£400 Spec!

blairw · 9 Jun 2008 at 20:32

Hi there,

My mate dave from the forums decided the other night that blowing up his PC would be a great idea, so we are setting about buying him a new one.
The budget is 400, and the main use will be gaming and video editing, along with having a high amount of apps open at the same time!
He will be using windows vista, and he dosent need a monitor, keyboard or mouse, 160 gig is the max needed for hard drive.
I came up with this spec, any suggestions.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £24.99
(£29.36) £24.99
(£29.36)
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel Kit (CT2KIT12864AA667) £23.99
(£28.19) £23.99
(£28.19)
MSI P31 Neo2-FR Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £37.99
(£44.64) £37.99
(£44.64)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £111.99
(£131.59) £111.99
(£131.59)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Sub Total : £348.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £62.98
Total : £422.87

Thanks,

Ben M · 9 Jun 2008 at 20:59

This mobo is meant to be pretty good:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

and I've heard about more people having negative experiences with msi boards than with gigabyte ones.

if he's overclocking he'll probably want a cpu cooler... but now we're going over budget.

and you havn't included an optical drive, is that being foraged from the old rig?

mp260767 · 9 Jun 2008 at 23:18

came up with the following, realise you said 160gb max needed for the hard drive but the seagate is a better/faster drive imo and worth the little extra.

went for pc6400 memory for only a little extra.

chose the 7200 wolfdale, you didnt mention what hes moving from, so this might be a big move or not.

changed the gpu to the powercolour version.

Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £69.99 (£82.24)

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.53GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £75.99 (£89.29)

G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NQ PC2-6400C5 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit £26.99
(£31.71)

Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99 (£46.99)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3250410AS) £31.99 (£37.59)

PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £74.99 (£88.11)

Sub Total : £319.94
Shipping : £10.95
VAT : £57.91
Total : £388.80

Talrinys · 10 Jun 2008 at 07:46

You sure that his old case wouldn't be okay? Cause you would be well off spending some extra on the GPU

Ben M · 10 Jun 2008 at 10:22

mp260767 said:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.53GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £75.99 (£89.29)

the main use will be gaming and video editing

lol...

pastymuncher · 10 Jun 2008 at 10:37

For gods sake don't go for the MSI P31 as it is a terrible board. I had a play with one a couple of weeks ago and it is the worst board i have ever had the misfortune to buy. Needless to say it went back.

On the other hand the Gigabyte P31 DS3L that everyone is recommending is a fantastic board. I got one of these to replace the MSI. It has loads of options in the bios and got a E2180 all the way to 3.6Ghz prime stable.

The reason he suggested a E7200 is because a quad will bring you no advatage at all when gaming (unless playing Supreme Commander). A E7200 will consume less power, chuck out less heat and hopefully should be easier to clock as well.

Dark_Angel · 10 Jun 2008 at 10:55

pastymuncher said:
For gods sake don't go for the MSI P31 as it is a terrible board. I had a play with one a couple of weeks ago and it is the worst board i have ever had the misfortune to buy. Needless to say it went back.

On the other hand the Gigabyte P31 DS3L that everyone is recommending is a fantastic board. I got one of these to replace the MSI. It has loads of options in the bios and got a E2180 all the way to 3.6Ghz prime stable.

The reason he suggested a E7200 is because a quad will bring you no advatage at all when gaming (unless playing Supreme Commander). A E7200 will consume less power, chuck out less heat and hopefully should be easier to clock as well.

He said he was doing VIDEO EDITTING.

Quad will kill the dual core in video editting and then stamp on it after it is dead TBH.

I would try to squeeze 4GB of ram in to the build though.

Maybe buy a cheap GPU now, and then when the new cards come out in a few weeks get one of them.

reflux · 10 Jun 2008 at 10:59

pastymuncher said:
The reason he suggested a E7200 is because a quad will bring you no advatage at all when gaming (unless playing Supreme Commander). A E7200 will consume less power, chuck out less heat and hopefully should be easier to clock as well.

Let's not forget that the UT3 engine also benefits from quad cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3127&p=4

mp260767 · 10 Jun 2008 at 11:16

Ben M said:
lol...

nice useful comment there cheers

being as he hasnt mentioned what his previous system was, what sort of games hes into playing and what sort of video editing work hes doing how do you figure the 7200 aint going to be up to the job ?

Ben M · 10 Jun 2008 at 11:31

mp260767 said:
nice useful comment there cheers

being as he hasnt mentioned what his previous system was, what sort of games hes into playing and what sort of video editing work hes doing how do you figure the 7200 aint going to be up to the job ?

A quad will always destroy a dual core at any video editing tbh.

Dark_Angel · 10 Jun 2008 at 11:32

mp260767 said:
nice useful comment there cheers

being as he hasnt mentioned what his previous system was, what sort of games hes into playing and what sort of video editing work hes doing how do you figure the 7200 aint going to be up to the job ?

It isn't as though it will be "bad" for it, but as someone that does VIdeo and Photo editting (and has access to 2 systems, 1 Quad core and 1 dual core) the quad makes it vastly easier.

You can even tell 2 cores to encode and the other 2 to game if you so desire, or render video so much faster its silly. I personally can't wait till 8 + cores becomes the normal, and even more programs make use of multi cores.

I really am looking forward to Alan Wake for this reason, a game that requires 2 cores min, with 1 core being used 80 percent simply for the physics alone!

Ben M said:
A quad will always destroy a dual core at any video editing tbh.

That isn't true! if the Quad system was turned off, I am sure the Dual core might be about even with video encoding

shaffaaf27 · 10 Jun 2008 at 13:21

so the unreal 3 engine utilses Qs :eek:

damn, thats quite a lot of games now. spore, mas effect, to name just a few brilliant titles on that engine.

i think imma be moving to Qc soon enough then aswell. thats for that reflux.

or 4GB

Ben M · 10 Jun 2008 at 13:23

8800gs shaffaf?

err no, just no.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

"andy" · 10 Jun 2008 at 13:26

see if theres any mobos in the b grade section

can usually save allot and only be a cable short or something silly

Dark_Angel · 10 Jun 2008 at 13:28

Ben M said:
8800gs shaffaf?

err no, just no.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

He chose the 9600 GT, which at higher res will be better than the 8800 GT 256MB, at higher res especially.

shaffaaf27 · 10 Jun 2008 at 13:48

the 8800GS is better than a 3850 IMO. and the 3850 for the same price as a 9600GT is not worth it.

Ben M · 10 Jun 2008 at 16:45

where does the 9600GT come into it?

the 8800GS is a terrible card =\

pastymuncher · 10 Jun 2008 at 19:20

Dark_Angel said:
He said he was doing VIDEO EDITTING.

Quad will kill the dual core in video editting and then stamp on it after it is dead TBH.

I would try to squeeze 4GB of ram in to the build though.

Maybe buy a cheap GPU now, and then when the new cards come out in a few weeks get one of them.

Excuse me but he actually said GAMING and video editing. I only stated why he recommended the OP a E7200. Too many people on this forum are jumping down other peoples throats these days if they don't agree with them.

UltraDad · 10 Jun 2008 at 21:07

Hello there

I encode a lot with CCE and it only uses 2 cores so a quad would not be any better tbh. If you use x264 then a quad will benefit you

Gonna get a 7200 wolfy for fathers day, would like to see what speed CCE goes at with it at 3.8 ghz, it goes at 6-7 speed at 3.2

I also use Dvdrebuilder using cce so gonna be benefits all round