How does this build look @ £800

scared_monkey

scared_monkey

scared_monkey

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19 Oct 2008
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5
Hi all,

First time posting on here, but I'm about to build my second computer and having learnt from my mistakes from the first one (the biggest being buying an AGP board just after PCI boards came out.. doh!) thought I'd see what peoples opinions were for improvements or replacements..

Here it is.

Asus P5QC
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Kingston 4GB DDR2 1066 HyperX
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
2 x Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB
Coolermaster CM690
Corsair 620W HX
Nvidia GTX 260 (216)
Sony Optiarc Lightscribe DVD Drive
Windows Vista Premium 64 Bit OEM

Total £830

Brief explanations.. I've gone for the P5QC because I like the fact it can take both DDR2 and DDR3, so maybe in a years time when DDR3 is a bit cheaper I can upgrade the memory.
I mostly will be gaming on this rig, so although a Quad might be handy, a speedier dual core will probably benefit me more?
I'm not a case ethusiast, I just want something that will fit all the components inside ok, not bothered about looks.
2 HDDs as I want to run Raid 1 for backup purposes - having said that it would save me £50 if I just went with one drive. Are they pretty reliable?

Lastly the GC. After much thought I'm going with the 216 core version of the 260, it's snapping at the heels of a 280, and in all the reviews I've seen it is faster than the 4870 (at least tested on games which I will want to play like Crysis and COD4). I'm also just more comfortable with Nvidia.

I can't spend anymore than the amount I'm already spending, so there's no point in me waiting for the i7 boards as I need to upgrade now and they'll also be pretty expensive for a while anyway.
 
Welcome to the forums, I'd personally steer clear of motherboards that support two types of Ram as they usually can only take two sticks of the newer Ram and more importantly they don't offer the benefits or stability of a motherboard that just supports DDR2 or DDR3.

You could go for an HX 520w PSU to save a bit of cash and get it nearer to £800.
 
Cool,

Think I'll knock the MB slightly down to the P5Q, and stick with the 1066 memory as the 1200 memory that this one can take seems quite pricey.

I'm also going to change the HDD from 2 750GBs to just 1 1TB Samsung Spinpoint. I've never (touch wood) had a HDD fail on me, and Samsung are a pretty reliable make.

These changes knock the price down to pretty much £800.

How does my build look, on target or waaayyyy off?
 
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Ok,

Updated the list, current spec as follows...

Asus P5Q
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Corsair TwinX DDR2 4GB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB
Coolermaster CM690
Dark Power 650W
Nvidia GTX 260 (216)
Sony Optiarc Lightscribe DVD Drive
Windows Vista Premium 64 Bit OEM

Changed the PSU to something a little quieter but just as efficient (computer will be in living room so noise is a factor to consider).
I've changed the memory to something a little more expensive but with much tighter latencies.
The P5QC has gone and replaced with the slightly cheaper but equally good for my purposes P5Q.
Lastly I've ditched the 2 750GB HDDs in RAID and gone for one 1TB drive instead. As this is mostly going to be a gaming PC I think have RAID as backup is needless, and anything important I want to backup I can always copy onto my 400GB external drive.

Any further tweaks?

Does everything look compatible?
 
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Oh shut up with the claimed thing, it's not big and it's not clever, and you're not contributing at all to this thread.

Anyway, yeah the samsung 1tb is a good choice, there pretty good and are quite solid so you shouldn't really need to back anything up.

Everything else looks good, but what RAM are you going for?

Out of the corsair twin x range id go for this one.

http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-148-CS

And this week it's on offer and good value.
 
It all looks compatible to me, backing up to an external drive that you store away from the computer is a much more secure strategy for backups than Raid anyway. Raid is just an availability solution rather than a backup one.
 
Bit of extra news,

BFG's American website is carrying details of an offer where if you buy any BFG 2xx series card and register it on their website they will send you a free copy of Far Cry 2, Futuremark Vantage, and an LED torch.

Not sure if it will apply to the UK, but if it does that's great as Far Cry 2 was one of the first games I was going to get to try out my new system (that and Fallout 3).
 
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