Hey there.. I'll cut to the chase. I'm looking to build my first high end gaming computer to play all of the best games at the highest setting and generally have fun with I have a budget of around £1500 but that has to include: -A monitor (I want a nice 24" one (1920x1200) from a good brand of good quality) -Case with all the components -A Wireless Card PCI card -Optical Drive -Don't need an OS for now.. Using the Windows 7 RC on this laptop and I like it so I will use that on my build until the retail version comes out which I will upgrade too -A mid-high capacity storage drive -I want to try SSD and have a smallish one that will have my games, programs and OS on it for ultra fast booting etc.. Although i've heard about a dodgy Jmicron controller.... Or something like that.. Please tell me if the one I have suggested has that -An after market fairly cheapish cooler. I want to overclock to around 3.4-3.6ghz so I don't need excessive cooling Anyway.. Here is what I put together -Intel Core i7 I think this is the best cpu in the market atm and so it should give me wonderful performance and it's a good OC'er -Titan Fenrir CPU cooler This is cheap (At £30) and according to Custom PC magazine, gives a better overall score than the TRUE... Looks like a bargain! -2xSapphire ATI Radeon 4870 512mb "Toxic" I chose these because they look like great performance and a week or two ago these were much more expensive and this one is only £120 and it's pre OC which is good as i'm pretty unsure when it comes to OC a gpu. I chose to get 2 so that I can get great performance with my 1920x1200 monitor -Asus P6T Motherboard Looks like a good motherboard that allows both Crossfire and SLI so if i choose to go down the SLI route in the future, then I don't have to replace my mobo first -Samsung Spinpoint F1 750gb Storage drive 750gb will be more than enough for me and I have heard that Spinpoints give great performance -Edimax nMax 300mbps Desktop PCI Network Adapter Looks a perfectly suitable wireless adapter and has 3 antennae to pick up the best receptions -Samsung 2433BW 24inch Monitor Looks a nice design, large screen and should fill the needs and look good on my desk -6gb G.Skill RAM (3x2gb) 1333MHz Triple Channel I do tend to have many windows open and accompanied with a 64 bit OS, it should work well and my PC should run nice and quick -Antec CP 850w I wanted a modular PSU and this one is designed with the case that I want in mind. 850W is nice and should be able to use it for a long time and antec is a well established brand therefore I do not feel at risk using one of their PSU's -Antec 1200 Loads of room in this case, with tonnes of airflow... I would like to do a few mods to it. I want to: -Flip the HDD's (Seen a TJharlow vid on how to this) -Cut some cable management holes (I want as few cables to be visible if possible, I will find a pic of how I want -Re-do the window so it's just one large rectangle of acrylic and so accompanied with some cold cathodes... It will really show off my system for people and myself to look at and drool -SSD--> Initial thoughts have made me gone with this Crucial 64gb SSD (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-001-CR) Can anyone recommend this? Here are some pictures of the cable management that I want Here is a picture of the window I want to create All of that totals too £1498 so I'm just about in budget! It also come with 3 copies of Farcry, 1 with the cpu and 1 with each gpu Here is a screenshot of my basket I hope this helps and you can give me some feedback and advice on this build Another quick thing... I see that a website called Kustom PC does case windows for you if you buy the case with them... Would anyone recommend I do this? It costs £30 + Case http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Case_Windows.html All the best... Ali
Overclocked or not, I think 1GB might be a more sensible level of memory than 512mb, although £120 is an undeniably good price. The rest looks good, so I have only one further piece of advice. Don't play Far Cry 2 even once. Especially not three separate times.
haha.. I think i will give it away to friends "as a gesture of good will" What benefits would 1gb of graphic memory have over 512mb?
The main 1GB GPU Memory allows the game to handle larger texture size. You are making a gaming computer as I can see. On my laptop (Dell Latitude E6400 with Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M 256MB) which has 4GB I easily pass the 4GB range if I play some games. Page file must be enabled. And just by working on my computer I am near 4GB. I don't think 6GB is enough on a long term run, get 9 or 12GB (it's not supper expensive, as they are 6 stick of 2GB).
I would rather get 6 for now... If i needed something like 9/12.. I could just add on another stick or whatever (I think) but some research has shown (I will find a link at some point) that anything over 6gb of RAM only improves gaming at a very small level. Therefore, 6gb is fine. http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/memory/3gb_6gb_or_12gb_investigated/10 I think that's the thing i read
Yes.. TODAY! These are B.S... the same was said with 256MB, 512MB, 2GB, 4GB, and now 6GB of RAM. The same B.S was said for dual core CPUs, and 64-bit CPUs and again with digital cameras... I remember a few years back when they said that anything above 3MP was a complete waist of money even for professionals... we know how that turned up days after that claim.
Yeah, but RAM is something that's very easily upgradeable and won't need swapping out, just adding to. Why get 12GB now if you're not going to use it; you can just buy another 6GB further down the line when it will be cheaper and you actually need it.
Is it possible to use ram of different brands. For example i have 3 G.SKill sticks and 3 corsair's for example.. does that work?
There is no problem in using different brands or similar quality. For best performance and stability it is best to match the RAM speed and timings exactly.
i would drop the 2x4870 512MB. crossfire and SLI are a waste of money IMO and are marketing gimmicks to get you to spend more money LOL. There performance depends completely on driver optimizations and which game you play. Stick with 1 high end card as this will be consistently good frames. simple fact is your gaming @ a high res 1920x1200. You will need a large video RAM buffer. When using crossfire or SLI 2x512 does not = 1GB it is still only 512 and therefore turning on all the eye candy at 1920x1200 would be better from a single 1GB card. get something like a Nvidia 275GTX (not 285 or 295 as these are horrible value for money) that can play all games @ 1920x1200 on MAX bar the silly badly optimized crysis. +1 on the 6GB is perfectly fine for todays apps and future apps for now. having looked at the benchys for RAM amounts anything above 4GB provides such a minimal boost its not worth it. This is on games mind you not 3D modelling software etc. personally id also drop the ASUS P6T as its not brilliant (the delexe edition is) although to be fair this is just opinion. Ive built several systems using the Gigabyte X58UD3R which is the cheapest 1366 board and it overclocks very well (will manage 4Ghz+) consider the 1TB F1 since it is faster than the 750GB version and only marginally more expensive <£10. If ya go with 1 GPU you can lower the power supply down to 650-750W range will save you a bit of cash. SSD are well overpriced at the min and to be dont justify themselves enough. Yes there fast but do you really wanna pay over £200 more than a normal HDD to shave 5 sec of a loading screen and decrease windows boot time by 50% or whatever. They wont give you better FPS in games. also dont buy from overlclockers they moderate there forums and remove all bad comments about any product. Have you seen any product that was less than 3-4 stars and most have 5. They are also more expensive than most other supplies and have terrible after sales support. try www.scan.co.uk found them to be cheap and reliable.
I admit that I normally do use scan.. This was the first build i priced up on overclockers and I only did this as it has the antec psu and those cheap gpus. Would you suggest 2x4870 1gb instead of the 512mb version? I want to try crossfire because I don't necessarily need best value for money as I have a large budget I might just scrap the SSD and then spend the additional money on maybe getting a p6t duluxe v2 (is the v2 better than the non-v2 and what's this OC palm version thing? I had a look at the Gigabyte UD3R and from what i've seen, it doesn't have SLI support therefore I probably wouldn't get it for future purposes I notice that in the Best build for May (I think it's called that off the top of my head) it said that the best 2 gpus for the ultimate ones are GTX260-216's.. would this be better than 2x4870's?
I got all my bits bar the 'card from Overclockers. For sure, they're not perfect; I ordered a 250GB IDE HDD from them in November and having sent it back as broken, I then received a 500GB in February! However, they're not all bad, and between them and Scan you should be able to get all the bits you want at the best or very near the best prices. Definitely get 1GB 'cards. Whether it's one 275GTX, two GTX260s (Bit-Tech recommends) or dual AMDs, just make sure they're 1GB. You need it these days. If you have a large budget, DEFINITELY get the P6T Deluxe, not the P6T. The V2 is actually a downgrade if I remember correctly; they cut the SAS ports or something like that, but I doubt it's a big issue. The OC Palm is a small handheld PDA-esque thingy that enables you to fiddle with the settings necessary for overclocking while the computer is still on, a bit like fiddling with the BIOS. It's cool but I think you'd have to be a real liquid-nitrogen-cooled-clock-skewing-overclocking mentalist for it to be useful. Other points; 6GB of RAM will be fine. I don't clear 4.5 very often. The 1TB is a better bet for not much money; get two in RAID 1 for security. If you've got the cash, I think that 2x260s would beat 2x4870s but doubtless some helpful person will supply benchmarks either way. A boot SSD could also be an impressive upgrade if you don't mind spending, but like the others say, they are very expensive for what is not a wholly mature technology. My rig (see sig, similar to yours) boots Vista x64 about 15 seconds, and I don't need any faster than that.
I suggest a Velociraptor HDD over some SSD. Cheaper, around the same speed (some SSDs are sloer and some are faster), and more space.
yeah 2x260 (216) are good right now if you must have SLI or crossfire. £142.90 from scan is bargintastic. ive just bought some for recent builds.. i think the 1GB 4870 are about £160 so id say opt for the 260s i tihnk V2 of the P6T deleuxe did have things removed but it solved some technical issues the boards were having also so better to get it ovre the first 1. i think when i read a review of the OC palm thing they said it was a bit of a gimmick and doesnt beat going into the bios and fiddling with the settings there it doesnt have all the features in the bios just a few of the main ones i think. like said more for ON-THE-FLY overclocking when you need to change stuff regularly.
Yeah. They are a good deal. The prices fluctuate a lot, though - go from £135-145 on an almost daily basis. Oh, and eBuyer had some GTX260's for £129.99 a couple of days ago. Dunno if they still do.
How much do you think that SSD's will drop over the next 6 months? Because I could always stick with a 1tb storage drive and just use that (Maybe another in Raid 1 for backup) and then just buy a ssd when they drop down in price? Cos atm, it's quite expensive
Probably not much. Not unless someone comes out with something jaw-droppingly awesome at a ridiculously low price. They're coming down, but prices are still high so adoption is slow... and that gives less incentive to lower prices. Paradox.
Yeah, the only SSD BT wholeheartedly recommends is still £330, and that's a lot of money. I don't see it dropping much over the next 6 months; the adoption rate isn't high enough, but with generally plummeting memory prices it won't be much more than a year before they become 'enthusiast-priced'. Since you're planning to switch from the beginning, that'll make it much easier to do it when the time comes. I would set the computer up like you're going to install an SSD, then just put in a small but reasonably fast HDD instead, wait until SSDs drop below £200 (give it a year or so), then swap the boot HDD out. Or, if you were planning on having an emergency boot partition on the 1TB anyway, then put one there and boot from that until you get around to getting the SSD.
