How many questions can I ask about my proposed

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Deleted member 68110

Deleted member 68110

£650's my utter limit.

  • Antec Sonata 3 Super Black Mini Tower Case with 500W aPFC PSU - £78.60
  • Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual/Quad Core Ready - £14.79
  • Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, ATX - £59.81
  • Intel Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache - £139.81
  • 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 - £32.89
  • Asus GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £113.96
  • 22" Samsung Monitor SM-226BW V2 Black Widescreen LCD, 1680x1050, 3000:1, 300 cd/m2, 2 ms, VESA UK - £210.31

TOTAL £650 - Does that seem like a decent build?

And I've left out the OS. So I need to squeeze £60 for Vista Home Premium OEM.

I don't want to compromise on the screen. Is there something as good cheaper?

The case seems like a bargain, with a decent PSU included, but it has an annoying door at the front. Is there another similarly priced solution?

The processor's hard to find - I might have to go for the Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2 x 2.66Ghz 6Mb Cache 1333 FSB Dual Core Processor for £125.67 instead. Is that a big drop in performance? At least it saves me £15.

Lastly and as if that wasn't enough - I'd love to squeeze a bit more cash out of the rest of the spend to get 4GB of RAM. Worth it?
 
Thanks for the replies.

The prices I quoted weren't from OC, and their price for the E8400 was significantly cheaper - I guess they can do that when they don't have any in stock!

If I order everything from OC then I'll probably go for the E8200 and the OCZ RAM:-

SpecList.jpg


2GB RAM and a 2.66Ghz processor seem like a compromise now, but I guess they'll still blow away my expectations after so long with an old machine...
 
Thanks a lot Wiggins - very useful info.

What you say about the monitor makes a lot of sense and I think I'll take your advice. I take it it's worth paying for the sumsung name - their screens seem to get rave reviews.

The Sonata seems like a great case, just possibly a bit small - I didn't think it would be a problem for what I was building. Also the PSU that comes with it also gets good reports. Is the Coolermaster and the Thermaltake Toughpower definitley worth the extra £30.

The graphics cards are different by £4. Is the 8800GT better than the 9600 GT? This looks like a straight either-or.
 
The graphics cards are different by £4. Is the 8800GT better than the 9600 GT? This looks like a straight either-or.
Ignore that - I was comparing the ex VAT price of the 8800GT with the inc VAT cost of the 9600GT. :o
 
While I'm on my penny-pinching quest... Is there anywhere in the UK that sells the Xeon 3110? Might be a cheaper option for me.
 
Stick with the Wolfdale.

Even drop down to the E8200. You will still easily get 4Ghz out of it.
Cheers. I think I'm going to have to drop down to the E8200 because the places that stock the E8400 have it for a fair bit more than I initially thought.

The Xeon 3110 is apparently exactly the same as the E8400. It's Wolfdale too. It seems impossible to find in the UK though.
 
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