Final Spec for Order Next Monday

[Gibbs]

Components
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail - £117.44
Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 AGP + PCIe Motherboard - £40.54
2GB PC2700 333mhz DDR RAM
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - £55.28
Thermaltake VC2000BNS Mambo SuperMidi Tower - Black - £32.84
Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler - £31.67
XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP) with Zalman VF900 LED
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Silent PSU
Samsung SH-W163 16x16 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter - £28.14

Shipping £15.95
Total £321.86

Anything without a price means i already have it. Only the RAM,GFX Card and PSU.

I went the 939 route as its cheap and cheerful for me. I dont want to fork out loads for AM2 or Core2 simply because i wouldnt make use of it untill quad core comes out. This machine will be for for internet/music/p2p/software development and gaming (Doom3/HL2/BF2/FEAR etc) and i dont have a huge budget so i feel this is a good setup for all i need it for. (even my socket a athlon runs Visual Studio 2005 no problem) It can be overclocked to the balls also to get the little bit extra out of it.

I will upgrade to PCI-e when quad core and DX10 are on the market but i dont plan on upgrading again untill April 2007.

Any thoughts?, better motherboards out there? (no real need for PCI-e untill DX10 comes).

input welcome am sure everyone is sick of seeing these topics

 

[dale1uk]

There are better motherboards out there if your looking for a bit clock on your 3800 as the vcore is limited on that one. You can volt mod the board to get it higher but you'll lose the warrenty.
Also if possible it would be worth selling your current 2gb pc2700 ram and get a new 2gb pc3200 set.

 

[Gibbs]

I have been looking at the Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard at £66 incl VAT

 

[deadeyedic30]

Depends on whether you want to buy a new graphics card or not ? If not Get the ASRock board as it has both graphics interfaces that operate at full spec. Definitely get 2Gb of ddr400/pc3200 ram, your current memory will hurt performance.

 

[Gibbs]

think ill stick with the asrock board. I wont be doing major overclcoking but to the max of what the board can handle with watercooling.

Really only want to spend <£400 excl shipping. Thoughts

Must be dual core though.

 

[dale1uk]

Well you could sell your 6800 ultra, they go for approx £120-£140 on the bay resulting in it only costing an extra £20ish for a x1800xt which would be loads better.
So say your budget is £530 inc the sale of your 6800 you could go for this:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail - £117.44
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - £76.32
2GB PC2700 333mhz DDR RAM - already have
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - £55.28
Thermaltake VC2000BNS Mambo SuperMidi Tower - Black - £32.84
Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler - £31.67
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB - £160.92
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Silent PSU - already have
Samsung SH-W163 16x16 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter - £28.14

Total cost - £502.61 inc vat

 

[Gibbs]

thats what am gonna do, going to pop the 6800 onto the bay and get rid.

i hope to get 120-140 as its does have a Zalman VF900 on it so hopefully itll fly off.

cheers buddy

 

[dale1uk]

Good choice, the x1800xt is an excellent card and you'll see a nice gain over the 6800 for very little outlay. If you've got the stock cooler for the 6800 I'd just put that back on as it should still sell for around the same price and it'll leave you with a very good cooler for the x1800. That motherboard should allow you to clock that chip to is max, my board is 100% stable with my overclock in sig, and has plenty of options in the bios for tweaking to get the most of the cpu.
I'd still recommend looking into 2gb of pc3200 ram as soon as you can afford it as that pc2700 ram will hurt performance.

 

[Gibbs]

yea, am gonna pick up the CPU on Monday so they dont sell out and become hard to find. Rest of the parts i will leave untill the end of next month as the LCD Display i wanted has dropped in price on special offer so am gonna pick it up while its cheap.