Specc'ing up a new PC

[Watto]

Guys and Girls,
My computer has officially died, ive located the problem to a motherboard issue but it seems my computer is a little dated and i have been looking to upgrade for a while, so here's where i need your help :

Now i understand that crossfire is basically the ATI version of SLi, where you can have two cards at the same time etc which sounds great but i dont think i have the budget for two top end crossfire cards, unless you guys can tell me otherwise.

i dont really understand the Master/Slave scenario, in that i dont know which one i have to buy if i were to only have one card.

Im looking for a AMD CPU, maybe a FX 60, i know its costly but its top end, i would like you guys if possible to tell me "GET THAT" or get "xxx, its cheaper and only x% slower".

i have ram from my old machine, pc3200 stuff, i think that should suffice.

im looking for maybe an 80gb OS hdd and a 400-500gb "storage" hdd, samsung ones look nice and quiet.

motherboards - its up for debate, ive seen a nice DFI lanparty one but again i would like your opinions.

i would like a 19" tft, again, up for debate.

also, what sort of a power supply will i need to cover this amount of usage and any suggestions.

Sorry this post was long winded but i hope you guys can help me.

Thanks in advance

Watto

[Clunk]

whats your budget?

[ExceededGoku]

need a budget mate, I could be speccing a £4000 PC or a £100 PC :S

[Watto]

Apologies, i knew i would leave something out.

i would like to keep it about £1,200 including monitor.

Cheers

[Clunk]

For that money, you can get a dogs danglers Conroe system that will obliterate anything AMD has to offer. The FX are still great processors, but they have been outclassed, and with your budget, i would definately go Intel.

[spazman]

My system in sig (minus 160gig HDD and 19" CRT) came to about £1,180.

[Watto]

So, i should look more into the new intel conroes? - im on it..

do we have any opinions on motherboards?

nvidia or ati? - clarification on master/slave situation with crossfire.
1 top end card (e.g - 1950xt) or two lesser 1600s? for example?

is 16mb cache on hdd a big plus?

what kind of power supply will i need to power this beast?

Cheers

[Clunk]

1 x top end card will do you fine on a 19" monitor - X1900XT or X1950XT for ATI, someone else can recommend the NVidia alternative.

Intel E6600 CPU

Asus P5B deluxe wifi motherboard

2GB ram PC2-5300 upwards

Decent sized PSU will alow for future upgrades to crossfire or SLI 600-700w from enermax, seasonic. Im not a fan of the other usual suspects myself (tagan, fsp).

16meg cache neither here nor there really. if you can get a 16meg one for a similar price as 8 meg then go for it, it cant hurt

[Watto]

okies,
i was looking at E6700 but i think that might just fall out of budget so might have to go for E6600.

the asus p5b deluxe looks a go'er tho, looks good.

im looking at Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply, its says SLI ready, does that mean it will only work with nvidia or what?

cheers

[Clunk]

lots of people swear by the seasonic s12 series on here, so you should be ok with that one. I think there is a newer revision with some modification to overcome some booting issue with certain boards...someone else might be able to shed more light on that.

SLI usually just means it has 2 x pci-e power connectors so you can run 2 cards, itll be fine with crossfire as well.

[Robbie G]

Watto - many PCI-E VC's need an extra power connector.

If you are running 2 in SLI, then you need 2 PCI-E power connectors.

If your PSU does not have these connectors then you need adaptors, which should be about £3 ea. Since this is SLi ready it will also be crossfire ready as all it means is that it has two PCI-E power connectors, it's just a branding thing.

Edit: too slow

[Watto]

Kewl, sounds good

so far this is what im looking at :

ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X ***Crossfire/Master Edition*** SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR4 (PCI-Express) - Retail - still not cleared this up, is the master the one i want?

Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Samsung SpinPoint T HD401LJ 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 775, 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail

1Gb (2X512Mb) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15

that in total comes to :

£971.04 inc vat, OCUK & SCAN.

does this sound ok?

advisable to get e6700 or stick with e6600?

[Robbie G]

Stick with the E6600 (you can get 3.5Ghz at least OC) but go for 2Gb of RAM. Personally I'd also go for 2 x 250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 in RAID 0. They're slightly quieter and slightly faster, though the spinpoint are top notch also.

Re: master vs normal, I thought a master was only if you were running two VCs? Though I'm no expert on crossfire etc as I could never understand how people could spend £600 on graphics alone

[harry1]

yup looks good.what bout case, and all the other little bits or do you already have those?

[Clunk]

I wouldnt say at least 3.5ghz. Most people seem to settle on around 3.0-3.2 for day to day use, but most will go higher with some extra voltage. But yeah, get the E6600.

Just get the cheapest X1950XT-X that you can find. As far as i'm aware, they are all made in the same factory and just differ in what stuff is bundled with them.

[cptwhite_uk]

If you're sticking with one videocard, you don't need the master card, you just want the equivalent 512Mb X1950 XTX version. Forget about SLI/crossfire for a 19" monitor you wont notice the difference, these 2 vid card setups for for the people using 1920x1200 or above resolution (you're on 1280x1024 with a 19" monitor)

You might want to consider waiting for the new Nvidia 8800GTX and 8800GTS cards, due for launch next month, and DX10 compatible (a big deal for graphics cards). Most techies would advice you to leave first gen DX10 cards though, and wait for the better performing, and less buggy second generation of DX10 cards.

My advice? Get the X1950XTX