Help me spec a system for my brother

nicktay2605

nicktay2605

nicktay2605

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22 Mar 2007
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Hey guys, its been a while since I put together a system so I'm wondering if I could get some help putting together a pc for my bro. He is currently at college and will be going into his last year next year doing A-levels. He likes to play games as well so the pc has to be capable of doing that on the latest games, eg crysis. Budget is about £1000-1200 including monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse. One thing that is important is that he won't have a lot of money to upgrade this system in the future so it needs to be future-proofed as much as is possible. Does this mean I should go for a motherboard that runs DDR3 memory? And can you put DDR2 memory in a DDR3 motherboard or only DDR3?

Thanks for any help.
 
Personally, Id go for the cheapness of DDR2 over the longgevity of DDR3. i mean DDR1 is still strong, and is actually worth something for resale.

Ill give a spec a go, back soon.
 
DDR3 is silly at the moment. The performance is the same or only slightly better than DDR2 for several times the cost.

Some mobos will take both DDR2 and DDR3, but a DDR3-only mobo will not take DDR2 RAM and vice-versa. It's not backwards compatible, just as DDR2 was with DDR1.
 
Ok thanks for the advice. Now the only thing I'm not sure about is the graphics card. He wants to play Crysis at a decent level of detail and maintain a good framerate. Whats the best card to go for, an 8800GT, GTS, or is the 3870X2 worth the extra?
 
Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
OcUK Value L2442WD-VA 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black £199.99
(£234.99) £199.99
(£234.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) £58.99
(£69.31) £58.99
(£69.31)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £45.99
(£54.04) £45.99
(£54.04)
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £22.99
(£27.01) £22.99
(£27.01)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM £129.99
(£152.74) £129.99
(£152.74)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £74.99
(£88.11) £74.99
(£88.11)
Asus Maximus Formula Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £129.99
(£152.74) £129.99
(£152.74)
Point of View GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (8717344966320) £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Sub Total : £820.91
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £145.93
Total : £979.79

leaves you about 200 for case, mouse, speakers, keyboard etc which i will leave to you or your brother as thats personal preferance.
save money by
getting the corsair hx520 PSU over the HX620, both will power the spec without a problem but for major upgrades the 620 may be a better long term investment.

getting 2GB rather then 4GB of RAM

getting a smaller HDD
 
He's probably going to be playing on a 20" or maybe 22" display, no bigger than that though. I think by decent level of detail he means at least all high settings on Crysis.

Edit: thanks very much for the spec jak, similar to what I was thinking. Is that a decent monitor to go with?
 
havent got the monitor myself ,but from the reviews it seems decent enough for me to consider getting one when i have the funds
 
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