What do you guys think of this spec?

yantorsen · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:29

closeratio said:
Yeah I've seen quite a few pics of it and I can imagine it does look nicer when you see it 'in person'.

I see it also comes with two fans as well, which is kinda nice

yep, although i had to modify my 8800gtx to fit it in, which is not ideal, but no biggie.

And the build quality of it is not amazing, but you get what you pay for really.

closeratio · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:33

yantorsen said:
yep, although i had to modify my 8800gtx to fit it in, which is not ideal, but no biggie.

Lol i've noticed that these new 8 series cards out are frankly huge. Do you think an 8800 GTS would fit in one of those without any modifications or is it pretty much the same size as a GTX?

yantorsen · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:40

closeratio said:
Lol i've noticed that these new 8 series cards out are frankly huge. Do you think an 8800 GTS would fit in one of those without any modifications or is it pretty much the same size as a GTX?

it will fit, the only reason mine didn't is because it came with soem dodgey metal handle thing attatched to it, which if I removed it voided the warrenty, but as far as im aware most 8800's don't have this thing.

so the 8800gts, i have about an inch gap from my hdd cage with my gtx, with the thingy removed, and the gts is shorter, so u'll be fine.

yanto.

closeratio · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:52

yantorsen said:
it will fit, the only reason mine didn't is because it came with soem dodgey metal handle thing attatched to it, which if I removed it voided the warrenty, but as far as im aware most 8800's don't have this thing.

so the 8800gts, i have about an inch gap from my hdd cage with my gtx, with the thingy removed, and the gts is shorter, so u'll be fine.

yanto.

Ah right cheers. At the moment I'm deciding between the zen and a Coolermaster 330 Elite and a couple of others. But that Zen does seem tempting.

Btw pastymuncher, I did a bit of shopping around and managed to get it all for £490 including shipping

And that includes one of those Akasa copper cpu coolers (the ones where the fan blows form the side rather than the top).

pastymuncher · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:55

closeratio said:
Lol i've noticed that these new 8 series cards out are frankly huge. Do you think an 8800 GTS would fit in one of those without any modifications or is it pretty much the same size as a GTX?

GTS is quite a bit smaller than the GTX. Don't get that Akasa cooler either. You can pick up an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for £12 if you shop around. Far better cooler too. Are we going for a decent psu now? The Corsair VX450w Is the cheapest psu i would go for. They are made by Seasonic and come with a 5yr warranty so are very good. The OCUK Huntkey is a bit of an unknown really, and as i said, it's the most important component in a pc.

yantorsen, does the Zen have a front intake that is'nt blocked?

yantorsen · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:56

closeratio said:
Ah right cheers. At the moment I'm deciding between the zen and a Coolermaster 330 Elite and a couple of others. But that Zen does seem tempting.

Btw pastymuncher, I did a bit of shopping around and managed to get it all for £490 including shipping And that includes one of those Akasa copper cpu coolers (the ones where the fan blows form the side rather than the top).

i dunno how well those akasa heatsinks perform, and personally i think that coolermaster case looks a bit naf.

yantorsen · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:57

pastymuncher said:
GTS is quite a bit smaller than the GTX. Don't get that Akasa cooler either. You can pick up an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for £12 if you shop around. Far better cooler too. Are we going for a decent psu now? The Corsair VX450w Is the cheapest psu i would go for. They are made by Seasonic and come with a 5yr warranty so are very good. The OCUK Huntkey is a bit of an unknown really, and as i said, it's the most important component in a pc.

yantorsen, does the Zen have a front intake that is'nt blocked?

it's kinda blocked theres a little slit at the bottom of the front. so yeah kinda.

but the airflow is still pretty good.

pastymuncher · 15 Oct 2007 at 20:58

closeratio said:
Ah right cheers. At the moment I'm deciding between the zen and a Coolermaster 330 Elite and a couple of others. But that Zen does seem tempting.

Btw pastymuncher, I did a bit of shopping around and managed to get it all for £490 including shipping And that includes one of those Akasa copper cpu coolers (the ones where the fan blows form the side rather than the top).

It always pays to look around.

I quite like the look of that new Coolermaster case. I would want to see a review or two before i bought it though. I am off now but will be back in the morning. I will see if i can do better.

closeratio · 15 Oct 2007 at 21:04

pastymuncher said:
It always pays to look around. I quite like the look of that new Coolermaster case. I would want to see a review or two before i bought it though. I am off now but will be back in the morning. I will see if i can do better.

Yeah I know what you're saying. Thanks for all you're help anyway

I might wait for a review or two of them as well. I can always get the centurion 5 because form what I've read they're just pretty good as well.

And I can see where you're cokmin from when you tlak abuot how the case looks yantorsen. But I spose it's all down to personla preference. They're all gonna be pretty much the same quality if you're only spending 30-45 quid.

While I do like the zen, I think I might end up going with a Coolermaster or a Thermaltake purely because I've read more reviews about them. But I mean it's always a possibility. And thanks anyway because you've helped a lot when deciding what case and GPU to buy.

lol i was surprised that i could get an 8800 gts in my system for less then £500

(don't tell anyone, but atm i'm running a Dell 2400 and my GPU is a PNY 6200

it's only because I don't have an agp or a pci-e though, can't wait to get this system running

).

yantorsen · 15 Oct 2007 at 22:04

closeratio said:
Yeah I know what you're saying. Thanks for all you're help anyway I might wait for a review or two of them as well. I can always get the centurion 5 because form what I've read they're just pretty good as well.

And I can see where you're cokmin from when you tlak abuot how the case looks yantorsen. But I spose it's all down to personla preference. They're all gonna be pretty much the same quality if you're only spending 30-45 quid.

While I do like the zen, I think I might end up going with a Coolermaster or a Thermaltake purely because I've read more reviews about them. But I mean it's always a possibility. And thanks anyway because you've helped a lot when deciding what case and GPU to buy.

lol i was surprised that i could get an 8800 gts in my system for less then £500 (don't tell anyone, but atm i'm running a Dell 2400 and my GPU is a PNY 6200 it's only because I don't have an agp or a pci-e though, can't wait to get this system running ).

lol

there's a review of the zen on 3dgameman if i remember correctly.

closeratio · 15 Oct 2007 at 22:39

yantorsen said:
there's a review of the zen on 3dgameman if i remember correctly.

thanks, I'll be sure to look at it.

taz488 · 16 Oct 2007 at 13:57

mr g should listen to the wise words of mr t

closeratio · 16 Oct 2007 at 16:34

mr t should only speak when spoken to

so anyway guys. I'm probably gonna go for a case in the Akasa Zen-type price range, and of that similar build quality. It's probably going to be a Coolermaster Elite 331. So I'm just going to relist the revised list after speakin to you guys about it.

Intel Core 2 E2180 (Which I intend to overclock)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Coolermaster HTK-002 Thermal Grease

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R Motherboard

2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2

XFX 8800 GTS 320MB GPU (or probably 8800gt 512mb)

Western Digital 320GB HDD, 16mb Cache

Samsung SH-S203N Black DVD+/-RW Drive, SATA

Tagan APlus CS-188AF Case

400W NorthQ Silent King Kong PSU

I know the case and the PSU might not be the bets quality (the case is circa £28, the PSU is £32), but I can upgrade that later. I just want to stick with the setup for around 3 or 4 months.

I'm also thinking of waiting for the 8800GT or even the new GTS to come out (which will apparently surpass the current one but will be th same price), hopefully by half way through November, but I mean it'll be pretty similar to the XFX card I specified here.

So basically with an overclocked CPU using the cooler I've shown (want to get it to around 3Ghz), the Graphics card I've specced, and the mobo, would it be powerful enough to do what i specified on the 1st page?

Thanks lads

closeratio · 17 Oct 2007 at 10:01

Anyone got any opinion? I might as well just assume it's ok if nobody replies. Thanks anyway for your help, you guys that replied.

pastymuncher · 17 Oct 2007 at 11:07

First off you don't need the Coolermaster thermal gunk as the Freezer 7 Pro comes with MX-1 pre-applied and it's really very good.

It could be well worth waiting to see what the 8800GT is going to be like.

If you get a DS3R make sure you will be getting a Rev 2.0 as that is the latest version.

I had a look at that case on coolermasters website and it looks decent enough for a budget case. Toolless drive installation too.

I really would go for a decent psu such as the Corsair VX 450w. You can get it for around £43 if you look around. Made by Seasonic and with a 5yr warranty you can't go wrong. It's only an extra £11.

Everything else is fine. On the memory side you can get 2Gb of PC2-6400 for £44 and it will give you some headroom for clocking.

closeratio · 17 Oct 2007 at 13:16

Thanks for your advice pastymuncher.

The only reason I wasn't too keen on getting a psu like that originally was because it'd force my budget over 500, but because this new 8800GT apparently only gonna cost around £130, I'll take your advice into consideration and will spend some of it on a better quality PSU.

And as for the RAM, yeah I was looking at that speed, but I was only previously limited by my budget. But like I say because of the possible decrease in the GPU price, chances are I'll get that as well.

I just hope those new 8800's don't take too long to come back in stock (as from what I've seen, everybody wants one lol), because it probably is going to be into November when I do get all this.

Just one thing though, and I know this is more or less off the topic of the original question, but when you're overclocking your cpu (well, the fsb anyway), can it only be done using the motherboard BIOS or is there a program which you can download that does it?

I don't particularly mind using the BIOS, it'd just be useful to have a stability program running alongside so I wouldn't have to keep going into windows to check the stability.

Thanks gents

pastymuncher · 17 Oct 2007 at 17:16

The best way to clock is by using the bios and then booting into windows and running something like prime to test for stability. Gigabyte does have some software for clocking in windows called easytune 5 Pro. I have it but have never used it for clocking. I just use it to check volts, % of overclock and stuff.

closeratio · 17 Oct 2007 at 23:21

pastymuncher said:
The best way to clock is by using the bios and then booting into windows and running something like prime to test for stability. Gigabyte does have some software for clocking in windows called easytune 5 Pro. I have it but have never used it for clocking. I just use it to check volts, % of overclock and stuff.

Ah right, thanks for that. I've looked at the software but it's just a big list to me. I might as well clock it through the BIOS anyway because like you're not doing it through the operatin system or anythin.

So I mean, will I basically get the same performance out of a clocked 2180 as I would out of a stock E6750? (minues the extra cache, and if I was, say, to clock it to around 3Ghz?)

pastymuncher · 18 Oct 2007 at 10:50

closeratio said:
Ah right, thanks for that. I've looked at the software but it's just a big list to me. I might as well clock it through the BIOS anyway because like you're not doing it through the operatin system or anythin.

So I mean, will I basically get the same performance out of a clocked 2180 as I would out of a stock E6750? (minues the extra cache, and if I was, say, to clock it to around 3Ghz?)

Basically yes, minus the extra cache of course but it really does'nt make that much of a difference.

closeratio · 18 Oct 2007 at 15:31

pastymuncher said:
Basically yes, minus the extra cache of course but it really does'nt make that much of a difference.

Good stuff

It's amazin how much you can save by gettin a cheaper cpu and clockin it. It's a shame more people don't know about this cos it'd save them a bomb. Thanks for your help anyway pastymuncher. If I don't have any more questions I'll post again on this thread how it all went when I've built it (I guess it'll be a while though), just in case anyone else was thinkin of building the same kind of system.

Thanks for all your help guys