Complete novice requires some guidance.

[mycarsavw]

Gah, this is proving complicated.

The costs keep going up as I decide I want better equipment.

For the original price ~£650 (not including VAT) am I better off skipping the BYO route and buying a prebuilt machine from a retailer?

[Flewis]

It is almost never better to buy from a retailer, unless you can get a ridiculous deal from a retailer, build your own.

[mycarsavw]

OK, well as promised/threatened here's my revised spec list

Motherboard - Asus P5B - £77.42

CPU - Intel Core Duo E6300 - £116.31

RAM - Corsair 2 x 1GB - £99.86

GPU - 256Mb XFX 7600GT - £79.30

HDD - Samsung Spinpoint 160gb - £37.00

Optical Drive - Samsung 18x18 DVDRW - £19.16

Case - Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower ATX - £57.56

PSU - 500W Silverstone SST - £62.23

OS - Vista Business 32 bit - £85.59

Totals ~£650 with VAT and delivery.

Any new thoughts?

[CrazyMonkey]

For a tiny bit more you can get a 520W Corsair (Amazing PSU)
I got mine for £63 on scan.
Apart from that it seems excellent, Vista is buggy

[Blitzen]

For a tiny bit more you can get a 520W Corsair (Amazing PSU)
I got mine for £63 on scan.
Apart from that it seems excellent, Vista is buggy

Maybe...but the Silverstone is excellent also.
Nothing else wrong with that spec.

Unless its the 64-Bit version Vista is actually VERY stable.
Ive been running Vista Ultimate for 2 weeks now (MSDN luckor) and its great. No bugs at all from normal use. I also use Vista business at work and thats fine aswell.

I must say though, i would rather go for 2x80gb drives and RAID 0 them than 1x 160gb. RAID 0 make the 'Vista' experience soooooooooo much more comfortable.

[mycarsavw]

For a tiny bit more you can get a 520W Corsair (Amazing PSU)
I got mine for £63 on scan.
Apart from that it seems excellent, Vista is buggy

Is there any benefit to pairing same brand components - ie memory and PSU?

Maybe...but the Silverstone is excellent also.
Nothing else wrong with that spec.

Unless its the 64-Bit version Vista is actually VERY stable.
Ive been running Vista Ultimate for 2 weeks now (MSDN luckor) and its great. No bugs at all from normal use. I also use Vista business at work and thats fine aswell.

I must say though, i would rather go for 2x80gb drives and RAID 0 them than 1x 160gb. RAID 0 make the 'Vista' experience soooooooooo much more comfortable.

I think I'm getting somewhere now.

I use XP Pro at work and it works well with both our (cough)Novell 3.12(cough) networks and Windows networks and I understand that's an extra feature over XP Home.

Am I right in assuming this is the same when considering Vista Business/Ultimate vs Vista Premium/Home and that I, as a home user with an internal wired and wireless network should opt for Business as I have no need for Ultimate?

I'll price up two 80GB drives, I'm a RAID novice so I'm afraid I may be asking more questions on that later.

Now onto a monitor;

I have an HP L1706 which is a vast improvement over my old Viewsonic CRT monitor. I also have an Acer something or other which to me, is not a patch on the HP.

I'd like 19" (widescreen or not) - what is the best to go for at the moment, or is it personal preference?

Apologies for all the questions but I'd like to learn and get this right first time.

[abeacock]

If you're going down the RAID route, make sure the motherboard has proper support for it, I'm sure I read somewhere that the basic P5B doesn't have RAID support.

[Splash]

I have no intention of using Skype and to be honest I'd rather remove the temptation. I have a wireless router/network already so I may just step up to the wifi board and lose the need for another cable.

The Deluxe/Wifi has advantages other than the WiFi. I bought it and am not using the WiFi; I bought it as it's got a good BIOS, and has been one of (if not THE) the best overclocking C2D boards out there, and stable as hell.

Vista. You're right, I could just buy it and be done, and I keep toying with the idea of doing so, but is it not advisable to sit back, let SP1 come out then jump on board?

You could do that, but that means paying for one OS now and another in September when SP1 gets released. I'm personally running a similar rig to your planned rig on Vista and it's absolutely fine.

Obviously(?) all the hardware I buy now will be new and thus have some Vista compatibility. What version would be an upgrade on XP Pro?

You'll probably want Home Premium, nothing really in there to make you upgrade to Ultimate unless you need AD domain support (like me)


Also as mentioned if you go the RAID route (which I personally wouldn't bother with, the performance boost is negligible when you consider the risk of data loss, meaning you need a good regular backup regime, and hence another disk to backup to) you'll need to buy an SATA RAID card as the plain P5B doesn't support RAID from the onboard SATA ports.

[mycarsavw]

If you're going down the RAID route, make sure the motherboard has proper support for it, I'm sure I read somewhere that the basic P5B doesn't have RAID support.

The Deluxe/Wifi has advantages other than the WiFi. I bought it and am not using the WiFi; I bought it as it's got a good BIOS, and has been one of (if not THE) the best overclocking C2D boards out there, and stable as hell.

You could do that, but that means paying for one OS now and another in September when SP1 gets released. I'm personally running a similar rig to your planned rig on Vista and it's absolutely fine.

You'll probably want Home Premium, nothing really in there to make you upgrade to Ultimate unless you need AD domain support (like me)

Also as mentioned if you go the RAID route (which I personally wouldn't bother with, the performance boost is negligible when you consider the risk of data loss, meaning you need a good regular backup regime, and hence another disk to backup to) you'll need to buy an SATA RAID card as the plain P5B doesn't support RAID from the onboard SATA ports.

Right, looked into the option of going with RAID, it's not really something I want to mess with - I already have a LaCie D2 external drive which I'm no where near filling up and I make regular ghosts of my Laptop drives so I know what I'm doing in that respect.

Splash, as you're running something similar to my plans, do you mind if I ask what your specifics are and what you use it for?

I've had a look at Home Premium and it looks as though it does the job. I presume with the introduction of all the new "levels" there's no direct comparison to XP Pro/Home?

[Splash]

I'm using my box as my main rig at home with the following spec.

E6300
2Gb Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400
Asus P5B Deluxe/Wifi
Geforce 6600GT (to be upgraded to either 8800 or R600 in a month or so)
200Gb Samsung Spinpoint hard drive
NEC DVDRW
Lian Li case
Vista Ultimate

I went Ultimate as I needed domain support, if I hadn't I'd have gone Home Premium (most people using XP Pro at home don't use the domain capability, sadly I do) as it's pretty much comparable with XP MCE.

In terms of what I use it for I have Office 2007 Home & Student, the box gets used for a bit of work but mostly websurfing, little bit of downloading, lots of WoW and Medieval 2... Also I'm using the onboard sound as the Creative drivers still don't do it for me (when they do I have an Audigy 2 ZS to plonk in, but the onboard is fine for WoW

[mycarsavw]

Final(?) revision

Motherboard - Asus P5B Deluxe - £121.60

CPU - Intel Core Duo E6300 - £116.31

RAM - Corsair 2 x 1GB - £99.86

GPU - 256Mb XFX 7600GT - £79.30

HDD - Samsung Spinpoint 160gb - £37.00

Optical Drive - Samsung 18x18 DVDRW - £19.16

Case - Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower ATX - £57.56

PSU - 500W Silverstone SST - £62.23

OS - Vista Home Premium 32 bit - £69.31

Totals ~£580.00 with no VAT (now found out I can buy through my firm) and delivery - I thought I read somewhere this was free for Hexus subscribers?

Will all of the above actually fit into the case, I've done a rough calculation and it looks like it will but I'm still curious.

Last thing to get is a monitor - Does anyone have some 19" widescreen recommendations - £150 (exc VAT) if that's attainable.

[Blitzen]

Looks good all accept for the case.

This: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=134904

or this

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=137411

would suit your needs better and are far better value tbph.

[Splash]

Monitor-wise I have an Acer AL1916W which is fine (albeit only 1440x900, and the viewing angle is a tad limited)

http://www.acer.com.sg/products/moni...toral1916w.asp

Price should be well within your budget.

EDIT - casewise mine is in a Lian Li PC-V600B which is around the same size as the Antec you suggested, so I think you should be fine.

[mycarsavw]

Looks good all accept for the case.

This: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=134904

or this

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=137411

would suit your needs better and are far better value tbph.

Thanks, especially for the alternate links too - one question though, they state they have "fan bays" but neither mention (that I can see) whether these fan bays actually have fans in them or whether I have to purchase these separately.

Monitor-wise I have an Acer AL1916W which is fine (albeit only 1440x900, and the viewing angle is a tad limited)

http://www.acer.com.sg/products/moni...toral1916w.asp

Price should be well within your budget.

I purchased a 17" Acer TFT very recently for my work machine and wasn't impressed at all with the picture. I appreciate it's hard to diagnose over t'internet but generally, would this be because of the on board graphics, ie, a better card = a better quality picture regardless of monitor specs?

As an example, my current TFT (an HP 17") looks, to me, to have a much better picture.

[Splash]

All I can say is that for the price I'm happy with my AL1916W. It's not a top end monitor by any means, but it's great value for money. If I recall there are a few other people on here with the same monitor - maybe worth a search of the forums.

[mycarsavw]

All I can say is that for the price I'm happy with my AL1916W. It's not a top end monitor by any means, but it's great value for money. If I recall there are a few other people on here with the same monitor - maybe worth a search of the forums.

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as slating your choice at all, I was just wondering how/what affects the output.

The TFT I bought was only a ~£100ish special end of line.