First home-built rig

maliCe

maliCe

maliCe

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16 Dec 2007
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Hi all.

This is my first post and it’s kind of long so, apologies! Anyways, I'm about to embark on my first ever home-built pc and was hoping you guys could give me a little advice. A friend of mine recently built his first PC from scratch so I figured he’d be my first port of call spec-wise (I haven’t been in the know about components since the Radeon 9800XT was the ****, hah). I’m looking to get back in to my first-person shooters big time and would really like a rig that’s going to churn out some intimidatingly high frame rates on the latest games. At the time I told him I had a budget of about £800 and he came up with the following (I now have £250 more to spend, woop woop!):

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 “Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition” 2.40Ghz. £152.74 (inc VAT)
Artic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g). £7.04 (inc VAT)
Samsung SH-S203NBEBN 20x DVD+RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) – OEM. £19.96 (inc VAT)
Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard. ££79.89 (inc VAT)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC). £35.24 (inc VAT)
BFG GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) – Retail. £199.74 (inc VAT)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache – OEM (ST3500320AS). £145.68 (inc VAT)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775). £32.89 (inc VAT)
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case – No PSU (Gun Metal Black). £82.24 (inc VAT)

Total Cost: £768.27 (Inc VAT)

My friend is competent but not absolutely knowledgeable when it comes to these things - so if anyone can pick faults with the list e.g. give feedback on where there are unnecessary elements/ necessary elements that need more attention I’d be really grateful (it’s a big investment!). Also, if anyone has any suggestions on what improvements I should make the extra £250 I’d appreciate that massively too.

Any response at all would cause me to do a small dance, thanks. x
 
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what mk17 said, although if you're not planning on adding too much to it you could save a bit of money and go for the 520w instead, it's not much different though if you consider the difference in the final price
 
Thanks for the replies chaps. I've given it some thought and came up with quite a few changes (taking into account the extra 250 quid):

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) (£72.84)

Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) (£29.36)

Samsung SH-S203D 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (£22.31)

Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) (£88.11)

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£152.74)

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
(£7.04)

Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)
(£70.49)

Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£82.24)

CoolerMaster Stacker 830 Evolution - Nvidia Special Edition (No PSU) (£164.49)

OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - OEM
(£234.99)

I'm hoping this will be a cracker of a gaming rig, but i've inevitably made a horrendous blunder(s) somewhere down the line. Any last nuggets before i press the buy button? Ooh the excitement! Thanks again all.
 
520 will be fine and is a very good PSU.

I would drop the combo motherboard for a DDR2 only as DDR3 is expensive and no better than DDR2 yet + wont be the main choice for a while
 
maliCe said:
Thanks for the replies chaps. I've given it some thought and came up with quite a few changes (taking into account the extra 250 quid):

*snip*
Click to expand...

that looks good, that's what I'd have for the money... maybe a 500GB HDD is a bit overkill, you can save yourself a few quid by downsizing, unless you can see yourself filling that much space =o

it comes to £922 doesn't it? You'd said your budget was £800 :o

also, welcome to the forums =]
 
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I dont think you can ever have too much hard drive space. I have filled mine and waiting for 750GB's to come down in price a bit more before I get 2 to RAID 1.
 
My friend suggested the 500gb and i never really questioned it. I guess that is a little OTT, and i'll go with you on the 520W because i like it when i spend less :).

There's a couple of things that are bugging me though even now. My mate is pretty much laughing at me for opting to go with the 8800GTX because the GT is much cheaper and can be OC'd to almost match it. I have the money to get the OCUK 8800GTX, but is it worth it? Will the performance be noticeable? (I want the best performance but not if it means 1 extra frame per second for the price difference if you catch my gist!) Also, It only has a one year warranty whereas the BFG GT for example has a lifetime guarantee. How much would this feature in your decision if you were in my shoes?

Also, i've heard that XP is the platform of choice for gamers at the moment so it seems logical to stick with that, but that means i can only get 2gb of ram and have to go through the hassle of buying vista / adding more ram if i ever invest in the newer OS. Is vista really THAT awful for games and is the fix for this SO far away that i should go with XP for now? It seems more straightforward to me to go with vista/4gb of ram than go through all this again at a later date but i'm afraid of making a huge rookie error. What do you guys think?

Thanks again.

ps. I'm aware all this information is probably scattered around the forum but as a newcomer its difficult to track down, hah.
 
I am using Vista 64 with 4GB of ram and am not experiencing any problems with games or applications. Go for Vista and 4GB of ram :)
 
fobose said:
I am using Vista 64 with 4GB of ram and am not experiencing any problems with games or applications. Go for Vista and 4GB of ram :)
Click to expand...

Would the basic version of vista suffice, dude? And is there a 'generally accepted as being very good but not offensively expensive' 4gb ram package that i'm missing out on? If not, what should i get! I'm fed up of my randomly selecting components and figure you guys know your stuff a lot more than i do. Apologies for leeching off your knowledge. I will contribute once this is in the bag! :D
 
Spending £250 on a case and PSU is overkill to me....a case is a personal thing but spending for spendings sake isnt needed IMO. Pocket the spare money for the next upgrade !

What resolution are you going to be gaming at? The 8800GTX is not an overly silly choice given the budget but it depends on your gaming resolution...
 
Hey maliCe and welcome to the forums. I have just done a specification for some else for around the same budget that you have (I think). How's the below specification,

Specification-3.jpg


If the above specification is a little over your budget, please say. :)

If you are looking at getting a new system and will need an Operating System then there is honestly no reason not to purchase Windows Vista.

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.

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. Have a read through this article. :)
 
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fobose said:
I use ultimate but I dont use any of the features on it (Atleast I dont think so). I would go for home premium atleast though. I have my eye on this ram at the moment as its VERY cheap:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-086-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813

PC2 6400 is fast enough even for overclocking your CPU pretty far too.

I paid £100 for 2x2GB g.skill about 2 weeks before that was on offer :mad:
Click to expand...

I had a quick glance at that and think i'm probably going to go with that.

The only thing left for me to sort is my graphics card.

So far the rig is definitely going to consist of:

Vista Home Premium OS
Antec p182 Case
Samsung 20 DVD RW SATA Optical drive
Corsair HX 520W PSU
Abit IP35pro Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40ghz (1066FSB) Processor
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB
OXZ 4GB (2x2GB) Ram
Seagate Barracuda 500gb SATA-II HDD
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal thing (no idea what this is but it seems popular, hah).

So... The OCUK 8800GTX or the GT? (once again i have the money for the GTX... but don't want to spend lots more for a couple of extra frames p/s, and the GT's have longer warranties. Gah! :confused:).

Thanks for all your replies so far they've been unfathomably useful :eek:.

edit: i'm also interested in getting a VGA specific cooler as i've heard these cards get a little on the warm side. which is standard?
 
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