First ever build, looking for advice

Morgy · 30 Nov 2007 at 00:39

Hey,

My faithful old system has lasted me nearly 5 years with upgrades, but now it's finally time for me to say goodbye and get a new PC. I've aimed for a PC that's powerful yet good value for money. Here's what I'm thinking of getting at the moment:

If I dare click the 'buy' button, this will be my first build. Now I'm sure that I have the grey matter to put together a computer, but I'm not so sure about my dexterity. I'm naturally a worrier (perhaps verging on paranoia

) and especially so with a purchase of this size. I really don't want anything to go wrong with this build and end up wasting hundreds of pounds.

So, what risks are there in building? I'm aware of the dangers of static and so will by an anti-static strap if I do build, but what else do I need to be aware of? I'm interested in the money saved and knowledge gained through building, but if I feel it's too risky then I'd rather buy a PC from ************.co.uk.

Any advice about building and the spec I've chosen would be much appreciated.

Cupra · 30 Nov 2007 at 00:41

whats your budget?

Morgy · 30 Nov 2007 at 00:47

My upper limit is around £800, and the spec above comes to £735 inc. VAT + P&P. I'm looking for a future-proof yet good-value PC, so I don't want to spend much more over that if it isn't going to give me a decent corresponding increase in performance. Also, I'm not really looking to overclock - I might explore the possiblility if i get more confident with it, but squeezing out maximum FPS isn't my goal here.

mp260767 · 30 Nov 2007 at 02:02

maybe upgrade the card to the evga, few extra years warrenty for £5 ish.

everything looks fine, as for the build give yourself enough time so you dont rush it, try and work in an area that gives you plenty of space to layout what you have and decent lighting so you can see what you're doing.

when you get everything and before you start you're build check the case, and plan out the order you're going to put stuff in, ie might be easier to put the hard drive in first if the cpu is close to the drive holder as you'll have the cooler on top and no space to get the drive in place.

also take the time to plan/arrange you're cabling to keep the case as tidy as u can as it will help with cooling, get some zip ties to help keep things out of the way once you're routed them around the case.

noticed that case has space for 7 120mm fans, make sure u keep some money aside to buy quieter case fans, in case the supplied ones are too noisy, also think about using tape on the inside of the case to block any fan holes that dont have fans on, will help reduce the amount of dust and mess you get inside the case.

Morgy · 30 Nov 2007 at 17:46

Well I would get the evga if I could but at time of writing the PNY is the only one in stock, and 2 years warranty should be sufficient anyway. I'm now having second thoughts about my power supply. I've seen many people go for a Corsair HX 520W and so I'm wondering about how much power I will actually need, should I go with that or stick to the OCZ 600W? Also, after reading some worrying threads about odd malfunctions with the GA-P35C, I've decided to go for an Asus P5K instead.

Thanks for the building advice, however I'm mostly asking about the risks involved in building and therefore what NOT to do. I'd really like to try building for the first time but not if I'm risking too much cash doing so. I'd be very grateful for an overview of what can go wrong, how likely it could do so, and steps to prevent such things from happening.

ramsden · 30 Nov 2007 at 20:42

Hi there,

built my first system about 3 weeks ago (this one). It took about 3 hours to complete with OS installed. As long as you have a good read up on what to do and prepare properly (correct tools, drivers etc) it is pretty much fool proof - if you have any common sense not much can go wrong. Read all of your manuals so you know what goes where and you will be fine. Make sure you have plenty of space in which to build it - I ended up with bits everywhere

Also, I am using the GA-P35C with no problems. As far as I can tell from the forums it is the revision 1 boards that had the problems - the rev 2 boards seem fine.

Good luck

Fire Wizard · 30 Nov 2007 at 21:36

Hey Morgy, firstly, Welcome to the forums.

Regarding your specification:

The OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply is fine and if you are on a tight budget, than you can't really do any better than that particular PSU. Now if you are willing to stretch, than may I recommend the Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU. One of the most recommended and talked about power supply’s everywhere I would imagine especially on this forum.

Concerning the Coolermaster Hyper TX 2 CPU Cooler, I haven’t heard much about that specific cooler but I will say, if you will be looking at overclocking the Q6600 in the future then that CPU cooler could well hold your overclock back due to the temperatures (Now i say this manily due to it only costing around the £15 mark) Once again, if you are willing to stretch then I would highly recommend the Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler .

Going onto the memory. You could save £6 by going for the OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2, pretty much exactly the same as the Geli but slightly cheaper.

The Nvidia 8800GT is a fine card, the only little thing i will raise to you is the manufacturer that you have chosen. In my opinion, this card is worth the extra £5 for the extended warranty which is 10 years.

The very last thing I have to mention is regards to your Operating System choice. Is the reason why you are choosing Windows XP over Windows Vista. Is it because of the compatibility problems and just general problems you hear that some people are getting with Windows Vista?

First, when Windows Vista was first released their where a few problems with compatibility, however, this has now changed and the support for Windows Vista is now excellent. The majority of the manufacturers out their have now released 64-bit drivers for their hardware and as regards to software, once again, the majority of software now work perfectly fine under Windows Vista. Their have also been a few problems within Windows Vista but the majority of these are now fixed thanks to the Performance and Reliability packs that Microsoft have been releasing along with other updates. Now there are still a few problems around for example, slow transfer rates across networks, from one folder to another but this seems to be only affecting a few people and not the whole user base that is using Windows Vista. Though I believe this is set to be fully fixed in Service Pack 1 (Fiji) which is due out in the first quarter of next year.

Now as far as gaming performance goes, in my opinion, it is now exactly the same as Windows XP, I notice no slowdowns what so ever. Now I understand that some people are still having a few problems but I believe these are very far and few between these days and I feel that some people tend to over exaggerate things a tad.

Though please take into account this is under DirectX 9. Regarding DirectX 10 performance, going on most of the responses from others, it currently isn't up to scratch and is actually better to run it under DirectX 9 in some games. Now in my opinion this has nothing to do with Vista and DirectX 10 itself. DirectX 10 is implemented just fine and it is the hardware that needs to catch up a bit. I think their is a lot more to DirectX 10 then a few people think. If someone disagrees with me on this, please post and state your reason. I would be very interested in hearing other people’s views regarding this.

If you do happen to buy Windows Vista and run a game such as Crysis under DirectX 10, you may not be particularly happy with the playability of it. If this happens, you can always run the game in a DirectX 9 mode.

Take a look at this article, interesting and well worth reading.

As a revised specification. (Just a possibility)

Since you are slightly worried about building your own system, then take at look at this guide, may help you out a little.

Morgy · 1 Dec 2007 at 00:13

Well since the Corsair HX 520W is so highly recommended around these forums, I've decided to splash out a little extra and go for that instead. As for the CPU cooler I'm now looking at the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro reather than my previous choice. Same price as the previous cooler, but highly recommended here. I haven't done any overclocking before, I'll probably get more confident to do so after the success (touch wood) of this build, so that cooler should be fine for me. The RAM looks like a good offer, but it probably won't be on offer by the time I order.

I'd love to get the EVGA card, but as far as i can see there's no ETA on when there'll be some more in stock. A fraction of the cost of this build is going to be paid for by my parents as a Christmas present, so hopefully this'll be ready and working by Christmas day. If OCZ still don't have any more cards in stock in 2-3 weeks time then I'd just have to go with PNY or some other brand.

I'm choosing XP because it's familiar, I'm happy with it, and from what I've heard Vista is a resource hog. I wasn't too happy to see on my friend's PC 1Gig of RAM just being used on idle system processes. I use my PC primarily for gaming, so I'd rather stick with the more stable OS. I might give Vista 64-bit some thought though, especially considering I'm trying to go for build that's reasonably future-proof. Thanks a lot for the system guide from the Corsair website, I'll have a read of that soon and see if it helps put my mind at rest.