Graphics Card BFG 9800GT OC Edition 512MB £118.90 Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 stepping £153.78 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R £105.74 Memory Corsair XMS2 4GB kit (2x2GB) PC2-6400 CAS5 £40.12 Case Antec P182 £92.44 Power Supply Arctic Power 700W PSU £41.44 CPU Cooler Akasa 966BL "Blue Aurora" £27.30 Hard Disk Drive Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB Hard Disk Drive £77.80 Optical Drive Sony DRU-V200S DVDRW £17.30 Operating System Windows Vista Home £84.95 Total £732.47 I shall be using it for the occaisional gaming but mainly for uni and the like. Also I am a massive rookie so there could be some massive errors. My Main Queries are: 1)Do I need the fan, as it has been suggested to me that it wont be nessersary? 2)Are there any good cheaper alternatives for the case, as £100 seems quite alot. 3)Is the graphics card good enough? Thanks
If you buy the retail version of the Q6600 it comes with a heatsink/fan, but if you get the OEM you will need a heatsink. The graphics card should be decent for some light gaming as long as you don't use super high resolutions; and as for the case..... if you want to save some cash how about something along the lines of this?
go with vista premium for aero.. the video card should be fine for what you use it for- just remember that GT model overclocks with the pcie speed also
Graphics Card: 9800GT for 118.9 GBP? Not when you can get a Palit HD4850 for .1 GBP cheaper, you don't. Processor: Solid. EDIT: Forgot about this, thanks klutch4891 - if you can get the OEM version of the Q6600, it'll save you a few pounds because it doesn't come with the stock heatsink that you'd be throwing away anyway. Motherboard: If you go with ATI and foresee the possibility of going Crossfire later, try bumping up to the UD3P (and a PSU that can handle two cards, of course). Otherwise solid. Memory: If you can find a cheaper 4GB configuration by another respectable brand (ex. G-Skill, Crucial, Mushkin, OCZ), go for that. Otherwise solid. Case: The P182 is most useful if you're looking for something very quiet. If silence isn't a paramount priority, something more barebones like the Antec 300, Cooler Master Centurion 590, or Cooler Master CM-690 all provide extremely good value in the 50-60 GBP price range. I would particularly recommend the CM-690, but it's really more up to your personal preference than anything else. Power Supply: A build like this really doesn't need anywhere close to 600W. Try looking for something more around the 500-600W range, if even that. That being said, a PSU is a component you really don't want to skimp on. Lower quality can mean bad, bad things for every other component in your build. I've seen the CM-690 with a ~500W Cooler Master PSU preinstalled before, at least here in the US. CM PSUs are of perfectly acceptable quality, and the bundle was significantly cheaper than the case and PSU were separately. If you can find that bundle in the UK (Scan doesn't have it, I checked), I would highly recommend it. If not, most other forum members here would point you to a Seasonic or Corsair PSU between 450-550W, and I would point you in exactly the same direction. The Corsair VX-450 would be perfectly suited for you, for example (provided you stick with one graphics card), and it's only ~10 GBP higher than your choice. CPU Cooler: Solid. HDD: Provided you actually need a whole TB, solid. If you don't need quite that much and you want to save a few pounds, shoot for a Seagate or Western Digital 640GB drive. ODD: Solid. OS: Just be sure it's 64-bit so it can actually use all of that RAM. Oh, and I'm not seeing where on that list you have that fan you mentioned in your first question... - Diosjenin -
The advice from Diosjenin is fairly comprehensive and (to steal a term) solid. The one thing I would comment on is the processor. To get the best value out of a Q6600 you would want to overclock it. AMD bring out the Phenom II on Jan 8. The Phenom II 920 is rumoured to give better performance than a Q6600 for around (again rumoured) £30 more. If you are able to wait a couple of weeks it may be worthwhile.
Your PSU should be OK it has 56 5* average reviews however ATi 4850 512 would be a good idea. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146705
Thanks for the replys guys. I like the CM-690 so will probably go with that. Its cheaper to go with the power supply Ive got and buy the case seperately, so should I do that, or should I still change to a different power supply? Ive changed the RAM to the following: OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC6400 Titanium Memory CL4(4-4-4-15) £40.00 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/154644 This is in order to avoid a postage charge from a given website, I assume its still a good product? Changed to the following harddrive as I would never need a TB: Seagate ST3500320AS 500GB Hard Drive SATA II 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - OEM £42.28 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130826 You both suggest changing the graphics card, is there a concensus on which is the best in the price region? And last point, i assume with the OS comment I just need to make sure I buy the correct version from microsoft?
that Power supply is crap! my housemate has an Arctic Power 600w, it doesn't even have a PCIe connector, it lacks SATA connectors (only 1) and it is very noisy. get Corsair Vx450 will be enough. or Corsair Hx520w if you want quality. everything else, as Diosjenin said
PSU: Depends on what power supply you have currently. If it's a no-name that came with your last case, you're better off ditching it. RAM: That'll work wonders. It even has lower CAS latency than the Corsair you'd picked out before - nice find! HDD: Looks good. Graphics Card: The ATI Radeon HD 4850 and the nVidia 9800 GTX+ are generally considered on roughly equal footing. Considering that you can find a 4850 right in the neighborhood of your price range and you can't find a 9800 GTX+ there, I'd shoot for the 4850. Get one with an aftermarket cooler if you can, though - heat can be a bit high on the HD 4800-series stock coolers. OS: So long as you get an OS that explicitly says 64-bit, you're good to go. - Diosjenin -
why you going quad core? save a 100quid and get e5200 +1 for going ati 4850, or save 30-60 quid and go with a 4830, 4830 OC'd will beat stock 4850 that centurion case is good but have a look at antec 300, options always good get the corsair vx 450w though the corsair cx 400w looks sweet and will meet your needs for 10-20 quid less can save another 50quid going with gigabye ep31 ds3l though the p45 ud3r is a awesome mobo if the PC is for office work, music, movies and the occasional game I see no need stretching for more expensive unneeded components so save 250quid and build a pc that meets your needs. An important question is what res monitor do you have? If your going to OC get the Akasa, if your not going to OC get the Akasa will keep your cpu nice and kewl and run near silent when not loaded An example is crysis and other GPU dependent games, the 60quid E5200 provided only slightly less FPS then the 1000quid Corei7 965 EE cpu did Now HL2 did shine for the icore7 because that engine loves cpu power, but E5200 still put out 80FPS at 1680x1050
The lowest-specced Intel configuration I'd recommend for anyone who plays games is an E7200 and a P/G/Q40-series motherboard that can OC it well. That being said, Denis_iii raises an excellent point - if you don't need to fill out your entire budgetary allowance for the build, don't do it. Maybe we should get a better idea of how powerful this needs to be. Monitor resolution is very important (again, thanks Denis_iii) as it gives us an idea of how many pixels the GPU needs to push. Another important factor is what kind of games you play, anyway. Gaming occasionally is one thing - but there's a massive difference between Fallout 3 and, say, The Sims 2, and it should be taken into consideration. - Diosjenin -
