a new look 2

Furnace1987 · 7 Apr 2006 at 11:21

okay, so a while a go i put up a spec for my lil brother. wanting a computer for £550.

now the budget has increased! Ching CHING! to.. £700.

This is what i have so far :

Shopping Cart (Prices in British Pounds) REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
GX-044-HT HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X800 GTO ICEQII TURBO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX800GTO-256ICEQT) (GX-044-HT)
£89.95 £179.90
CP-131-AM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-131-AM)
£77.95 £77.95
CA-048-AN Antec SLK3800BUK Black Quiet Midi Tower Case - 400W SmartPower PSU (CA-048-AN)
£51.95 £51.95
MB-091-AB Abit AT8 ATI RD480 Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-091-AB)
£69.95 £69.95
FG-001-YS YS-TECH FD128025HB 80mm Fan - 3 Pin (FG-001-YS)
£3.50 £7.00
FG-003-YS YS-TECH FD1225 120mm Fan - 4 Pin (FG-003-YS)
£6.95 £6.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£15.95 £15.95
HD-017-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2004C 200GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-017-SA)
£44.95 £44.95
CD-038-PO Pioneer DVR-111DBK 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-038-PO)
£23.95 £23.95
Subtotal £478.55
VAT £83.75
Total £562.30

Ram is 2GB MUSHKIN PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory RAM - 116 delievered.

And on top is also a possible DVB-tv usb tuner, probably the leadtek one.

What you think?

vanandjuanunited · 7 Apr 2006 at 11:26

Why are you crossfiring two gto's? :confused:

X1800xt for the win. Look at 512Mb Powercolor x1800xt

semi-pro waster · 7 Apr 2006 at 13:24

As above why bother Crossfiring with an X800 series card when the X1800 series is faster and the X800s are limited in terms of resolution that they can scale to.

I doubt that the PSU that comes with the case would be up to Crossfire either.

All the parts are compatible though but you might be able to balance the system a little better in terms of CPU and graphics cards

Furnace1987 · 7 Apr 2006 at 14:03

gotta go with with budget though.

It'll do for now. he cant afford the works at the begginning! what psu you suggest?

processor and gfx can be upgraded later. its just to get him started.

i chose them cos they were on offer on the this week only. and it meant he could have them in crossfire from go.

semi-pro waster · 7 Apr 2006 at 14:22

Furnace1987 said:
gotta go with with budget though.

It'll do for now. he cant afford the works at the begginning! what psu you suggest?

That is fair enough going with the budget but there are better options for the budget is all we are trying to say, single cards are less hassle and draw less power as a general rule. You could pick up a 7800gt for the same price or less and same applies for an X1800XL not to mention that the HIS cards are dual width so you might not be able to fit both.

If you do still want to try it then I'd maybe look at a 500w+ PSU: Hiper, Enermax, FSP, Tagan and Antec should all have suitable options.

Furnace1987 said:
i chose them cos they were on offer on the this week only. and it meant he could have them in crossfire from go.

Crossfire for the X800 series is limited to 1600x1200 which might or might not be above the resolution of your monitor but it isn't a limit that applies with the X1xxx series or above and has never applied to SLi cards

Explicit · 7 Apr 2006 at 14:26

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£150.34
Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)
£70.44
2GB Mushkin PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory RAM
£116.00
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) **this week only**
£229.07
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31637) (HD-001-HI)
£52.82
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-068-SA)
£23.44
Antec SLK3800BUK Black Quiet Midi Tower Case - 400W SmartPower PSU (CA-048-AN)
£61.04

Total inc VAT: £703.15

That will walk all over the X800 crossfire setup. Also includes a better CPU with 1MB L2 cache.

semi-pro waster · 7 Apr 2006 at 14:32

Explicit has given you a good specification there, the only compromise that I can see is losing 40gb hard drive space but that isn't much in the circumstances. I'd also change the DVDRW to match the colour of the case as well though but other than that looking good

Explicit · 7 Apr 2006 at 14:34

lol, forgot about the colour...updated

Mr Mag00 · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:24

Hi sry to hijack this Furnace

can i ask a few questions as i have a similar budget. This is my first attempt at building a reasonable spec gaming pc and as well as anyone else i want to get the most for my money as i will not be able to do this again for a while.
Is this set up fairly future proof for gaming 18mths -2 years? I know things move very fast and all are out of date as soon as out of the box

can this be overclocked? I really fancy having a go in the future.
btw the forum is a great source of info, keep up the good work all. TIA

semi-pro waster · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:34

Mr Mag00 said:
Is this set up fairly future proof for gaming 18mths -2 years? I know things move very fast and all are out of date as soon as out of the box

For the budget as I've said Explicit has given a good specification, it will play games comfortably for the next year or so but obviously you will need to scale down the detail levels as it gets older and games get newer. It covers new technology such as PCI-E and SATA II etc but doesn't include support for AM2(the new AMD socket) however that can't be helped and since that won't be a huge leap forwards it seems then it isn't much of an issue to my eyes.

Mr Mag00 said:
can this be overclocked? I really fancy having a go in the future.

Yes you can overclock, the retail cooler will do for some overclocking although as you get faster you may want to consider getting a replacement cooler. Ask when you get to that stage though, it should be fast enough at stock for just now. Asus motherboards aren't always the best for overclocking as they seem to be designed more for stability but that one should offer enough in the way of options to begin with.

Explicit · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:38

Mr Mag00 said:
Hi sry to hijack this Furnace
can i ask a few questions as i have a similar budget. This is my first attempt at building a reasonable spec gaming pc and as well as anyone else i want to get the most for my money as i will not be able to do this again for a while.
Is this set up fairly future proof for gaming 18mths -2 years? I know things move very fast and all are out of date as soon as out of the box
can this be overclocked? I really fancy having a go in the future.
btw the forum is a great source of info, keep up the good work all. TIA

Hi, welcome to the forums!

Well it won't be future proof for 2 years (nothing really is to be honest). AMD's new socket AM2 is just weeks away now, and Intel Conroe will be here in a few months (which appears to destroy the FX60 for half the price). DX10 graphics cards will also be out next year/end of this year which will make all of todays cards out of date (but games won't take advantage of DX10 until the end of next year I'd say). Windows Vista will also be out in early 2007.

So that's how things currently line up. I'm not going to tell you to wait, but I'll leave you to think about how long you want your new computer to last. Of course, you can't wait forever otherwise you'd never buy anything.

Furnace1987 · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:43

semi-pro waster said:
Crossfire for the X800 series is limited to 1600x1200 which might or might not be above the resolution of your monitor but it isn't a limit that applies with the X1xxx series or above and has never applied to SLi cards

well.. he only has a 15" tft atm so i think it'll be grand for the moment!

as to psu. will have a look. going to check out the space on the mobo! hope it fits!!!

Explicit--- erm.. card you rated is great.. but ati.. using on a sli mobo.. waste of money?

Cheers so far! this **** be an alrite system!

will let you know how i get on

Explicit · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:52

Furnace1987 said:
Explicit--- erm.. card you rated is great.. but ati.. using on a sli mobo.. waste of money?

The A8N-E is certainly an nforce mobo, but it will only take one PCi-E x16 graphics card (either ATI or Nvidia) and doesn't have an SLI option.

Furnace1987 · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:58

Explicit said:
The A8N-E is certainly an nforce mobo, but it will only take one PCi-E x16 graphics card (either ATI or Nvidia) and doesn't have an SLI option.

stand corrected!

pogo · 7 Apr 2006 at 16:16

I don't know if you are still intending to go the crossfire route but even if you are, you cannot simply buy two identical ATi cards, one of them needs to be a Crossfire master card (which are usually more expensive and are not available from OcUK anyway).

A much better option would be something like this, which would not only be faster but is cheaper too.

If you are worried about noise, you could buy a Zalman VF900-CU with the money saved from the graphics card.

Furnace1987 · 7 Apr 2006 at 16:26

yer i did think that just before..

when are ocuk going to stock some?!

artic cooler is better by far!!!-- see my original post.

might go with the card you suggested!

pcAnywhere · 7 Apr 2006 at 16:31

The spec Explicit gave is very similar to mine (I went for a cheaper GPU). The asus BIOS allows some overclocking but I don't think you can vary the chip set voltage... but I've never overclocked, so I'm not sure how critical that is

From reading around (esp the Mobo forum) the Crossfire mobos seem to have a few issues and whilst SLi seems to be OK, quite why you'd want to buy two GPUs when they are updated every few months is a bit beyond me. Save the money, put it into a savings account and buy a *new* single GPU in 9 months time... for the same money... which will be faster / better / less hot than your 2 "old" cards

Emlyn_Dewar · 7 Apr 2006 at 17:33

With only a 15" TFT is there really much point in getting the X1800XT? Also, would the PSU from that case be alright with that card, it would be close to the limit wouldn't it?

Might aswell go for the Leadtek 7600GT, that will easily handle all the most recent stuff at the resolution that TFT will be using. Also, it's only £140 so would free up some cash to add in the TV card you were thinking of.