Advice on component selection...

[803hart]

I was thinking of building my own pc that will be mainly used for 3D apps such as 3D Studio max and for the occasional gaming. My budget currently stands at £600, £650 the most...

I would like to buld a system around this motherboard:

ASUS P5WD2-E Premium i975X, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX :£133.35 Inc VAT

Thank you all in advance....

[mallett]

from what iv seen thats a very good board, are you planning on plugging the new conroe chip in it then?? if so id recomend the E6400 as it will be the best for cheep as should be around £180, or so i hear

do you have all the monitor/keyboard and stuff so you dont need to speed any of your bugget on this, and what about the OS?

as for graphics any 7900GT wouold suit you very well for the useage you want, but you will have to take care in the choice of case as you will need a fair amount of cooling for this, will the noise level bother you?

[spazman]

Ordered that board the other day will have it some time next week hopefully, appears to be a very good board.

[803hart]

from what iv seen thats a very good board, are you planning on plugging the new conroe chip in it then?? if so id recomend the E6400 as it will be the best for cheep as should be around £180, or so i hear

I'm leaning towards a dual core cpu at the moment. I'd like to see how the new conroe chips will perform in benchmarks, thats y I picked the motherboard (to be compatible wiv the conroe cpu jus in case I decide to upgrade later down the line).. £180 is a bit on the expensive side for me, Im looking to spend £120 max.

do you have all the monitor/keyboard and stuff so you dont need to speed any of your bugget on this, and what about the OS?

I dont have the monitor so I was thinkin flat panel, atleast 19" at £230 max.

as for graphics any 7900GT wouold suit you very well for the useage you want, but you will have to take care in the choice of case as you will need a fair amount of cooling for this, will the noise level bother you?

As for graphics Im thinkin more of ati x800xt and above for around £150 max. I aint too fussy about the case but wouldnt mind a more silent option for say £50 - £70

[alcor]

The Dell 20" widescreen display is about £270 at the mo, its got £150 taken off.
It is a pretty big, high resolution monitor that should be pretty good for 3D design.
I think im right in saying its exactly the same screen as the Apple cinema displays (obviously with a different outer casing) and those are widely used for 3D design.

If you can, its probably worth streaching your budget a litte for it.

[mallett]

I'm leaning towards a dual core cpu at the moment. I'd like to see how the new conroe chips will perform in benchmarks, thats y I picked the motherboard (to be compatible wiv the conroe cpu jus in case I decide to upgrade later down the line).. £180 is a bit on the expensive side for me, Im looking to spend £120 max.

dual core would be the best for the sort of thing your looking to do, as most 3D apps are multi threaded now so will naturally run faster on them, as for benchmarks, theres been some early tests on the conroe here
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6184&page=4
the lostest they show is the E6400 but there is a cheeper chip, the E6300, which will have slightly lower scores but still extremly good. this will be slightly over your budget at about £150 but these are still only pre oder prices, and are not definative....
but you should wait until august as AMD is expected to anounce huge cut prices on there range to compete with the intel chips, and if you really want to go down the route of the LGA775 chips, then for a budget you could get a pentium D as the price of these will drop alot too

I dont have the monitor so I was thinkin flat panel, atleast 19" at £230 max.

im not massively sure on monitors, but a TFT is the way to go, id surgest looking at as many reviews as you can and then posting on the monitor section of this forum, as im sure there will be someone out there with that monitor who will be able to give you some good advise

As for graphics Im thinkin more of ati x800xt and above for around £150 max. I aint too fussy about the case but wouldnt mind a more silent option for say £50 - £70

my personal fav is the nvidia you can pick up a very good 7600GT for around £120-140, but again post on the graphics forum for better advise

hope this helps...