First build, what have I forgotten, what to improve.

Hungryhobo

Hungryhobo

Hungryhobo

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2 Apr 2009
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15
OK, I'll be buying the parts for my first homebuild in the next few days and I was hoping I could ask some advice.

First- I'm looking for a DVD RW drive which is either not region locked or which can be set to region 0, I have a collection of disks from America which I would prefer to be able to play. It doesn't have to be fantastic.

Second- What have I forgotten, it'd be annoying to no end to find there's one part which I forgot to include.

Third- Is there anything in this build which strikes you as being very above/bellow par? I'd hate to find the graphics card can't run to full potential because of a poor bus or that an extra 10 euro spent on ram would have significantly improved performance.
Is the power supply up to par or over the top?

This is going to be my gaming PC for quite a long time and I probably won't be changing anything apart from perhaps adding some ram or an extra hard disk.

How much of an improvement would I get from say, buying the overclocked bundle here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-050-OE? it's a little more expensive but how much of a boost would it give to performance?

 
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I would say get a better case and get a better monitor. If you want to keep the budget the same then reduce that graphics card to maybe a 4890 or GTX275.

I have that case for a 2nd low-end PC and it's good for the money but not something I would use with that budget and spec.
 
2nd a better case, as a minimum you want to be looking at an antec 300, though I think for such a high end system you should be looking at the 9 or even 12 hundred, or a Lian Li equivalent if you dont like the look of the antecs. You might not want to spend too much on your case, but with such a high end system its gonna be thrwing out a lot of heat, so you really need a case with good cooling or lese youre going to experience a few crashes due to heat issues

Id also look at a better motherboard or else you wont be able to upgrade the RAM later, that is the budget gigabyte and only had 4 DIMM slots (not 6), either get the UD5 or possibly look at the biostar.

Id also look at getting slightly faster RAM to allow for a better OC on your CPU, this stuff would do

And lastly yeah monitor possibly, its a little pointless spending so much on a top end card then having an average monitor to display it, Id look at this one as a minimum - though remember that a monitor will last, any money you invest in it now is likely to last 5- 10 years, thats why I got my HP LP2475W :D (they dont sell it any more) great investment

Its all gonna push your price up, but as mame said if youre at limit of your budget it'd be worth dropping the gfx card for some of these changes, atm that gfx card is way above everything else in your system, these changes will give you much better balance
 
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thanks for all the advice guys.

I've dropped the graphics card to

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

mother board is now

Biostar TPower Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

Monitor is now

Samsung SM2433BW 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Added a SSD

OCZ Vertex Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTX30G)

Memory upgraded to

Corsair XMS3 6GB (3 X 2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel Kit (TR3X6G1600C8G )

Case is now

Antec 900 Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU)



That price is starting to hurt.... ah well, I'll just have to start giving grinds :-P

I'm not sure if the case comes with fans or with slots for putting fans in....
anything missing?
Will I need an adapter to fit the SSD into that case?
 
Sounds better now, the antec 900 has 3.5" bays so it might need a 3.5 to 2.5 adapter, if the drive doesnt come with it already.

and yeh the case comes with fans
1 20cm top fan
and 3 120mm case fans - one rear, and two mounted in the hard drive bays
 
forget ssd. It only really improves boot/load times rather than performance. You budget is not high enough for it. 30GB just isn't enough, you need at least 60GB.

Remember people that budget looks high, but includes monitor and all peripherals. So the budget for the unit isn't a lot.
 
I'd agree get a better case, I have that case for my cheapo server. The case looks cheap so for the money your spending I would get a case that doesnt look cheap


Ooops just noticed you have.
 
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