build me up butter cup..

[]MadBoy[]

can you guys please help spec me up a pc for my mate, complete new build. Will need everything apart from monitor keyboard, speakers, mouse, he wants 4gb of ram. Budget of £550, spec me up

gaming pc more than anything, so best we can do with that if you can guys

Cheers

 

[Bennie-Mac]

CPU-Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz - £103.99

Mobo - Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £79.99

GFX - Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB - £101.99

RAM - OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 - £43.99

PSU - Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU - £59.99

Case - Antec Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - £39.99

Hard Drive - Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - £36.99

Optical Drive - Samsung TS-H653B/DEBH 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - £12.99

VAT - £86.25

Delivery - £12.95

Total Cost - £579.12

Should do the job ok, delivery is free for you So the actual total is only £566.17

Yay my first ever spec! Sorry i coudlnt get the picture to work so u will have to look them up yourself...

 

[]MadBoy[]

nice mate, thanks for your time

 

[]MadBoy[]

we are on a budget build, he deffo wants the 4870 and quadcore.
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) -

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) -

OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)

x2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A32728)

Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Rev.4 Zen Black Case - No PSU

OCZ StealthXStream 500w Silent ATX2 Power Supply

Sony NEC Optiarc AD-5200A 20x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

£586

couple of questions, 1) will the PSU be man enough for that lot. 2) Do we really need a raid setup to get the most out of it? 3) dual ddr worth the extra?

 

[Jumping]

I would rather go with one drive than doing RAID 0 as the benefits you will see from such a setup is virtually nill. This might just be me but I wouldn't go down to the 500w PSU with the components you suggested. Take the money saved from getting one hard drive and put it towards a slightly bigger PSU.

I also thought he wanted 4gb of RAM? So why change it to 2? Imho the system suggested by Bennie is better and if your friend doesn't have a 22"+ screen getting the 4870 is probably a bit of a waste of money.

 

[]MadBoy[]

1) i thought raid 0 was suposed to be quicker than single drive setup?
2) 4gb of ram on standard xp, i thought there was memory addressing issues?
3) he wants the 4870... i would have thought the 4850 would be more than man enough.. heyho if we dropped spec on GFX we could buy better else where
4) I was thinking of the 620 tbh, but I was hoping we could get away with a slightly cheaper lower powered one. Would the 500w be ok on the 4850 or we still looking higher?

 

[perkele]

1) i thought raid 0 was suposed to be quicker than single drive setup?

So did I, especially for reading and accessing big files (especially video). I used to find it reduced boot-up times too.

But perhaps things have changed in the last 3 years? Seriously I dunno, but would love to know the answer!

 

[flinco]

why if the main use of the pc is gaming would he want a quad core? a higher clocked dual core would give him better results for less money..

 

[]MadBoy[]

i have said this His answer is "they might not use quad now, but later on they will"
any other thoughts? We are very close to buying something, but dont really want to do so untill all aspects are covered, hence the post

 

[Superjeep4x4]

They have also been saying that for a long time now and he would get a lot more millage from a E8500 than a q6600 that has been around for a while and frankly from the posts I have read are not clocking well these days compared to what they used to.

Look at it this way. He is on a budget and either way down the road you will need to upgrade the cpu so you either buy old tech for a quad that performs less within budget sacrificing for the chance that a year or two down the road more than a few games will make real use of quads or buy a E8500 that will perform better, run cooler, overclock way higher and frankly still play games for the next year or two about as good as you can get

Its man code. You dont let your friends drive drunk. You dont let your friends take home a ugly person unless its close to closing time and you dont let your friends buy less performing cpu's.

I would also probably get a P43 board and save a few bucks. Buying combo boards that use 2 types of ram never works out that well and would take the saved cash and buy a 4 gig kit as even in XP you will see over 2 gigs. I am also not sure you need the 1 gig version of that card. I would get the 512 flavor unless you have a monitor and play at a crazy res. For the money the 4850 is a great card and as I said with the 1 gb version unless you play at a crazy res you do not really need it. That PSU will power it but I would probably go with a 620 if he sticks with the 4870 and the q6600 but the 500 will be great if he wakes up and goes with a E8500 and a 4850.

It might be time to take him out back and slap him a bit till he picks the E8500

 

[]MadBoy[]

lol nice one