Comments/views invited for first system build

MrJubbly · 5 Mar 2007 at 23:24

Hi

I'm going to try and build my first system. My existing PC (an ageing Pentium II 450MHz) is creaking at the seams and is soon to be inherited by my young children.

I have been doing some research and have come up with the following shopping list:

Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
Creative Inspire T3100 2.1 Speakers - Retail £29.95
(£35.19) £29.95
(£35.19)
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro ULTIMATE SILENT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £119.99
(£140.99) £119.99
(£140.99)
Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £103.99
(£122.19) £103.99
(£122.19)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £101.99
(£119.84) £101.99
(£119.84)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1 Soundcard - OEM £43.50
(£51.11) £43.50
(£51.11)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) £13.99
(£16.44) £13.99
(£16.44)
Akasa AK FC-03 Fan Controller Pro £24.95
(£29.32) £24.95
(£29.32)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Samsung SpinPoint P HD160HJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £34.99
(£41.11) £69.98
(£82.22)
Samsung SpinPoint T HD321KJ 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £53.99
(£63.44) £53.99
(£63.44)
Sony Floppy Drive - Black £4.99
(£5.86) £4.99
(£5.86)
Samsung SH-182MRSMN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige,Black,Silver) - Retail £19.99
(£23.49) £19.99
(£23.49)
Akasa AK-183-L2B Amber Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin £9.95
(£11.69) £19.90
(£23.38)
Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 - Black/Silver £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Samsung SM-206BW 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £199.99
(£234.99) £199.99
(£234.99)
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838) £104.99
(£123.36) £104.99
(£123.36)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £97.99
(£115.14) £97.99
(£115.14)
Sub Total : £1,175.15
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £24.95
Vat : £210.02
Total : £1,410.12

The PC will be used primarily of general home and office use, but the above has been compiled with the following also in mind:

 Must have a reasonable amount of future growth potential.
 Decent amount of disk storage.
 Needs to be air-cooled and quiet.
 Would like the ability to play the odd game at a reasonable level of quality.
 Want to have a go at some mild over clocking with the view to having the ability to overclock more, should future growth dictate.
 Want to set up a disk array.
 Want to bite the bullet and go with Vista.

As I say this is going to be my fist build, I would really appreciate it if you guys could give my component list a once over and see if I have made any glaring mistakes, or there are any areas for improvement. I wouldn't necessarily want to spend anymore, but I'm not sure if I could/should reduce spend in some areas to spend more on others. For example would I be better off downgrading/removing the soundcard and spending a bit more on the processor?

Given this is my first build, is there anything else I need to include? I know I'll need some thermal paste for the HSF, but will I need anything else (besides blood, sweat and tears) i.e. screws, cables, etc?

Finally will the PC7 house all this kit (or should I ask this on the Case forum) and be suitably cool?

Cheers,

Jubbly

geff_r · 5 Mar 2007 at 23:39

The way things are going i'd get a bigger power supply
dx10 cards might start requiring 300 watts alone
just a thought personally i think in 2 years time 620 watts will not be enough.
I think all you're choices are sensible.
Also i think the akasa eclipse atx case would be a better choice for the future
if like me looks arent as important as useability and performance.
God knows how big the cards will be in 2 years time i think the gtx cards just about fit in the lian li correct me if im wrong.And the eclipse has bags
more room to manouvre.

masslac · 5 Mar 2007 at 23:42

geff_r said:
The way things are going i'd get a bigger power supply
dx10 cards might start requiring 300 watts alone
just a thought personally i think in 2 years time 620 watts will not be enough.
I think all you're choices are sensible.

Uh, 620W is more than enough.

I would personally ditch the soundcard and use the money saved to upgrade the graphics to the 8800GS. Also, I'd be more tempted by one 500GB drive.

The rest looks great.

BTW, you don't need the floppy drive as AFAIK SATA drivers etc are native with Vista.

geff_r · 5 Mar 2007 at 23:47

It's more than enough now yes but have you heard the new ati card is going to be 300 watts? i'd rather get a very good psu now and have it last 6 years than
have to upgrade in 2-3 years.

Slinwagh · 6 Mar 2007 at 01:15

When you say disk array, am I correct in saying you mean RAID, if so you need to look at at least 2 identical disks, size, manufacturer etc.

MrJubbly · 6 Mar 2007 at 07:45

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

geff_r said:
Also i think the akasa eclipse atx case would be a better choice for the future if like me looks arent as important as useability and performance. God knows how big the cards will be in 2 years time i think the gtx cards just about fit in the lian li correct me if im wrong.And the eclipse has bags more room to manouvre.

The Eclipse was my second choice, but the PC-7 is just that bit better looking personally. Still may change my mind and go with the Eclipse.

masslac said:
I would personally ditch the soundcard and use the money saved to upgrade the graphics to the 8800GS.

Wasn't sure that my day to day usage would really warrant me spending to much on the gfx card. Open to persuasion though.

masslac said:
BTW, you don't need the floppy drive as AFAIK SATA drivers etc are native with Vista.

Can you explain more please (I'm such a noob). I thought a lot of drivers etc still came on floppies, and that at least this would be useful to have in the early stages of the build?

Slinwagh said:
When you say disk array, am I correct in saying you mean RAID, if so you need to look at at least 2 identical disks, size, manufacturer etc.

Yes, RAID is what I meant. I've gone for two Samsung Spinpoint 120s, which I was going to run as RAID 0? Is that right?

Thanks again guys. Keep your views coming. Much appreciated.

Jubbly

Shydave · 6 Mar 2007 at 08:09

Your choices look good for what you are looking to get fella.

Possibly http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-006-BE&tool=3 for your monitor, slightly cheaper, everyone loves it, and a tad bigger for the money

tbh I think unless your going to run sli etc and as you say your only looking to run the occasional game at a reasonable level then I would say that the PSU you are looking for would do the job.

Raid drivers that come with mobo(s) usually still come on floppy, but that will be basically the only thing that you will use it for and unless I am very wrong you can copy them on to and external drive / flash and copy them from there? I am sure someone will confirm that either way.

The Akasa case (having recently looked for one myself) is said to be very good for cooling and also has plenty of room inside. So you may want to consider that too.

If you are not looking a high end gaming then stick with the gfx card you are looking at unless you want the dx10 lovelyness when it kicks in

I am sure you will love and loath your first build but you will find in the end you will get a much better pc for the money by doing it yourself.

The chip you have gone for is also a superb overclocker and you should be looking for some very nice results from it.

melbourne720 · 6 Mar 2007 at 10:26

MrJubbly said:
Wasn't sure that my day to day usage would really warrant me spending to much on the gfx card. Open to persuasion though.

Better to spend the money on that than a sound card IMHO. The x1950 Pro you've chosen is a gamers card as well.

MrJubbly said:
Can you explain more please (I'm such a noob). I thought a lot of drivers etc still came on floppies, and that at least this would be useful to have in the early stages of the build?

SATA drivers are now native to Windows XP SP2 onwards (or at least most of them are). It won't harm you system to have a floppy drive, but I doubt you'll need it. My system has a SATA DVD Writer and a SATA HD and I didn't need a floppy drive.

All drivers come on CD now.

MrJubbly said:
Yes, RAID is what I meant. I've gone for two Samsung Spinpoint 120s, which I was going to run as RAID 0? Is that right?

Yep, but you need identical drives. Exact same model, size, everything.

Girdag · 6 Mar 2007 at 10:45

melbourne720 said:
Better to spend the money on that than a sound card IMHO.

I disagree. If he's not a massive gamer, he won't NEED an 8800 for a good while, and wouldn't notice a massive difference with it. However, everyone but the deaf will notice the difference a good soundcard can make. I'd get the

Click to expand...

Tarty · 6 Mar 2007 at 13:12

Might want to look into the Dell 20inch monitor, very highly rated here

melbourne720 · 6 Mar 2007 at 13:51

Girdag said:
I disagree. If he's not a massive gamer, he won't NEED an 8800 for a good while, and wouldn't notice a massive difference with it. However, everyone but the deaf will notice the difference a good soundcard can make. I'd get the

Modern motherboards like the 680i have High Definition sound, its come a long way.

And if you're going to spend over a ton on a graphics card (originally picked a x1950 Pro), wouldn't you want dx10?

MrJubbly · 6 Mar 2007 at 23:57

Okay, I may condsider dropping the sounds card in favour of better gfx card. I'll do a bit more digging around, but from what I recall there's not a great deal of choice in the 8800's for around the £200 mark, which is effectively the figure i'd be looking at.

If the new Sammy's don't come in soon then the Dell was my second choice. I had looked at the Belinea, but the 102030W. Completely overlooked the 2225S1W. On my search I was looking DVI only so that was another reason I ruled out Belinea. A lot of people do seem to be raving about the 2225S1W though, so perhaps VGA isn't that bad after all?

Just to clear things up re the RAID thang. I was going to order two Samsung SpinPoint P HD160HJ 160GB's to be used in a RAID 0 set up, and a further standalone Samsung SpinPoint T HD321KJ 320GB. My current thinking is that the two 160s will be used for data and the 320 will be used for O/S, progs, games, etc.

Cheers,

Jubbly

oli collett · 7 Mar 2007 at 00:08

MrJubbly said:
Okay, I may condsider dropping the sounds card in favour of better gfx card. I'll do a bit more digging around, but from what I recall there's not a great deal of choice in the 8800's for around the £200 mark, which is effectively the figure i'd be looking at.

If the new Sammy's don't come in soon then the Dell was my second choice. I had looked at the Belinea, but the 102030W. Completely overlooked the 2225S1W. On my search I was looking DVI only so that was another reason I ruled out Belinea. A lot of people do seem to be raving about the 2225S1W though, so perhaps VGA isn't that bad after all?

Just to clear things up re the RAID thang. I was going to order two Samsung SpinPoint P HD160HJ 160GB's to be used in a RAID 0 set up, and a further standalone Samsung SpinPoint T HD321KJ 320GB. My current thinking is that the two 160s will be used for data and the 320 will be used for O/S, progs, games, etc.

Cheers,

Jubbly

The RAID idea doesn't make any sense, you wouldn't be using it at all, the O/S defiantely wants to be on the array as does any other software that will be frequently using disk. A RAID array won't help you're performance for watching videos, listening to music etc.!

You're best off just having 2 disks, or even 4, then just partition them.

melbourne720 · 7 Mar 2007 at 09:37

I'd use the RAID 0 for programs and windows and the 320GB drive for Data and windows swap file.

York · 7 Mar 2007 at 14:51

For what you want to use the PC for I wouldn't bother with Raid-0. You have to remember that should one of the disks fail, then you loose the data on both. With the sort of performance increase you'd be seeing I'd suggest either getting a higher density disk or not bothering with Raid 0 at all.

Stabhappy · 7 Mar 2007 at 14:58

PSU is overboard. Way, way overboard. a 450W FSP unit could pull the 1950. And the 8800GTS. Course, aim about 500w if you're getting a GTS (Which I recommend btw)

Also, one 500gb drive partitioned properly will outbench 2 small drives in raid0.