Hello all,
While for the past 8 years at least i've been slowly upgrading pc's for me and my wife (we both love games) My mother is giving us £5000 to spend on basically rebuilding our entertainment and computer systems.
I found out about overclockers about 7 months ago, we live in shelton so any parts I need its very handy I can just pop over and buy them and apart from an issue with a lcd monitor which isn't OC's fault I am perfectly happy to buy all my bits and pieces from them.
Now my wife is disabled and I am her primary carer, most of the time i've hadto strictly budget upgrades, in a tier system, buy a new graphics card or memory and bits that come out go into the other house pc's, I think a lot of us do that.
The computers and games are trully our escape and window on the world so I can't really afford to make any mistakes on this build.
Now apart from about £1000 set aside for a nice plasma 42" samsung and 2 good quality lumbar support office chairs (tesco direct), the money in theory is all for spending at overclockers to build/buy two complete machines.
I know you can't really future proof a pc but i'm looking to buy motherboard etc that has a lot of upgrade potential and stability.
Theses are my ideas but please feel free to offer opinions and suggestions.
Firstly the parts i'm certain about unless someone comes up with a really good reason not too
Mine and wifes pc will be different due too the simple fact I push my machine more, i'm more likely to throw new games at max settings into it and scream for more performance.
Case:
NZXT Hush Classic Series Silent Computer Chassis - Black, both of us love the look of this case and like its sound dampening plus its a really good price.
Addon card:
OcUK Ageia PhysX Accelerator - OEM, now a lot of people see these as a waste of money but two games we love support it and 4 games that are coming out will utilize it, so its really personal choice on that (i've tried City of villains mayhem missions on a friends pc who has one in and the experience is atleast 10x more fun).
Wifes sound card:
She doesn't listen to much music just games and sound isn't as important to her as me so Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Sound Card - OEM (PCI)
Now me i'm fully into the game sound experience and having tried the razer setup I'm sold on it, so for my system:
Razer Barracuda AC-1 Gaming 7.1 Sound Card - Retail
Razer Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headset
Hard drive:
Now i've been using hitachi for awhile and am very happy with the quietness and speed of the drives so its pretty much a no brainer especially considering the price:
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache.
Power supply:
I've been reading up and have decide on:
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant
So there you have the "pretty certain" unless someone convinces me its lemon season and I just bought a whole cart load.
As for cpu's I am sticking with intel (a year ago I crossed all the pc's over a 6 month period from amd to intel)
As I said Wifes machine won't be used as intensive as mine so for hers I thought:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 "LGA775 Conroe" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
or
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(I know the boost for games at the moment are not much but would it be best to go the quad for future?)
For me well this amount of money is a once in a life time event and even though its hugely expensive I am so tempted to go for the.
Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition QX6850 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
Motherboard, I really have no idea, I want to go either crossfire or sli.
There is so many motherboards out there I'm pretty lost, all I know is I want it stable, overclockable and able to be upgraded via cpu etc in the future.
If i went nvidia
2x 320mb 8800 gts's for wife
2x 786mb 8800 gtx's for me.
If ati
4x 2900's xt 512mb
BUT I have concerns about the loudness of the ati's and the amount of power they draw.
These pc's are center stage in the livingroom so its got to be a quiet setup.
Memory: really it depends on the motherboard.
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2
or
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit
or if the board is ddr3 then I know its more expensive.
Operating system ?
Wife has windows home premium vista 32bit
I need to purchase mine which will either be home premium 32 or 64bit.
My other question is specific todo with lcd's so will put that in that section, thankyou for reading all of this and for any replies, im in no rush to buy this, going to take atleast a month to make sure everything is right.
I'm not really interested in waiting for the next big thing the 8900's and 45's because the headaches and huge price tag that always come along with them.
While for the past 8 years at least i've been slowly upgrading pc's for me and my wife (we both love games) My mother is giving us £5000 to spend on basically rebuilding our entertainment and computer systems.
I found out about overclockers about 7 months ago, we live in shelton so any parts I need its very handy I can just pop over and buy them and apart from an issue with a lcd monitor which isn't OC's fault I am perfectly happy to buy all my bits and pieces from them.
Now my wife is disabled and I am her primary carer, most of the time i've hadto strictly budget upgrades, in a tier system, buy a new graphics card or memory and bits that come out go into the other house pc's, I think a lot of us do that.
The computers and games are trully our escape and window on the world so I can't really afford to make any mistakes on this build.
Now apart from about £1000 set aside for a nice plasma 42" samsung and 2 good quality lumbar support office chairs (tesco direct), the money in theory is all for spending at overclockers to build/buy two complete machines.
I know you can't really future proof a pc but i'm looking to buy motherboard etc that has a lot of upgrade potential and stability.
Theses are my ideas but please feel free to offer opinions and suggestions.
Firstly the parts i'm certain about unless someone comes up with a really good reason not too
Mine and wifes pc will be different due too the simple fact I push my machine more, i'm more likely to throw new games at max settings into it and scream for more performance.
Case:
NZXT Hush Classic Series Silent Computer Chassis - Black, both of us love the look of this case and like its sound dampening plus its a really good price.
Addon card:
OcUK Ageia PhysX Accelerator - OEM, now a lot of people see these as a waste of money but two games we love support it and 4 games that are coming out will utilize it, so its really personal choice on that (i've tried City of villains mayhem missions on a friends pc who has one in and the experience is atleast 10x more fun).
Wifes sound card:
She doesn't listen to much music just games and sound isn't as important to her as me so Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Sound Card - OEM (PCI)
Now me i'm fully into the game sound experience and having tried the razer setup I'm sold on it, so for my system:
Razer Barracuda AC-1 Gaming 7.1 Sound Card - Retail
Razer Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headset
Hard drive:
Now i've been using hitachi for awhile and am very happy with the quietness and speed of the drives so its pretty much a no brainer especially considering the price:
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache.
Power supply:
I've been reading up and have decide on:
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant
So there you have the "pretty certain" unless someone convinces me its lemon season and I just bought a whole cart load.
As for cpu's I am sticking with intel (a year ago I crossed all the pc's over a 6 month period from amd to intel)
As I said Wifes machine won't be used as intensive as mine so for hers I thought:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 "LGA775 Conroe" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
or
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(I know the boost for games at the moment are not much but would it be best to go the quad for future?)
For me well this amount of money is a once in a life time event and even though its hugely expensive I am so tempted to go for the.
Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition QX6850 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
Motherboard, I really have no idea, I want to go either crossfire or sli.
There is so many motherboards out there I'm pretty lost, all I know is I want it stable, overclockable and able to be upgraded via cpu etc in the future.
If i went nvidia
2x 320mb 8800 gts's for wife
2x 786mb 8800 gtx's for me.
If ati
4x 2900's xt 512mb
BUT I have concerns about the loudness of the ati's and the amount of power they draw.
These pc's are center stage in the livingroom so its got to be a quiet setup.
Memory: really it depends on the motherboard.
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2
or
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit
or if the board is ddr3 then I know its more expensive.
Operating system ?
Wife has windows home premium vista 32bit
I need to purchase mine which will either be home premium 32 or 64bit.
My other question is specific todo with lcd's so will put that in that section, thankyou for reading all of this and for any replies, im in no rush to buy this, going to take atleast a month to make sure everything is right.
I'm not really interested in waiting for the next big thing the 8900's and 45's because the headaches and huge price tag that always come along with them.
