I have nearly £1400 pounds to spend on a tower, have some ideas but need help

BTW - you guys are up late. I'm waiting for a connecting flight out of Tokyo to NZ and have slept in 2 days - whats your excuse :P
 
am i right in thinking that even if i cant stretch to a raptor for the primary, it i s still better to have a small drive for the os and a second larger drive for everything else,

edit don't worry found the answer , scorpio is for notebooks
 
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NeilCardiff said:
am i right in thinking that even if i cant stretch to a raptor for the primary, it i s still better to have a small drive for the os and a second larger drive for everything else,

there's 2 types of WD Black Scorpio and Caviar, is there any difference,
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I'm not 100% sure sorry - i my case the F1 performs better than the V1 Raptor (NB i don't have the V2 Raptor like helmut above) in terms of read/write performance so i have all my games and movies on that drive.

For the OS, i really like the 'snappy-ness' that the raptor provides.

I guess the reason why some people split them is that raptors are really expensive and it's just easier to have all of your movies etc on a larger cheeper drive / external harddrive.
 
NeilCardiff said:
am i right in thinking that even if i cant stretch to a raptor for the primary, it i s still better to have a small drive for the os and a second larger drive for everything else,

there's 2 types of WD Black Scorpio and Caviar, is there any difference,
Click to expand...

Yes smaller for OS, bigger for Storage and the models are same thing I think apart from sizes.
 
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so you recommend the 150gb raptor fro the os and any games that have problems with loading times, and then I could get a 500gb WD black for everything else

I have a 300gb diamondmax sata 2 but set to sata 1 in my old pc, I could use that for multimedia stuff as speed isn't important for that

the 3 drives would give me more than enough storage

Wires everywhere but plenty of space , lol
 
By asking directly the opinion of i7 you're never going to get a rock solid answer - there will be pro i7ers and anti i7ers so its really up to you. You need to make the call and if you're unsure then don't take the risk and go for the safer option.

Personally for a purely gaming pc I'd go for a higher clocked dual core as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Black Dragon DDR2 X2
HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5
Asus Xonar D2 7.1 PCI Sound Card
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Arctic Cooling Freezer XTREME CPU Cooler
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Sony NEC Optiarc DRU-V200S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter

Grand total inc.VAT+del: £1,374.11

Features:

Faster primary hdd for OS and games, with second large general storage hdd.
Hefty cpu cooler and P5Q board for overclocking potentail - should hit 4Ghz easy.
Sound card, most people don't/forget to spec these but even the cheaper ones offer considerable improvement over onboard sound - so if you have the budget get one!
 
beh* said:
I'm no expert but with the new raptors you get two types of speed advantage. Firstly because the drive is spinning so fast you get faster seek times. The result is that your OS etc feels 'snappier'. The second advantage is obviously superior read/write speeds. Games load faster
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It may well feel snappier but the loading times don't change drastically for some reason: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15931/5
 
Nullvoid said:
It may well feel snappier but the loading times don't change drastically for some reason: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15931/5
Click to expand...

Thanks Nullvoid
Thats quite an eye opener, Considering the raptor is £150 the advantages over the Caviar Black is tiny

The main difference is its about 15% faster at loading windows and other programs, Not sure if that worth £150
 
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If your spending 1400 on a base system get i7
If you going to upgrade the Display which I would then I would probably still go i7, there wont be any problems with it. If not wait and see how the deneb fairs in jan.

I take it you don't upgrade often? which case what ever you do, go quad.
 
AcidHell2,

except for a new gfx card and extra memory I haven't changed my tower since I built it 4 yrs ago, it was preety fast then but everything in is obsolete now ad like I said it's plating up like mad,
now i have the cash for a really nice system im going to treat myself,

I cant even run some games on mine at any settings as i only have shader 2 and a single core, not good, lol

I'm definitely going quad as it's more future proof, and there's bound to more games utilizing quad core coming.

as for i7, I'm really unsure, do you have an i7, if so how do you get on with it?

do you know anything about the new gfx cards coming out in January, I'd like to get it going now, but if there going to be much better it will surely drive down the price of current cards,
 
nope don't own an i7, but I haven't heard of any problems and why would there be. It is a significantly faster cpu and is far more future proof. The q9 are old hat and old socket using old ram. Especially as you don't upgrade for several years you are best buying the best you can for the money.

I don't know about the gfx cards, but I doubt they will be a huge difference.
 
i dont know weather to go with the q9 and have peace of mind and maybe upgrade to an i7 lin 18 months or so, Im definitely not going to leave it years again, got far to far behind with my current pc, never again,

How do you feel about using a raptor 150gb as my primary drive, is it worth the £150 for that drive
 
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AcidHell2 said:
I wouldn't it wont helps fps and do you really mind waiting the extra 30 seconds for a level to load.
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Your right, I dont mind waiting a bit longer, in the review I read it isnt that much slower. 1 to 3 seconds per level, and as for windows, Im happy with the way it performs on my current system, and thats a heap of crap.
its going to fly on my new one in comparison anyway, thats saved me £150
 
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I;ve had a think about a q9550 based system and I like this, But if I want to overclock as much as will still be stable then what size of psu will i need to be sure of having enough power, especially if i want to add a second gfx card in the future, the one I have selected uses upto 290 watts, so with 2 thats 580 just for the gfx.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 LGA775 'Yorkfield' (Far Cry 2 included) £264.49
Thermalright TRUE Black 120 CPU Cooler with 2 120mm fans £40.24
Asus Maximus II Formula P45 £166.72
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB £346.11
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive £73.37
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £91.99S
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Full Tower Case £121.99
Thermaltake ToughPower 850W Modular Power Supply £109.24
3 120mm fans one for side of case and 2 for cooler £20

Total £1234.15


I guess I'm going to need a big psu to handle everything.
 
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This psu has had some good reviews, stable power, quiet, runs quite cool etc,

Thermaltake ToughPower 850W Modular Power Supply

I like the idea of modular as there are no uneeded leads floating about,

I also like the look of this.

Zalman ZM850-HP Heatpipe Cooled 850W Modular PSU
 
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