New gaming rig... Yet again...

[danjamin]

Okay, like so many others, I'm going to tell you what I'm planning to spend my cash on...

Price is limited to something under £2000, because I'm using my student loan to fund this, and I need *some* money left over for books and stuff. Or a MacBook Pro Stupid, I know, but I need a new PC...

Anyway, here's what I've got planned, and the cheapest prices I could find online;

Mobo - Intel D975XBX "Badaxe" - £141
Processor - Core 2 Duo E6600 - £218
RAM - OCZ PC2-5400 Gold GX XTC - £153
Graphics - XFX GeForce 7950GX2 Extreme - £383
Case - Aerocool ExtremEngine 3T - £68
PSU - Seasonic M12 700W - £133
HD - Maxtor DiamondMAX 320GB - £61
DVD, etc - Sony 16x DVD-RW Dual Layer - £22
Sony 16x DVD-ROM - £12
Sound Card - Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music - £57
Speakers - Creative Inspire T6060 5.1 - £47
Cooling - Scythe Ninja Plus - £33
2x SilenX iXtrema Pro Fan - 2x £19
Keyboard - Logitech Ultra Flat - £11
Mouse - Logitech G7 - £47
Monitor - Asus PW201 20" LCD Monitor - £362

TOTAL - £1784

I plan to overclock quite a bit, and will use this machine mostly for gaming... Hard Drive space isn't all that imporant to me, I've got a number of spare drives at my disposal, hence only 320GB here...

Yeah, so any suggestions you guys could make to this setup, eg compatibility issues or better value/performance?

Much appreciated, Dan.

[kalniel]

Very nice. You will totally regret blowing your student loan on something that goes out of date as quickly as a computer later, but hey, you can ignore the old fart's ramblings I'm sure.

Not sure about an ultra-flat keyboard for comfort.
I've had very bad experiences with Sony DVD-RWers, so I'd strongly recommend avoiding them, but others may say different.

[dave87]

imho - ditch the 7950 and get an x1950

Otherthing is you wont need a 700w psu - get the 600w S12, it'll be perfectly adequate.

Sony DVD-RWs (the later ones at least) are fine, but I wouldn't bother with the X-Fi.

Dave

[danjamin]

Okay, so any suggestions as to what [non-sony] DVD burner to get?

*Clings onto the idea of quad sli in the near future, so retains the 7950gx2* Thanks anyway though

[kalniel]

Anything by LG, pioneer etc. etc.

[MSIC]

Very nice. You will totally regret blowing your student loan on something that goes out of date as quickly as a computer later, but hey, you can ignore the old fart's ramblings I'm sure.

Not sure about an ultra-flat keyboard for comfort.
I've had very bad experiences with Sony DVD-RWers, so I'd strongly recommend avoiding them, but others may say different.

I was going to add something to this, but you know what, i'd recommend just re-reading what Kalniel wrote again. Good advice.

PS NEC dvd drive.

[Chunkers]

Very nice. You will totally regret blowing your student loan on something that goes out of date as quickly as a computer later, but hey, you can ignore the old fart's ramblings I'm sure.

What he said.

7950GX2 ? Why not tone it down a bit and spend some more on food, clothes, even beer.

Sorry, none of my business I know.

Chnks

[lodore]

i would serguest sony drive since my nec drive gave up on me

[MadduckUK]

i would suggest pioneer as my sony drive would frequently refuse to eject discs for no apparent reason.

[dave87]

I would suggest quad sli is pointless - two x1950s in crossfire (when they sort the drivers out) will be much better....

[harry1]

i was looking at custom pc this month with the dream pcs, omg they were a joke the vadim and the scan rhino, and it had a 7950 gx2 and said that it could run any game at the 24 inch res... and had fps to prove..

(well done scan the black rhino was wicked imo)

[darrensen]

I have built many PC's over the past for myself and for friends. Most of them are gaming machines and end up costing £1500. I have done loads of research into my next machine and have decided to buy a Macpro. It has 2 Dual core Xeon cpu's @ 2.66ghz and i'm having a X1900XT 512mb GPU. It's only costing me £1500 Ex Vat, but you could downgrade the cpu's to the X2 Dual core 2ghz.

It's a very powerful system and then you can install windows on the machine as well.

[kalniel]

Ew.. FB-DIMMs.. *shudders*

[darrensen]

Ew.. FB-DIMMs.. *shudders*

Lol yeah that is 1 downside.......the memory is expensive. But that's only a minor issue. 2gb memory would be fine anyway.

[Dark Horse]

I'd go with most of what is said above. Main things I would change are:

7950gx2-->x1950 or a cheaper 7950gx2, they can be had for £315

Psu to 600w Silverstone ST60f for £90, 700w is overkill and bit pricey

Fans from the £19 each things to 2 Yate Loons (rebadged nexus fans) from Silencio_777 on ebay for about £8inc p&p each.

I would also get a fan controller if you're looking for a quiet computer

I would get rid of the X-Fi, unless you're an audiophile its a waste of money as onboard is pretty good these days.

If you've already got loads of storage then get a Raptor with the money saved from above.

[danjamin]

Okay, I've made quite a number of revisions to the above setup, mostly due to cost issues.

Also, I'd rather hold back until the 2nd gen DX10 cards are in full flight before I got my whole sli/xfire setup going, and at that time i'll have a monitor, gpu, cpu and motherboard upgrade to deal with.

But until then, this lost should do me fine for any games i'm wanting to play for the next year or so... [And leave me with enough cash to pay for my internet ]

Motherboard Asus P5B Deluxe - £114
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - £112
RAM G.Skill PC2-6400 HZ - £241
Case Antec 900 Ultimate Gamer - £73
Graphics Card BFG 7600 GTO - £110
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 9 160GB - £41
Optical Drive Samsung SATA DVD-RW - £25
Mouse Logitech G7 Gaming Mouse - £51
Keyboard Saitek Eclipse II - £28
PSU Silverstone ST60F 600W - £89
Monitor Hanns-G 19" TFT - £118

Comes to a shade over a grand. Nice cutback on my previous offering.

I am slightly torn between my two case selections though, so any thoughts on either would be helpful.

I'm going for the E6300 because I've heard you can get pretty decent OCs on it, and compared to the rest of the C2Ds, its really quite cheap. I doubt I'll be needing the extra 2MBs of cache it lacks, at least not for now, because I'm not really into the whole media encoding thing

I know there are better motherboards, but I've done my research, and this is just what I'm looking for, and just in my budget.

Noticed the lack of IDE drives? I'm well modern

As I said, the 7600 and monitor are merely temporary, until something based on the G80 is slightly more affordable, and a decent Core2 overclocking motherboard (450FSB+) WITH SLI comes into being.

Not counting the 680i offerings, because as it stands, they're no more affordable than a 8800 atm. Not really worth it IMO.

God, I'm waffling... Suggestions appreciated, thanks, Dan.

P.S. I know I'm missed out cooling, I'm just going to salvage that out of my current PC, which has a Scythe Ninja just sitting in it, not really doing much... And this PC is going to my flatmate/girlfriend anyway, and it'll be a cold day in hell before she manages to stress even a Presler beyond the stock cooler. Unless MSN + firefox get built in CPU stress tests in their next "upgrade". Sorry, I digressed. Ignore that