New £1k PC spec

[this_is_gav]

I'd be interested to see your evidence of the Seasonic beating the Liberty 'ends up'.

The cabling is a bit longer now on the newer revisions. The Seasonic is a good bit quieter, is more stable on the 12v, and while I can't validate this part, I'll go as far as saying Seasonic don't under-rate their PSUs as much as my Enermax (something Hexus themselves found out in their roundup last year). I couldn't run a 4th and 5th hard drive (in the system on the left) without it dropping out. I got an extra 50Mhz O/C with the Seasonic too.

"All ends up" was perhaps too strong, as the Liberty does in fact have one advantage in its modular design, but other than that I've personally found the Seasonic better in every other area.

Lets not forget, in the last statement you make you say that 600W is over the top. So why would you use the Seasonic over the Enermax there either?

Because if he's planning to get an 8800GTX or similar in the future he's going to need something that will provide more than ~400W. If he's not, then something decent around the 400W mark would be fine. I didn't specify that the Seasonic would be better than the Enermax there - just generalised.

[Puncr0c]

Gah! You guys have made me really think about the PSU now. Hmmmm. Does anyone have any idea how well either the Seasonic S12 600W or the Enemermax Liberty 620W would fit in the P180 case? Will the PSU fan be the right way round? I'm sure I read somewhere that people have had problems where the PSU fan ends up at the very bottom of the case (essentially blocked) in the P180.

I think I'll defo go with the X1950 Pro. It is quite cheap and should be fine for at least a year. Then I'll go for a DX10 card. Scan are currently out of stock of the Sapphire X1950Pro - any idea on when they're likely to get more in?

[Puncr0c]

Damn, I've just measured my desk and its gonna be a bit of a tight squeeze to get the P180 in there. My desk has a tower holder underneath it, so the P180 is gonna end slightly overhanging at the front, and also compromise the scanner tray above it (not that I use it).

Here is a picture of the desk I use:



Do u think I'll be ok with the P180 overhanging slightly (by about 5cms or so)? It'll probably mean that the front feet wont sit on the tower holder properly, so the case will be held up by a the front of the metal cage bottom. I guess maybe I could put more rubber feet on the case a bit further back.

The tower cage tray is (H)44, (W)34, (D)45.5cm (although the height is not a problem).

I can't lose the desk either, I've only had it for about 3 months. Not using the tower holder is also undesierable as that was one of the reasons for buying it.

If overhanging is not an option, then can anyone recommend a similar case that's not so deep?

[colinloves]

I would think about the Corsair 620 HX. Its pretty much a Seasonic, plus 80% modular. In some cases, its got better components than the Seasonic.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=32

and

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/371

I guess that the Seasonic suffers from the same 12v rail problem as this one. It seems most PSUs are having this lie told.

[Puncr0c]

I would think about the Corsair 620 HX. Its pretty much a Seasonic, plus 80% modular. In some cases, its got better components than the Seasonic.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=32

and

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/371

I guess that the Seasonic suffers from the same 12v rail problem as this one. It seems most PSUs are having this lie told.

Wow, those links tell u everything u'd ever need to know about power supplies (including how to build one in ur garage lol).

So I guess the Corsair 620W gets the best of both worlds - its a Seasonic S12 underneath, but is modular and comes in slightly cheaper than the Enermax. Seems like a no brainer now - I'll go with that. Thanx guys.

Anyone know when the X1950 Pro's will be back in stock? Scan have run out of all of them! If I order my system today, will the whole thing be delayed until the X1950's back in stock?

[acrobat]

Thats similar to the PC I am about to buy. Theres a few differences though. You can see what I'm going to buy in my thread.

I am still trying to decide on a lot of this stuff too. Im getting the same case as you, and although its quiet and good cooling, it sounds like a pain to build in, and needs good length cables. But you can buy extension cables for a couple of quid so I dont think it really matters what PSU you get. And its hard to find which PSU has longer cables than others

So Im kind of decided on this one anyway, and I'm just going to hope the cables are big enough. If not, I'll buy a few extender cables:

580W HiperPower Type-R
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=228620
£50.99 Ex VAT
£59.91 Inc VAT


I'm also thinking of going with the 8800GTS. Its just that I need a new graphics card anyway.... and I was thinking of getting a cheaper card and then upgrading to DX10 next year. But unless I spent about £150, the cheaper card would be crap for gaming and I would be buying a srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy new PC and then playing it with low-medium settings until I upgrade. And then when I upgraded the £150 card would go in the bin So I decided to spend about £150 more and just get a good 8800GTS.

My only concern is that it will be an amazing DX9 card, but it may struggle with DX10 when it finally shows up. And after spending £300, I'm not going to want to upgrade to the later version of it, or the ATI R600 next year. So its quite a big risk, but I'm 99% sure I'm going to do it anyway.


For a motherboard, I'm 99% sure on this one:
Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 iP965
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=437659
£79.99 Ex VAT
£93.99 Inc VAT

Its about 20 quid cheaper than the one you listed. I'm not sure how they differ though. I need to spend a bit more time researching them. It seemed good enough to me though.

[Puncr0c]

Seems like quite a few ppl out there will be playin on similar rigs

I'm also thinking of going with the 8800GTS. Its just that I need a new graphics card anyway.... and I was thinking of getting a cheaper card and then upgrading to DX10 next year. But unless I spent about £150, the cheaper card would be crap for gaming and I would be buying a srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy new PC and then playing it with low-medium settings until I upgrade. And then when I upgraded the £150 card would go in the bin So I decided to spend about £150 more and just get a good 8800GTS.

My only concern is that it will be an amazing DX9 card, but it may struggle with DX10 when it finally shows up. And after spending £300, I'm not going to want to upgrade to the later version of it, or the ATI R600 next year. So its quite a big risk, but I'm 99% sure I'm going to do it anyway.

I too have had the same dilema about the graphics card. But I've decided on the X1950Pro (for the reasons in the starting post). One thing to consider though, is that the X1950Pro is about £135 with VAT which aint too much. My mate's just bought one and he says he's been playing BF2142 with maxed out settings on 1280x960 at 60-80FPS. So in my view, that should keep me going for at least 1.5 years. So I'm not sure if £135 is such a waste of money really. Also when I do come to buy a new card in 1.5+ years time, the market should be flooded with decent DX10 cards that will be well tried and tested.

Recent news has led me to believe that buying a DX10 card at the moment is not the way to go. I've heard that Windows Vista apparently will end up running games slower than XP as it shares the gfx card with the game rather than handing it over. Since Windows Vista will be the only DX10 platform (I beleive), u've got to wonder whether its worth having ur £300+ card being wasted on ur operating system in the background, just to receive an extra bit of eye candy in the game. I'm sure over the next few months or so this issue will be resolved, but months on the graphics scale timeline are significant chunks of time being wasted.

[Puncr0c]

It's ordered.

Ordered spec:
LN15049 Intel E6600 Core2Duo 2.40GHz
LN14277 Corsair TwinX 2GB DDR2 6400 C4
LN15170 Asus P5B Deluxe i965 s775 WiFi
LN16176 Sapphire 256Mb X1950 Pro PCI-E
LN15686 Samsung S182M/BEBN DVDRW Lightscribe
LN14162 320Gb Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS
LN15215 CORSAIR HX 620W MODULAR PSU
LN15487 Antec P180 Silver Case
LN13007 Enermax EB305C-S 3.5 Ext USB2
LN12009 Logitech X230 2.1 Speakers

Thanx for all the help guys.

[Rys]

It's not gonna happen. DX10 doesn't just hook into Vista, it's part of the kernal itself. The only possible way to get it in XP is via emulation, and emulating it will be so slow that no current home PC will be powerful enough to render it usable.

In short DX10 on XP isn't going happen.

Not quite. D3D10 drivers and their hooks for the API require WDDM, the new driver model that's part of Vista which depends on the new kernel architecture.

[Puncr0c]

All items arrived yesterday, present and correct (nice one Scan ).

Had a quick look at the parts, in particular the Antec P180 case and the Corsair HX620W PSU, just to make sure it would fit in the case and that the cables will be long enough. I must say I'm uber impressed so far with the quality and design of both the P180 case and the Corsair PSU (thanx whoever recommended that).

Turns out that the PSU can be mounted either way round at the bottom of the case. The fan doesnt get blocked when facing down into the bottom of the as the case has been designed to raise the PSU about 2cm from bottom to allow ventilation (and has big hole for the fan). The cables that come with the PSU easily stretch from the bottom of the case to the top, so there's no issues there either.

That's all I've really looked at so far. I'll probably be doing the full build over the weekend plus a bit of testing. Then if all is well, it'll be off to Santa for xmas (family members have coughed up some of the cash for xmas ).

[Ben_]

p180 is awful

wait til the feet and the door magnets fall off and the wires catch on the fans

[Puncr0c]

I'm one of those ppl where something always goes wrong, especially when spending this kind of money. Bad luck just seems to follow me around...

The new rig was built over the weekend, with no mishaps! Hurray!

So here are my final thoughts on the rig/setup...

Case: The P180 is a fantastic case and I would highly recommend it. So far I've not seen any signs of the door magnets falling off (as Ben_ says), but maybe I'll post back on that in future. As for the cables getting stuck in the fans, I can see where this may happen as the bottom chamber (where ur PSU goes) is quite tight for space. In fact, that is my only current criticism about the case at the moment. Getting all the wire routed through into the main chamber whilst avoiding the fan that Antec place about 10cm away from the PSU is a bit tricky. Apart from that, the rest of the case design is perfect IMHO and facilitates easy building and upgrading of the rig in future. I can also confirm that the case is uber-quiet even with all the stock installed fans on.

PSU: When u get this baby out the box, u instantly appreciate its quality and that it means business (even the product logo looks like its come from a heavy duty DIY product). The PSU was easy to install (apart from the cable management but that was the due to the P180 case). The spare wires are all black which looks cool and would definitely suit ppl who want to show off the insides of their cases. Connection lengths to the motherboard with the P180 case were not a problem.

Motherboard, CPU, Memory: All the kit was easy to install (as u'd expect) and worked perfectly. My only gripe here was that the ASUS software is a bit clunky at times. Epsecially the Wireless LAN Utlity, I ended up reverting to the standard Microsoft util.

Graphics card: Gave the GFX card a quick blast on BF2 and COD2. It easily handled all settings maxed out on BF2 running at 1280x960 with 4xAA and ran at 70-90FPS. I cant get BF2 to go to 1280x1024 in this game though, even though that's my LCD monitors native resolution - weird. COD2 ran like a nail in DirectX9 mode, although I did expect this. The developers have been criticised for putting naff gfx code in for DX9 effects. DX7 mode however run with all settings maxed at 1280x1024 4xAA at 90FPS.

Not tested the Samsung DVD burning or Lightscribing yet, but I'm pretty sure they'll be ok.

[Steve B]

get some pics up man

[Puncr0c]

get some pics up man

Ok, I'll do that!

It will have 2 wait till after xmas I'm afraid. Santa came along and took it away from me once I'd tested it.

[colinloves]

nice one PuncrOc.