£700 system spec

Adam_151

Adam_151

Adam_151

Soldato
Joined
18 May 2004
Posts
2,894
Location
Lincoln, Uk
We are looking to replace the 'family' computer in a couple of months or so, budget is £700 but thats probably slightly stretchable

It needs to be a resaonable games machine, not worried about tip top performance, but should be upto running modern games reasonably smoothly, other than games, its only going to be used for web browsing, and office kinda stuff, so games is the only really big demand

We want a TFT monitor (of a decent brand) either 17" or 19"
also want a legal copy of XP pro (whether that is normal or x64 depends on spec, I guess :confused: )
I guess we are looking for at least a gig of memory

Other than that, its pretty much undecided as of yet, so I'm be grateful if people could come up with ideas of specs, I'm open to both intel and AMD systems, but I might be leaning slighly towards intel because we haven't had an intel system since original pentiums (though I guess thats a pretty silly reason :p )

I'm personally very much out of touch with whats available these days, last time I put together a system the 9800 was the graphics card of choice, and I have no idea whats available these days in graphics at all :o

Many thanks

Adam
 
wait a little bit for conroe (core 2duo) to be released, as a major price/performance shift will occur once this has settled in (shouldnt be more than a few weeks for this to happen)

when this has happened, the amd x2 prices are going to drop like crazy, and you will see some really capable, really cheap dual core cpus knocking about. the cheapest conroe cpu is on oc for like £150 quid! one thing i would advise is do not skimp on the power supply unit if building as you will regret it.

once this has happened come back to this or another forum for a suggestion. it may even be an idea just to grab a dell deal with a conroe (core 2 duo) processor, as they do the very cheap complete home user pc deals.

if you want to build then come here again and i will knock a system spec on oc and post it up for you.

i should add that once conroe is out there is absolutely no reason why you cant have an extremely capable gaming system with monitor for your budget: gfx cards have gone down in price and up in performance a lot since the 9800 pro days. as tft monitors have dropped in price considerably, you will also probably be able to get a 19 inch monitor on that budget. as for windows i would scour the net for a cheap a deal as possible if you are building. otherwise most computer companies will supply windows. are you sure you need pro because its going to be more expensive?

best regards

sam
 
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Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£152.69
Intel DP965LT 965 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-011-IN)
£88.07
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB5300DC) (MY-030-GL)
£64.57
BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-025-BG)
£117.44
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£55.17
NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£25.79
Antec SLK2650BQE Black Quiet Mini Tower Case - 350W SmartPower PSU (CA-051-AN)
£38.72
Acer AL1716AS 17" LCD Monitor (MO-018-AC)
£129.19
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (N09-01528) (OS-001-MS)
£61.04

Total inc VAT: £732.68

But since you're buying in a few months time, prices should drop and there should be some cheaper motherboards available.
 
Thanks for your input so far :)

As this isn't something thats happening straight away, yes we will be waiting for conroe to arrive by default, I'm just trying to get a rough idea atm, whether or not conroe will be the one to go for, etc etc.

Also even though its dual core 1.86 gig seems slow :confused: , it doesn't seem to have any other numbers, like for example AMD advertise chips at 3600+/3800+/etc, but they are really about 2.4ghz, but there is nothing like that on the intel :s. A mate did say something about intel having re-designed it so it runs better and doesn't need to be as fast? if this is the case do they run cooler than the prescott chips?

Oh and I specified XP pro because one day (yeah... :o ) I intend to have some kind of linux samba server to act as a domain server and have roaming profiles, etc, and as far as I'm aware xp home can't be set up to join a domain... yes I know I'm too much of a geek and a workgroup network would be fine, but you know what its like :p
 
The seagate hard drive will be faster since it has a 16meg buffer


Conroe have lots of L2 cache so the processes aren't slowed down by having to look into memory. New chips (as your friend says) have a better architecture. They are also dual core which allows for better multitasking results.

Conroe are great for overclocking since they run at a lower temp, lower than the Prescott
 
clock speed is pretty much an irrelevance in relation to cpu power these days. although clocking a certain chip will give higher speeds, the 1.8 conroe is going to outperform 3.6 ghz intel pentium 4 chips.

plus the conroes overclock like nothing has before.
 
CP-127-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN)
£154.95 £154.95
MB-011-IN Intel DP965LT 965 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-011-IN)
£74.95 £74.95
MY-083-CS Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT667D2) (MY-083-CS)
£59.95 £59.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£65.95 £65.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£136.95 £136.95
HD-088-MD Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-088-MD)
£45.95 £45.95
CD-049-SO Sony DWG120A 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-049-SO)
£20.95 £20.95
MO-015-OK OcUK Gamer 198YP 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-015-OK)
£121.95 £121.95
Subtotal £681.60
VAT £119.28
Total £800.88

Alittle over budget.. but isnt that always the case when buying anything.
A hell of a pc for £800
 
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