Looking For Some Opinions

[Spitfire01]

Hi everyone,

I am looking to upgrade my computer soon, or maybe even build a fresh one. Just want to know people's thoughts of what components to get. I like to get a wide range of opinions before making any decisions.

I will mainly be using the machine for some gaming and also Quite a large amount of 3d modeling and rendering. I don't particularly want to spend over £2000 for it but I may be persuaded should it not be too much over that.

I realise that Intel is the top dog at present with it's Core 2s but will it be worth holding out for some Socket F opterons or some AMD native quad cores? (not the 4x4 Quad FX)

[acrobat]

Mmm £2000 You could get a real monster for that

I am actually about to build a whole new PC for myself, which I consider a real monster too. The total cost is around £1400. So I think I will cut and paste a bunch of stuff from my list and you can use that as a basis. If you decided you where ok to spend a bit more than £1400, you could put that to good use and either get a bigger CPU or get a second graphics card for SLI. If it was a gaming PC, I would suggest a second graphics card and a big monitor. But for 3d modelling, I would probably stick with 1 graphics card, and then get a bigger CPU.

One thing I should probably ask though, is would you be willing to overclock your CPU? Its just that there is a specific CPU which is very fast. And then there is the same CPU but clocked at higher speeds but it costs significantly more. You could get that within your budget, but if you where happy to overclock, you could get the cheaper one, and then just overclock it to the same speeds as the expensive one. Anyway, this in my opinion, would be a good basis for you to build from. This would probably suit you really well, but if you wanted to spend a bit more, we can just tweak some of these items to be slightly better. Here goes:

p.s. All this stuff gets really good reviews by the way, which is why I chose it.
CASE:
Akasa Eclipse-62 Midi Tower Case - Hi-End
£69.94 Ex VAT
£82.18 Inc VAT

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail
£177.79 Ex VAT
£208.90 Inc VAT

GRAPHICS CARD:
768Mb EVGA 8800GTX PCI-E (x16), Mem 1800 MHz, GPU 575 MHz, 128 Streams, 2 x Dual Link DVI-I HDTV
£407.99 Ex VAT
£479.39 Inc VAT

RAM:
2Gb (2X1Gb) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP
£169.99 Ex VAT
£199.74 Inc VAT

HARD DISKs:
320 Gb Seagate ST3320620AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ
£56.69 Ex VAT
£66.61 Inc VAT

Price for two (I recommend getting two):
£113.38 EX VAT
£133.22 INC VAT



Notes:

That CPU is superb. Within your budget though, you could probably afford to go up to the E6700 or maybe even a Quad Core. But the E6600 would likely be fast enough for you anyway, and like I said, it can be overclocked to be much faster which will cost you nothing.

That graphics card, is the best gaming graphics card available today. You could actually afford to get TWO of those and run them in SLI, within your budget. That would making gaming amazing - even at very high resolutions if you decided to get a 24" or even 30" monitor. Personally though, I think you might be best to stick to a 24" monitor (or even a 20"), and stay with 1 graphics card, and spend any extra money on a CPU which would help with 3d modelling etc.

Lastly, there are other things you would need. A motherboard, some fans, soundcard maybe, etc. But that is something you need to decide on really. Those components listed above, are exactly what I am going to be buying in the nest week or so. Its very fast and good stuff, and total it will cost me approx. £1400. So use that as your guide. If that sounded good, then I can suggest a motherboard right away. If you wanted to spend more though, and get two graphics cards, you would want a slightly better motherboard than I am buying.

I hope this helps to get you started though, and let us know what you think about the £1400 kind of range, and then it will be easier to pick the remaining components.

---edit---
Ehh actually, my £1400 was excluding VAT. So with VAT it would be a bit more. But you still get more if you wanted to spend more and be closer to £2000.

[Spitfire01]

That looks pretty nice. Though I am unsure about swapping back over to intel as I am a bit of an AMD fan boy, but I do concede that intel is the top dog right now. I do fancy using 2 monitors as it helps so much with modeling looking at references on the 2nd screen. What monitors do people suggest for such work? This is an aspect I have overlooked in my time of building computers as I've never seen it anymore than just something that shows you what's going on.

[acrobat]

That looks pretty nice. Though I am unsure about swapping back over to intel as I am a bit of an AMD fan boy, but I do concede that intel is the top dog right now. I do fancy using 2 monitors as it helps so much with modeling looking at references on the 2nd screen. What monitors do people suggest for such work? This is an aspect I have overlooked in my time of building computers as I've never seen it anymore than just something that shows you what's going on.

The Intel Core2Duo is definitely the way to go now. That may change next year when AMD's Quad Cores are released, but for the moment, the Intel Core2Duo (and quad cores) are by far the best. They are just so fast. You are also guaranteed a decent upgrade path in the future by choosing one of those.

As for monitors, I dont know anything about dual monitors. I have researched single monitors though, and I've specifically been concentrating on finding one which has a fast enough refresh rate so that theres no ghosting or blurring when playing games on it, or watching movies. The best I have found is the
20.1" NEC 20WGX2, Widescreen. Its widescreen so that may work for you without having to use two monitors. You can evidently view two full A4 pages both on the screen side by side, at the same time. But dual monitors may still be an advantage for you. Also, there are bigger and better monitors available but it depends on your budget. That NEC is about £350. If you went up to a 24" or even a 30", it would cost significantly more for a decent one.

I'll leave it up to other people to suggest about dual monitors though, because I just don't know anything about that. I do know that there's a REALLY good forum for researching monitors though. This place may be good thanks to a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, but to research monitors I used the other forum which worked out great for me. It just has so much information about pretty much every monitor available. Its here:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/

The review of the NEC I mentioned above is here:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...pic.php?t=3208

It even talks about how accurate the colour representation is, which may be of use to you if you are into 3d Modelling etc.