New system

[tanman]

Happy new year all

Not sure if this is the right place but hear goes

Lookin at building a new pc with a comfotable budget what would / can you suggest to buy

main features are

case, cpu, graphics card, power supply, motherboard also would / do i need windows 64 instead of xp if i went down that road.

Indeed a much needed penny for your thoughts

Thanx

[kasavien]

Hi this would be the right place to post, but it would be better if you could give an idea of budget in £'s not sure what you mean by comfortable?? Also if you could specify prefered makes i.e. AMD or intel, ATI or nVidia that would help.

Cheers

Andy

[tanman]

Hi

ok ive used and happy with amd also ati graphics card with about 1500-2000 to spend max

are the fanless power supplies really that much more quiet, also there is a cpu fan called zalman is this a good addition as well.

what i have at the minute is

amd 2200 proc
abit nv7 proc
radeon 9700pro
1 gig of mem

which i done approx 18 months ago

hope this helps

thanx

tan

[RavenNight]

Right well I just specced this up quickly:

CPU: AMD X2 4800+ £550
Mobo: Asus A8n-SLI Deluxe £114
RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair £175
GFX: 512MB X1800XT £350
HDD: 74GB Raptor and 400GB WD Caviar £265
Case: Gigabyte Aurora £80
PSU: 580W Hiper Type-R £53
DVD: DVD+-RW Dual-Layer Lite-On Lightscribe £33
FDD: Sony Floppy £5
Sound: X-Fi Fatality £146
Cooler: Zalman CNPS9500 (Think thats the one you wanted, its awesome!) £33

Total: £1804

[kalniel]

Well you have a nice budget and the above system is amazingly fast.

Personally I would just wait a few weeks for the new NVidia and ATI products - the new NVidia chip looks to be something else and would really be a great fit in your system.

You do not need win XP 64 and I would not recommend getting it - driver and product support is not mature enough for the performance gain (which is minor, as the advantages are usually cancelled out by the optimizations for more mature 32bit applications). By the time 64bit really gets used we'll probably be using Vista instead of XP.

[kasavien]

Ok here goes, i specced this up before i saw the above post

LN8248 SilverStone "TEMJIN" J05B (BLACK) Aluminum front & SECC Body (w/o PSU) £68.89 £80.95

LN11453 550W Akasa AK-P550FF Quiet ATX12V/EPS12V v2.01 aPFC PSU with Sanyo Denki Fan SLi/Crossfire Ready £66.89 £78.60

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ATI chipset system

LN12574 Asus A8R-MVP S939 ATI 200 Crossfire DDR400 SATAII Raid USB2 GbE Lan 6Ch Audio £68.42 £80.39
LN12369 512MB Sapphire PCI-E ATI X1800XT GDDR3 ViVO Dual DVI-I £315.49 £370.70

nVidia chipset system

LN10973 Asus A8N-SLi Premium NF4 S939 DDR400 PCI-E SATA Raid Gbit Lan 8Ch Audio £97.10 £114.09
LN12458 512Mb Asus PCI-E 7800GTX 2DHTV Bundled with KINGKONG Game £410.99 £482.91

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LN10971 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ S939 512K (2.2) Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty £238.42 £280.14

LN11598 Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower Cooler (Socket 478, LGA775, 754, 939 and 940) £27.89 £32.77

LN9106 2Gb (2x1GB)Corsair, DDR400, non-ECC, 2x184 DIMM, unbuffered, 2-3-3-6, Silver H/S, L/T Warranty £149.00 £175.08

LN11686 Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card £72.29 £84.94

LN11866 Samsung SH-W162C/BEBN Black 16x16 ±R Dual Layer DVDRW Writer OEM UK £23.48 £27.59

LN4884 Samsung Black 16x DVD-ROM + 40x CD-ROM IDE £12.11 £14.23

LN7120 Mitsumi FA404M 1.44 Black FDD+Int USB2 7 in 1 Card Reader (SM/MMC/SD/CF/MD/MS) Fits in 3.5" FDD Bay £10.49 £12.33

LN9709 160Gb SATA300 Samsung SpinPoint™ HD160JJ (7200rpm,8mb) - NCQ £51.09 £60.03

LN6346 74Gb SATA150 Western Digital Raptor Enterprise (10Krpm,8MB) - NCQ £97.86 £114.99

LN8090 Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 OEM Single £83.21 £97.77

Right i've included 2 possible setups, one based around nvidia and the other ATI. I've done this because i think its pointless getting an ATI gfx card and an SLI motherboard. If you have an SLI motherboard you want an nVidia Gfx card so that you could upgrade at a later date to dual Gfx cards, same applies to ATI gfx and a crossfire setup.

I've included a dvd rom and writer incase you would need to copy dvd's.

Anyway given that the total price would be...

nVidia system = roughly £1631

ATI system = roughly £1484

If your happy to spend a bit more i would invest in an AMD FX55 or AMD X2 4800+

Hope this helps.

Andy

[kasavien]

Oh yeh and for a few extra squid you may want to throw in some nice case fans and rounded cables, Akasa do nice 120mm fans.

[nvening]

Dont get a Hiper PSU, stick with something like a Tagan, seasonic Etc. Also i would get a modular PSU, this allows you to only use the cables you need.

Personally at the moment i would get an NVIDIA card, as ATIs are overpriced and the drivers do not work properly, also thier problems with OpenGL games.

Bear in mind though that Nvida and ATI are both soon to release new top end cards and while you may not want one of these it should push the prices down on lower cards was well.

Also the situation with Nvidia and ATI may change with the new cards too (hopefull the driver issues will be sorted by then)

Are you planing any OC? And iwould get a Dual core system.

Also bear in mind that AMD is about to release a new socket called M2 so your new CPU will kinda be out of date quickly, but thats just computing for you.

[billythewiz]

Hi tanman

I've one quick question/suggestion.

Are you really keen to spend £1500+ ?

A few years ago most PCs used to cost that, but prices have droped. These days £1000 can buy you a really neat system. I presume you want to build your own is that right ?

My advice would be to spend less, still get a superb system and use the £1000 you save to buy a holiday, a car or a deposit on a house

Seriously, £1000 can get you a 939 PCi SLi Mobo, a fast CPU (3700 San Diego), 1 or 2 GB of memory, a top graphics card ( X1800 or 7800GT ), a decent case and PSU and a state of the art hard disk. That's especially true if you have some components from a previous PC (monitor, keyboard, mouse, CDR etc.)

With a buget of 1500-2000 it becomes a bit like Brusters Millions. You have to start looking for expensive components to use up the money. If you're intent on spending all that money (maybe someone else is paying) then £500 for a graphics card may be ok and £100 for a sound card to sit on a mother board which already has 8 channel sound, is the way to go.

To put things in perspective, the 1Gb, Athlon and 9700 system you speced 18 months ago could probably be built now for less than £800.

BTW, are you in oil or fish ? I used to be oil

[RavenNight]

Whats the problem with Hiper PSUs? Mines been awesome and I know loads of people who have them and have been really impressed.

[tanman]

Hi all

First of all thanx to eveyone for your time and input. All the inputs seem to be on the same playing field as it where.

For software i will wait till winvista gets up and running.

I am looking now to get a system now that will do me now for say the next five years or so me hopes. As I have a house / car & the dog this is for me

Also bear in mind that AMD is about to release a new socket called M2 so your new CPU will kinda be out of date quickly, but thats just computing for you.

How much better / faster is the above cpu & how much more expensive will it be??

billythewiz im in the oil trade

nvening what does "Are you planing any OC" mean

Once again i thnk you all for your input

Rgds

Tan

[RavenNight]

"OC" means overclocking, making stuff run faster than its designed to for increased performance.

[kasavien]

Hi tanman

To answer your questions, no one knows how fast the new M2 processors will be as yet, also as it is a completely new series of processors you can expect to see the whole spectrum from low end budget to expensive processors for enthusiasts.

OC is short for overclocking which is changing settings for your cpu so that you get a higher clock frequency and therefor better performance, RAM can also be overclocked. The reason this was probably asked is because if you are NOT overclocking you won't really see any benefit from getting a Heat sink fan apart from maybe reduced noise levels. Also if you are not overclocking you won't need expensive RAM.

Oh and you'll be waiting for a few months yet before vista is released, as far as i know it won't be released until the back end of this year.

Hope this helps

Andy

[tanman]

Hi

Ok OC = overclocking

Looks like the software can wait then till later, same as the newer cpu i feel.

Once again thanx for all this.

rgds

tan

[tanman]

Hi all

Two last questions

ONE does this case have any major faults

CoolerMaster Stacker STC-810 - Silver Trim (No PSU) (CA-054-CM

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...Cases_126.html

if not there is no need to reply

TWO If i cant get this mother board Asus A8R-MVP S939 ATI 200 Crossfire DDR400 SATAII Raid USB2 GbE Lan 6Ch Audio

what can i get as a good replacement


Once again thanx for all your help

Rgds

Tan

[MSIC]

I can't comment on if that case is any good or not, but my experience is with the Antec P180 case which is absolutely excellent, and great for a quiet system.
I also agree with the 'Brewsters Millions' comment, the price/performance curve is not linnear for top end CPU's and graphics cards. I wouldnt encourage anyone to spend over £300 on a CPU or over £250 on a graphics card - you will just lose too much value over the next few months.
The components that generally devalue the least are things like mice, keyboards, monitors and cases, so invest wisely in these and get quality parts. They are also the things that you intereact with and will actually shape the 'experience' of owning the computer.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, these are the components that I helped a friend to buy this week:

Dell 2005FPW (20" Widescreen TFT) from ITC Sales £350 inc delivery
And the following using Komplett's PC Builder which you can adjust to be the following for your budget:

NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x,
JBL Creature II Speakers + Subwoofer
Seasonic S12 Powersupply 500W, 120mm
Corsair Value S. PC3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MB
Creative SB X-Fi XtremeMusic
POINT OF VIEW GeForce 7800GT 256MB,
Antec Performance One P180 Miditower,
Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI, Socket-939
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket
Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX5000,
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 Total = £1377

I would also seriously consider a Zalman CPU fan for £30 plus and arctic cooler for the graphics card, about £15.

All that will come built for you, including a 3 year warranty (the monitor has a Dell 3 year warranty too).
This will be a serious system which will 'feel' impressive, to touch and look at too.

Total = 1772 approx, inc VAT and delivery.