Any help in this matter will be appreciated, next week I'm buying a new PC...my top end budget is £1300 (£1400 at a push). Just to give you some background, this will be the first PC I will have bought and assembled since my p4 3ghz socket 478 with 1gig of ram. Back then my hard drives and DVD writer was connected via IDE cables and I'm pretty sure PSU's were a bit different. So with all these new changes I need to know wot to expect when building a PC these days as I know things have changed. I want this PC to last around 2-3 years without any major updates if possible and after asking some friends I've been told that as I want the PC to be mostly a gaming PC then a fast duo cpu is better than a slower quad cpu (is this true?) Also I'm aware things have changed since my SDRAM days and now its DDR2 ram but with some many different speeds I'm not sure what to go for. Below is a spec of what I have managed to put together so far...all that is missing is the case and psu (suggesitons please) and a copy of xp premium 64 bit (which i'm told you need for 4gb of ram?). I already have a mouse and speakers and will probably just use onboard sound and think about a soundcard later if necessary (or is this another mistake?). Please tell me where I'm going wrong and right below or if you can make up a totally different PC and give me some pointers then I'd appreciate it very much. This is all from ebuyer.com LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA - Retail Box With Software 139985 £66.79 Seagate ST3100340AS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - OEM 134684 £89.99 Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 DHX Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12) Lifetime Warranty 142433 £69.60 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) Socket 775 Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor 140428 £130.37 Sapphire HD 4870X2 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card 148278 £349.94 ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard 142854 £104.62 Western Digital 500GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive 16MB Cache - Retail Mybook II 136212 £58.99 Microsoft Black Wired PS/2 Keyboard 500 - Retail Box 088759 £7.75 Samsung T240 24" TFT Monitor 1920x1200 1000:1 300cd/m2 5ms DVI/HDMI Rose Black 3 Years Onsite Manufacturer Warranty 143848 £303.03 Belkin 8-Way Surge Protector With Telephone Protection 4M Cable (Grey) (£275,000 Warranty) 113893 £18.04 Total: £1212.64 inc shipping I know case, psu, windows vista is missing...but am I missing anything else? remember I have speakers/mouse already Cheers again
Err wait a month for Intel Core i7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_i7) It's a new socket so any s775 motherboard you buy now will be outdated very soon.
hmmm is it really worth waiting for? from what it reads its a quad cpu and also requires DDR3 ram...surely a new cpu, newer mobo and newer ram is going to blow my budget...and will it provide me with a massive jump in terms of performance over the cpu i've selected already in terms of playing games and surfing the net??
Yeah, don't get the P35 mobo. Go for the P45 at least. Also, the CPU is a choice between the q6600 and the e8500. The e8500 is better for gaming at the moment, but future games will have better quad core support so the q6600 will start to perform better. I'd splash out and get the q9450 if you could. Its about £200 ish but a great performer. In the list above, you haven't mentioned a CPU cooler. If your planning to overclock you'll need a decent one such as the OCZ vendetta 2. Also you haven't mentioned a PSU. With that setup, and the 4870 x2 which drinks power! You'll be looking at a 750W. I'd recommend the corsair tx 750.
Hmmm so you would recommend the q9450 over the E8500? That's a contradiction from what the majority have told me...anybody else got thoughts on this? I'm aware i'm gonna need a decent psu and also a case, in terms of a cpu cooler, i have no plans to overclock the cpu so I will be just using the stock cooler Are you sure I will need a 750w psu?
Avoid the Extreme PSU Calc at all costs. It is truly terrible, and consistently overestimates power needs by 20-150%. Instead, use this one: http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php I've personally checked the accuracy of this calculator using my Kill-a-Watt meter, and it's almost dead-on. If anything, it still guesses a little bit too high, but that just gives you a bit of room for expansion or aging.
Admittedly, no. But a monitor would likely bring it to your £1300 budget. It's either an outdated board or expensive RAM.
It wasn't for me but for a friend. Specs were something like this: Q9450 - £230 MSI X48 Platinum - £180 4GB DDR3 (1600Mhz I think) - £160 Sapphire 4870 - £180 Corsair HX620 - £70 2xDVD - £30 Vista Premium - £60 Antec 900 - £70 Sharkoon Lazer Mouse - £20 Saitek Keyboard - £40 500GB HDD - £50 That's just over £1000 I think, tell me if I've missed anything. DDR3 RAM is coming onto Par with high end DDR2 stuff so you can pick up 4GB for around £130 now. With the extras you have it might streach the main PC to around £1100-1200 but I did pay over the odd for some of that stuff (£130 ASUS P5Q was out of stock and many of those prices have gone down.) You could go with a single 4870 and then upgrade later. It all depends how much you upgrade your PC.
Quite a small HD on that spec (id need more space, hence why I've went for a 1tb internal and 500gb external), I want to go for the 4870x2 instead of the 4870 which will cost more and also with a monitor I think your setup would blow my budget....mostly cause I don't see the short/medium term benefits of an exspensive mobo like urs or DDR3 ram which for the extra price only provides minimal performance increase.
The only reason is future upgradeability which if you don't want it then your current choice is fine. I tend to choose more powerfull than functional components anyway.
I think in terms of upgrading, in 1 1/2 years from now i'm gonna be looking to change mobo/cpu/ram and hopefully the 4870x2 will be sufficient to last me into a 2nd year where I can upgrade that too.
I think you will need a 750W to be on the safe side. The requirements of the 4870x2 from ati is 650W minimum so you should be looking at a 700W to be on the safe side. Are you getting a new OS? Don't forget to factor the price of that in.
yeah i'm getting vista premium 64bit, when I order all this next week I will make sure to pick up an OEM copy
The one you posted looks seriously lacking in choices. Looks good and is easy to use, just needs more data in it.
You should maybe get PSU with higher watt because maybe you will later upgrade some of the parts you are now using and then will require more power... But that is just in case you plan to upgrade anytime soon Otherwise I agree with crazybob... Good configuration by the way nicely choosen.
Rather than thinking about future redundancy on the 4870X2, I'd start saving up for a second one. Just thinking about two of those bad boys running in Crossfire gets me weak at the knees. Factor in the price drop on the 4870X2 (and the vanilla 4870) in the next twelve months, I think crossfire'd 4870s are going to be next year's 8800. Which means a lot of people are going to be investing in watercooling / higher watt PSUs. Global warming is a lie!
