Building a new PC

Funkie · 2 Mar 2006 at 09:49

Thinking of building this rig what are your thoughts

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4200BVBOX) (CP-126-AM) £258.44

Sapphire PURE Advantage CrossFire Radeon Xpress 200P CrossFire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-003-SP) £93.94

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS) £146.82

Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-015-WD) £110.39

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) £258.44

Coolermaster Wave Master - Silver (No PSU) (CA-037-CM) £88.07

Q-Tec 650W Triple Fan Gold PSU (CA-003-QT) £23.44

Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Silver (HD-000-MI) £16.39

Pioneer DVR-110DSV 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Silver) OEM (CD-033-PO) £29.32

SpeedLink Ultra SL-6465 Flat Metal Keyboard (KB-000-SL) £23.44

Netgear DG834PN 108Mbps Rangemax Wireless ADSL2 Modem/Router/Switch/Firewall (NW-083-NG) £76.96

vanandjuanunited · 2 Mar 2006 at 09:51

Will you be overclocking?

Funkie · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:06

probably not as I wouldnt know what I was doing

Devlish · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:14

You play games? that card looks a little underpowered for that chip, board and mem. You may want to think about the

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) Price: £199.95 (£234.94 Including VAT at 17.5%)

vanandjuanunited · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:14

Research the motherboardboard a bit more - think these have had issues with chipset. Also ditch the qtec psu for a hyper antec or seasonic if you value your components - other than that it looks fine to me.

Devlish · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:17

argh yeah qtec - hisssssss. Im not big on boards but i intend to get the DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF) which i've heard only good things about *provided you havent got more than 2 pci cards you want to carry across and one of them is audio...)

Funkie · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:28

went for that graphics card so I could buy 2 within my budget

what problems have there been with the Sapphire PURE Advantage CrossFire Radeon Xpress 200P CrossFire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-003-SP)?

ACESHIGH · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:39

Everything looks good.

However there are some changes i would make ...

This mobo... more stable & happens to be cheaper ...
MSI RD480 Neo2 Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-066-MS) £76.32

Better PSU ...
Antec NeoHE 430W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-044-AN) £64.57

If youre a gamer then a better GPU (best bang per buck at present) ...
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) £234.94
... if youre not a big gamer then the card you have now is fine.

ACESHIGH · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:43

Funkie said:
went for that graphics card so I could buy 2 within my budget

what problems have there been with the Sapphire PURE Advantage CrossFire Radeon Xpress 200P CrossFire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-003-SP)?

the ULI chipset mobos are more stable like the MSI one i chose above.

ACESHIGH · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:48

Funkie said:
went for that graphics card so I could buy 2 within my budget

what problems have there been with the Sapphire PURE Advantage CrossFire Radeon Xpress 200P CrossFire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-003-SP)?

OK just noticed you put x2 on cards. this will not work as you need 1x standard card & mastercard for ATI crossfire (ATI's version of SLI) to work. You only have 2x standard cards.

Get the card below .... this is the best bang per buck graphics you can get, it will EASILY beat your card & an X8 series master card (X850) & about same price. REALLY you should get this card. !!!!! I cant emphasize this more. Besides X8 series mastercards are hard to find now (X18 & X19 series mastercards are all over though).
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) £234.94
.

vanandjuanunited · 2 Mar 2006 at 11:03

Didnt notice the two gto's either. Deffo go for the x1800 though as above.

Funkie · 2 Mar 2006 at 15:34

hmmm the gpu had a crossfire badge on the picture http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X800PCI_Series.html

ACESHIGH · 3 Mar 2006 at 02:10

Funkie said:
hmmm the gpu had a crossfire badge on the picture http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X800PCI_Series.html

Yep, that can be confusing.

What the pic reads is ...

ATI crossfire multi GPU ready.

It is ready to be paired with a mastercard for crossfire, but 2 of these cannot (will not) work together as neither is a mastercard (& OcUK are not selling X8 series mastercards - there were only X850XT mastercards). Even if you got an X850XT master card & the X800GTO - they would be a fair bit slower then he X1800XT 256MB card (for similar price).

Thus the Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) really is your best buy.

Dont buy 2 slower cards just to have crossfire when you can get 1 faster cards.

(i repeat OcUK are not selling X8 series mastercards, & those etailers that are sometimes price them upo to £200).

Just trying to help out.

just noticed
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3
Available This Week Only for £229.07 Including VAT

Funkie · 3 Mar 2006 at 09:52

thanks m8 your saved me a few quid

Funkie · 7 Mar 2006 at 12:47

What about this gpu its £23.52 more but double the memory than the Connect3D

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) £258.44

what do you think?

MichaelHo · 7 Mar 2006 at 13:15

sorry if u have mentioned it already but what are you going to use this rig for mainly? e.g. jus web browsing and word processing, gaming?
and whats your budget?

Funkie · 7 Mar 2006 at 13:23

main pc of the house the kids have thiers I have a laptop and this one will be down stairs running games office everything

its being upgraded from a dual core intel 3ghz system

Zefan · 7 Mar 2006 at 13:25

Can you post simply a list of the items and not the hefty descriptions?

Funkie · 7 Mar 2006 at 14:28

right done that

so which is better deal

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) £258.44 (£23.52 more but double the memory)

or

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) £234.94

MichaelHo · 7 Mar 2006 at 21:56

get the 512MB one if u can part with the extra money

also id say get a better PSU, seasonic or targan or enermax.