the graphics card and get 2 decent sized disks to RAID0 them - get amazing speed - theres no point getting a 7800gtx if you got a poor hard disc so your cpu got to wait ages to load all the textures and stuff!

plus, 200gb is also peanuts (not quite as miniscule wrt the 40gb, but small nonetheless) - you want 2 of those, and a 7800GT instead (you can overclock it to get near-GTX performance, or buy one of the pre-clocked ones!)

you just need to make sure you order the retail cpu with the hsf, and when you get more money, get ANY thermalright hsf - xp 90/xp90c/xp190/si-120 - all will blow your socks off!

hope ive helped!

you are talking a wee bit of nonsense tbh.. Just to clarify, I do agree on the RAID 0 performance but I don' think they warrant you to lower your gfx because of that. Also, dual arrayed disc arent that much faster anyways unless you raid 4 of them. (There's always the I-RAM if you're loaded) Also, a GT ripped out its guts for clocks will still be slower than that of a GTX.. the 6800GT--Ultra rule isnt that pronounced now..

The retail CPU part is really bollocks, ... no really... Why would you want to waste the dish out for something you wont even use? OEM chips are the way to go if you've decided to go 3rd party cooler.

EDIT: Arrgjhh... 4 min too late.. Was having dinner when I posted...

[Blackspeech]

You will want to replace the cooler, trust.

Also, its up to you but i would get a nicer case, its like having a rolex made from plastic.

Personally, I like the case, it is simple, tooless and elegant - I am not looking for anything fancy, but I understand your point.

Not a hardcore gamer - just enjoy good games and graphics and really want to be able to play CoD2, Advanced Warfighter (in particular) and X2 (bundled) and then X3 at lovely res and speeds. Also want to see what this card can do for Thief DS and Rome TW.

I changed my monitor to a new 19 incher as well so all I have to do is build the machine and as of Thursday I ain't in the office until Monday 16th January! However the smallest member of the family arrived on Saturday morning - so he will have other ideas.

[BrynS]

If you're not averse to a bit of overclocking and tweaking, I would go with the Opteron UP 146 instead of the 3700 San Diego. Depending on the stepping, these chips clock to 2.8 - 3.0GHz on air and 3.0+ on water. Even at stock (2.0GHz) and with 1MB cache, these chips are good value and should comfortably manage 2.4 - 2.6GHz with modest cooling.

The 256MB 7800GTX is a great performer but looks overpriced compared to ~£210 7800GT's. Another alternative would be a reasonable X1800XL at ~£230. Although offering slightly less performance overall at stock speeds than an 7800GT, the XL offers a number of image quality improvements, such as HQ angle-invariant anisotropic filtering, MSAA with fp16 HDR (a patch for FarCry is due to be released at some point to allow this on X1K cards) and various quality improvements under the Avivo technology umbrella. Some of these Avivo improvements are coming online in Catalyst 5.13 (due on 22/12/2005), which has shown the X1K range to outclass nVIDIA's Purevideo capabilities in areas such as de-interlacing, filtering and decoding peformance, especially with the emerging H.264 codec. Factor in the price of nVIDIA's Purevideo suite for the GT and the XL should cost about the same, while also offering decent overclocking potential.

I believe the NEC 4550/1 (the 4551 include NEC's LightScribe variant, although the capability [quite slow] and premium [too high] are not worth upgrading from the 4550 IMO) is slightly newer than the 3550 and costs about £30.

I would plough the savings from the above into a decent case, such as the Antec P180 or a large HDD, such as the SATA 2-platter 250GB Samsung for whisper-quiet performance or one of the larger Seagate's, which include 5-year warranties.

Cheers,


BrynS