Advice required.

gazzamcg

gazzamcg

gazzamcg

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My Dad's 6 year old laptop is past it's best and instead of a new laptop he wants a desktop. It's mostly used for business work and video editing with a little gaming.

I've settled on the following which is roughly around budget :


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I'm not sure if the motherboard is worth £20 & £15 extra over the cheaper Giagabtye & Asus P45 motherboards, considering he probably won't overclock.

Is the psu a good one or is there another one at the same price roughly that would be better value.

Any problem with the memory and motherboad.

I'm not sure what the performance difference will be between the 750gb wd green caviar and the wd 650gb caviar.

With the cpu cooler, is there any better for maybe £25ish and is there any compatability issues with the P45 motherboards.

Any other comments ?

He doesn't need a case as he will use my old akasa eclipse 62 one and he will probably go for the asus donar dx 7.1 sound card.

Or should we wait and see what happens with the i5 coming out soon ?
 
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You've got triple channel RAM there buddy, as well as a DDR2 Motherboard with DDR3 RAM - the DIMM's are not interchangable.
 
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Looks good, but does he really need a P45 board? I mean, P43 would be fine, and even G41 since i can't imagine much overclocking being done. Also, that RAM will not work. Just get 4GB DDR2. Light gaming does not require a 4890. It doesn't even require a graphics card, but if you really want one then i'd suggest a 4670, if not lower than that. PSU is okay, but i know several people personally who've had OCZ PSUs blow up on them... you don't need 600W either. Look at the Corsair CX 400W and the PC P&C Silencer 420W.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.66GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - OEM £129.98
(£113.03) £129.98
(£113.03)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD1001FALS) £68.99
(£59.99) £68.99
(£59.99)
Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £66.99
(£58.25) £133.98
(£116.50)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate "Passive" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £62.09
(£53.99) £62.09
(£53.99)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (KHX8500D2K2/4G) £48.99
(£42.60) £48.99
(£42.60)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 420W Power Supply £39.99
(£34.77) £39.99
(£34.77)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.99
(£16.51) £18.99
(£16.51)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £17.99
(£15.64) £17.99
(£15.64)
Sub Total : £453.03
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £69.45
Total : £532.48
 
As Wozend said you have the wrong RAM. Either that or the wrong motherboard and CPU. You could go i7 for £110 more. Or you could look at it as wrong motherboard RAM and CPU and go AMD which would be better performance for your budget. Or i5 when it comes out

The rest is ok except maybe the aftermarket cooler. If you aren;t overclocking then don't bother and if you are then get something better.
 
Oh yeah, thanks for the mistake with the memory :D

Is there any advantage going with 6gb for the quad ?

Superewza, the thing is he wants a good system and consedering the price of the 4890 it's good value.Is there any performance difference with the P35 & P45 ?
Thanks for the info regarding the OCZ psu.I think i'd rather go for a minimum 500w though, incase of future upgrades.
 
That is a good system, and the 4890 may be good value but it's simply not needed. That PSU can actually max out at 480W so that will be more than enough, considering any upgrades aren't going to make it draw that much more power. Look at Corsair, SeaSonic, PC P&C and BeQuiet for the best PSUs.

Oh, and on chipsets, i don't think there are any G35s... G31s, well, they work. But i'd only recommend them on a really strict budget. The P43 is a much better balance, and is far better at overclocking. I'll admit that i don't know anything about the G41s, but they should be okay.
 
If you are going to stick with that chip (and I think i5/i7 or AMD would probably be better) then p35 is pretty old now. p43's are pretty good.

If you are going for the 4890 then 500/600W PSU is probably sensible. That GPU is probably a bit overkill but as it is normally thing to need upgrading it will keep you going for longer.
 
He's happy to stick with the 4890, he likes the call of duty games and a few others.

Yeah, so maybe a 500w max psu to look at considering he won't probably look to upgrade in five or six years time.
 
Well in that amount of time there will be upgrades that are twice as good and consume half as much power... i really don't think he needs a 4890 though.
 
Namak said:
If you are going to stick with that chip (and I think i5/i7 or AMD would probably be better) then p35 is pretty old now. p43's are pretty good.

If you are going for the 4890 then 500/600W PSU is probably sensible. That GPU is probably a bit overkill but as it is normally thing to need upgrading it will keep you going for longer.
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Yeah I think i'll keep it at the P45.

Should I look at the amd phenom quad cores ... I though the intel quad cores are better. :confused:

I think the i5 spec will be over budget ?
 
Not really, the i5 is going to phase out the C2Qs so it should be around the same price. It's something like this as a generalisation: C2Q > Phenom II X4 > Core i7.
 
gazzamcg said:
Yeah I think i'll keep it at the P45.

Should I look at the amd phenom quad cores ... I though the intel quad cores are better. :confused:

I think the i5 spec will be over budget ?
Click to expand...

Before the Phenom 2 came out that was true. Now the AMD Phenom 2 is roughly on par with the LGA775 chips, cheaper and have more upgrade potential in the future. Intel i7 is the best but pricey. The i5 when it comes out will probably restore intel mainstream section dominance but not sure about price/value
 
So he'd be better going for the phenom quad core or wait for the i5 to be a reasonable price.

I wished I'd just ordered the bloody thing .... even if the ram didn't work :D
 
I'd say a 4850 512mb, slightly overclocked would be a much better choice. If he's looking for light gaming on stuff thats around at the moment then the 4850 is more than sufficient. I use a 4850 512mb and i can play crysis/far cry on max settings at 1680x1080 with great frame rates. This will save you a bit of cash for a better PSU or other component.

If you want to future proof it a bit, then it would be stupid not to wait for the new ATI 5 series cards to come out. Even if they're out of budget it will always bring the price of the older cards down and make that 4890 a better spend!

As you can see it doesn't really make sense to buy a 4890 now.

(Edit: just to be clear on my pc so i dont give you any misleading info - i also have a Phenom II quad overclocked at 3.2gz and 4gb of DDR2 memory, which helps the performance obviously on games like far cry)
 
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Yeah, theres no rush to order so waiting a few weeks isn't a problem with regard to price drops with new stuff coming out.

When he gets a better system he might get more into games so i'd rather go for the 4890 as a long term investment.
 
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Had a quick look at the benchmarks of the Phenom II X4 920 and it's not much better than the Core 2 Quad 9300.

So i'm better sticking with the 9450 ?
 
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