Advice on a £1400-£1500 spec please

Damage Inc

Damage Inc

Damage Inc

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9 Jun 2006
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Crawley (its so lovely)
Hi guys,

Please cast your experienced eyes over this initial spec. Ive leaned heavily on Shaffa's good work in his speccing thread and made my own mess of it below. It is primarily a gaming machine with some potential photography processing and such also.

Right now its too expensive really. Trying to ease the cost down. Ill be gaming on a 24" at 1920 x 1200 and enjoy eye candy.

Got 2 HDD so that i can put OS and apps on 1 and data on the other. That way I can ghost and have a 2nd OS installed on the other disc incase there are serious problems. This may be insane - advice please?

X2 is for the gaming goodness. Again, is this helpfull at 1920 x 1200 or is 1 x 4870 enough? Im looking for future proofing to some extent.

I could go for a Q6600 but the 45nm stuff cheers me up. Thoughts?

Is the PSU too much? there is an X2 in the system - maybee a 650W? Is the brand ok?

Specv1.jpg


Cheers for help
Dam
 
The specs look good but I'd change the motherboard to somehing else. People have been claiming that the x2 doesn't work with the DFI motherboard. You could maybe look into an ASUS p45 p5q if you're not considering crossfire. 2 x2s would be overkill for that res anyway and doesn't scale too well for the cost.

As for the cpu, the new E0 version is out soon but I don't know if they'll come at a premium or not or if it's even worth waiting for. I'm sure someone else could clarify that.

You could also consider a noctua cooler instead but that's really down to taste since the tuniq performs similarly.
 
Hi Helios,

Thanks for the reply. Funnily enough - now ive posted the spec a funny calm came over me and Ive been reading posts and actually having then sink in rather than panic flit everywhere being generally overwhelmed.

One thing i just read was about the DFI board. To be fair to Shaffa he specced the board originally against 2 x 4750's in CF.

Its not my intention to put in 2 x X2....as you say...its overkill for the res. Will look into costs of the ASUS p45 p5q.

This post is to gain me some traction in terms of firming up the spec. Im essentially waiting for X2 prices to perhaps drop a little as demand slows. Im also desperately trying to see if Dell are going to sort the input lag on the 24" ive selected or if I should go for one of the Hazro ones (24 or 26) now they have been updated and OCUK has stock.

I will also wait for the E0 stepping assuming it comes along in the next 2-3 weeks. Im buying by end of Aug early sept if it kills me as I need a new PC so badly. My old one is....wait for it....an athlon 1800+ with a Nvidia FX5200. Does that rock or what. Think ill notice any improvement?

Dam
 
Don't bother with the 500GB samsung drive, it's slow compared to the newer ones such as the 320GB, 640GB and 1TB drive. So I would not put my OS on that drive and instead use the 1TB drive as my OS drive, or you could change the 500GB to the 640GB if you planned on putting the OS on the smaller drive.

I would hold off on buying the Dell 2408, there is a big thread in the monitors section of this forum about that monitor. The monitor its self has very bad input lag, so if you want the dell wait for the REV A01 version. Or spend a little bit more and buy a better monitor like the Hazro. The Hazro has just been updated to fix some issues, they also changed the screen from matte to glossy.
 
Everything looks good mate, I agree with Helios.. it would be better getting a P5Q series motherboard.

As for improvements from your old system, you will be amazed.. it was pretty amazing when I made the switch from my old Athlon 3700+ to my current E6750. So you're in for a treat. :)
 
Cheers for all the replies guys...

Ive made the changes advised and here is the current spec taking them into account.

Price went down and then kinda back up. Doh.

Any thoughts on how I can make this rig cheaper? Do people think the X2 is overkill for the gaming res? or do you think it will stand me in good stead for the future?

Specv2.jpg


Cheers guys,
Dam
 
That spec looks great but if you want to cut the cost, you could go for the geil ram on this week only. According to the reviews on there, it can do tigher timings no probs on slightly higher voltages.

I think the x2 is perfect for that res since new demanding games will come out and hopefully the x2 will be able to cope with them. I'm guessing you dont upgrade much lol so having extra power is always good for future proofing.
 
hey Helios,

I guess im looking for some magical way to knock off £100 or so from the bottom line price. Mainly to pacify my wife in some way as she feels £1600 is way too much for a gaming rig.

And we all know that wives have ultimate power. However, try as I might, I cant. I could dump the 640gb drive and risk life with everything in one place. Not my idea of fun when things go wrong tho.

I could downgrade the PSU to 650, swap back to the Dell and wait for A01 rev and I could really save a chunk if I go to a 4870 and see how it performs. I could even go to a G280 and save....

I do have a question tho. In an earlier post you suggested the Asus pq5 if I dont want to do Xfire....but the review im currently reading of it says it supports Xfire. have i got the wrong board?

Cheers
Dam
 
Damage Inc said:
hey Helios,

I guess im looking for some magical way to knock off £100 or so from the bottom line price. Mainly to pacify my wife in some way as she feels £1600 is way too much for a gaming rig.

And we all know that wives have ultimate power. However, try as I might, I cant. I could dump the 640gb drive and risk life with everything in one place. Not my idea of fun when things go wrong tho.

I could downgrade the PSU to 650, swap back to the Dell and wait for A01 rev and I could really save a chunk if I go to a 4870 and see how it performs. I could even go to a G280 and save....

I do have a question tho. In an earlier post you suggested the Asus pq5 if I dont want to do Xfire....but the review im currently reading of it says it supports Xfire. have i got the wrong board?

Cheers
Dam
Click to expand...

The P45 boards have two 8x lanes instead of two 16x lanes when used in crossfire (16x if only 1 card is used). That's what was meant by unless you want to go crossfire. If you look at crossfire you are better with a X38/X48 based board as they do have two 16x lanes.

You can easily knock £100 off. If this is a gaming pc mainly then a quad is a waste as there are not that many games that actually use them. Much better off going for a dual core such as the E8500. They will hit 4Ghz+ when clocked. You could save some more by swapping the monitor for the 24" Dell on this week only. That's about £160 saved and makes for a (slightly) happier wife.

If you stick with the X2 then you will need a big psu as they suck up a lot of power.
 
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Drop your CPU to the Q6600 if you want quad core, it can be overclocked to atleast 3Ghz+. That should save you £100 already, but as said above E8400 may be better if its a full time gaming machine. Only time to go quad is when games start utilising all the cores and also if you video edit and run multiple virtual machines at one time.

Get the Giel PC6400 ram which is on special offer this week. With the money saved you should be able to get a X38 board if you want to have a crossfire setup in the future.

I would change the CPU cooler to the Tuniq as its a good all round cooler, not sure about the noctua.
 
Hey l337z0r, I agree with you on the cpu and ram. As for the noctua, it is one of the best coolers around. the only reason I'd go for the tuniq if it was under £30 which it used to be..
 
Im really appreciating all these comments.

Have been making a "sad" face for the wife and downgrading some of the components to try to make some more savings as per your advice.

Only issue is that im unlikely to buy before the "this week" offer on the Geil Ram ends.

Another question: do i need to buy 120mm fans for the Lian Li case or does it come with whats needed?

Current spec now looks thus:

Specv3.jpg


Hows this then?

Dam
 
IMO downgrade the 4870x2 to something else

I game at 1900x1200 and I know its not the same card but I was bitterly disappointed with my 3870x2 - in benches was amazing - for actually playing games utter pants !! - far prefer my now 8800GTX

go for a 4870 - and save yourself 200 quid !!
 
Chimerical said:
Get a GTX280 to be honest.

You can buy a Gainward model for £252.61. The 4870 X2 is, in my eyes, a waste of time. Far too expensive for what you get and still relies on Crossfire at the end of the day. The 280 will destroy anything you throw at it anyway (bar Crysis).

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp... GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Click to expand...

just what i was gonna say.....

the X2 is overpriced at the moment & ultimately will be obsolete in 6 months
 
IMO the GTX 280 for 1920 would be much better, the X2 only really shines at 2650x1600.

i havent seen anythign about the DFI and the X2, but now that you lot say there is a problem, i shall check into it.
 
Really interesting stuff.

Actually what you guys are saying is really challenging. I wanted an X2 becasue ive been kinda dreaming about getting one since I heard of its release. The 4870 was so good for price/performance and still is but the 280 beats it a lot o the time.

I think i need to sleep on this one. The x2 is indeed over priced, but i did say I was going to wait to see if the price dropped soon as im not buying till end of Aug.

I rekon im probably going to plug for the 280 and spend what i save on soe good gaming mice and keyboards and speakers and whatnot.

Any news on the question about the fans for the Lian Li case? Do I need to buy 120mm fans for it or does it come with them?

Dam
 
I'm not sure about that specific lian li case but my cousin recently bough a lian li A10 and the fans came with the case. Btw with the money saved up by going to a gtx, you could consider a sound card to top off the already awesome spec.
 
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