Hardware What Hardware Should I Buy? - Nov 2008

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/11/04/what-hardware-should-i-buy-nov-2008/1

Want to upgrade your system or build a PC this month and don't know what parts to get? Once again, we've put together a range of components which the bit-tech staff personally recommend to take the stress out of upgrading or system building to suit any budget.

 

Concerning Gigabyte EP31-DS3L - do you know that you can use only two double sided RAM modules? Though you recommended 4 GB corsair kit, if someone buy less RAM with later upgrade in mind, they would have to buy new MB. Intel's northbridge in #31 chipset series is pretty limited.

 

Also, check the price of the 4GB Corsair XMS2 kit - it's since dropped another fiver to £39.99 on Ebuyer (which was bloody handy as I was in the market for a 4GB kit - kaching!!).

 

To be honest, It's a budget board, so is always going to be feature light. The important thing is it gets the basics right, while offering good overclocking options at a very reasonable price. We could easily have just picked a better P45 board, with it's much better northbridge, south bridge and a whole lot more board features, but the increased price wouldn't have made much sense in the affordable hardware range.

 

**edited**

It's dropped a fiver since yesterday!

 

Yep up to 4GB of memory is supported, but the need for >4GB of memory is just not there from a low end PC. I can't fathom the need for 8GB of ram under normal circumstances. By the time you feel the need for more, the chances are that you've outgrown the motherboard anyway.

For £45 you've got a great overclocker, four SATA for a few hard drives, and enough ram to support the latest games and virtually every application out there bar workstation.

 

Once again guys a nice roundup. I would very much love to have your job lol.

 

Crikey! And they've got 1100+ in stock, so they're not going to run out any time soon. Bargain!

 

I like the table view its much easier to see what your doing for reference once you've read the article, especially in the cases where the product is the same as last month as you don't have to flick through the whole thing again.

The jump on the budget rig is quite noticeable my brothers not going to be pleased he's been saving for a fallout rig for a few months now and this is probably going to set him back further, poor brother.

 

Yesterday night, no less!

 

How feasible is it for you guys to knock up these systems in these articles and benchmark them, it would be nice to see relative performance for the price in these articles?

 

It'd take a lot more organisation to get specific components in and it'd mean that the article wouldn't happen every month (and therefore wouldn't be as up-to-date). The £400 PC for example took about two months of organisation, testing and article compilation (around other articles) because parts weren't available and Scan had to ensure good stock levels.

Plus, there's the current volatility in the market which could mean that some products we thought we'd recommend go up in price and there are better alternatives around - as you've seen, the Corsair memory dropped over a fiver between 11pm last night and 9am this morning unbeknownst to us.

Also, we've covered nearly all of the products recommended in the article before on the site with supporting benchmark data (the main exception being hard drives, but that's something we're working on changing...)

 

i have this board and i have to say that i think its an absolute steal for the money. i can honestly say i have never had a more stable board (and ive had a couple of asus')

the double sided memory thing is a limitation, but one that i have just overcome by buyng a 4GB kit and flogging my 2GB. the chipset features may not be perfect for the high end market, but at this price point there just isnt a better product.

 

Well, if you buy 2 or 4 GB then it should be OK. 2 / 4GB is enough for almost anything

 

Again, great article, it's very useful to get a roundup of the state of the market at the moment.

One thing though, all your ATCS 840 links are directed to your Lian Li V1110 review.. some kind of subtle hint there?

 

Another very nice article. The grid layout of each makes it easy to print off, or copy into a word document to show someone, or for that someone to show their parents or other PC funders.

In the picture of the HX1000 is one of the modular connection parts broken? The top right one of the four blue connections.

 

Thanks for spotting that - duly corrected!

 

i love the sharkoon rebel series (9 amd 12) and they are very reasonably priced i would love to see how they copare to the el;ite 330

 

Except for in the table

dun, table was updated, but page wasn't...

 

The Antec P182 has dust filters, as far as I am aware.