Need Advice on Hardware for my first Rig

Drushby

Drushby

Drushby

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Joined
10 Jan 2007
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Location
Nottingham UK
First Post Goodness mmmm.

Right then guys and gals this is my first post so please play nice :)
I'm looking to Build and OC my first rig i have built pc's before so i know a little about them. I'm looking for a rig mainly for gaming with prehaps a soupcon of DVD Ripping and encoding, and probally to download torrents with. So here is my checklist that of things i would like in order of priority

Budget (£) 1000-1200 (Streching to 1500 for the right rig)
1. Excellent gaming performance for 2007 and 2008 (Hopfully into mid 2009 :eek: )
2. Stability
3. Kickass looks (just so you get an idea of my tastes i'm loving the new dell XPS case :D )
4. Future Proofing
5. Low Noise

Ok so here is what hardware i'm currently thinking of and why.

CPU: E6400 Dual core Conroe chip/AMD64 X2 4200+ (Unsure as to which type of chip best suits gaming)
Mainboard: Biostar Tforce P965 (Because i read on these forums its a good solid board for over clocking)
CPU Cooling: Tuniq Tower
HDD: Seagate 320 GB HDD (Because i read on these forums again that Seagate perform faster)
Memory: 2-4 GB (Unsure of a decent brand to buy)
Graphics Card: Prehaps a 8800 GTS
Sound Card: Some form of Sound Blaster (Unsure of model)
Case: Prehaps a Lian li Black aluminum case (To aid heat disipation)
Moniter: again no idea :D

So if anyone would like to help its much appriciated Im UK based so please if your going to refer me to a site to buy components it should be based in the UK. Thanks for reading my little essay and hopefully thanks for all your replys :D
 
sorry im not much help on most of the hardware now as i havnt being keeping up to date with it, but i thought id get you started

sound card, x-fi xtreme music, for £50 you cant go wrong and if you have decent speakers it sounds amazing!

i'd recomend an akasa case, but they tend to be a bit big, i have an eclipse 62 the quality is really good but the size does annoy me

i also have a lian li which was £60 and it's good but i find it rattles quite a bit from fan vibrations

other than that cant help much as im a bit of a noob as well!!
 
Ive just purchased my upgrade bits after reading many forum post and asking many questions.

What I have learned goes like this:

1. Buy Intel Core 2 Duo and NOT AMD x2. Intel perform better, cooler and can be overclocked if this is your thing.
2. Dont buy a 6400 when a 6300 will do the job.
3. If you can afford it a 6600 is a nice chip but then so is a x6800
4. The gigabyte DS3 and DS4, along with the Asus PB5 boards are good stable boards with good overclocking potential.
5. If you have the money then 8800GTS or GTX are very nice however for those with tighter budgets an ATI 1950Pro or 1950XT-T are just as good second choice card.
6. Buy the best memory you can. Geil and Crucial rank high. If your thinking of Windows Vista then 2GB is perfered size. If you going to us an existing copy of XP then 1GB will be fine but this all depends on what else your going to use the Rig for.
7. If your overclocking your Core 2 Duo get an after market Heatsink and fan. Both Artic Freezing 7 and Tuniq are tried and tested on this forum and there are many posts of peoples successful overclocking attempts with these HSF.
8. When you talk about monitors, if you considering 20" LCD and above then your native screen resolution will be 1600x1050 and above. Your graphics card should have 512MB to avoid paging although it may only lead to a few FPS depending on the rest of your specification. Any lower size LCD and 256MB should do the job. (Again depending on the rest of your sepcification).
9. NVIDIA says that an 8800GTS need a minimum 400Watt PSU which means you buy 500Watt and above (pleanty of suggestions on this forum with people having their own opinions). But you dont need your own generator unless your run SLI with Dual-Quad cores.
10. Dont forget to buy from Overclockers.co.uk (Can I have a medal now?)

Alf
 
Last edited:
Quick Spec:

Although you can change the motherboard to the DS4 if needed.
And also the RAM to something else too.

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional Soundcard - Retail
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler
Belinea 2225S1W 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache
EVGA nForce 680 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
CellShock 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK)
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM
Total: £1,506.17 inc. Delivery

To save even more money, you could just get the E6300 and overclock as much as you can.
 
Heres what i have come up with:

Monitor - Asus VW192S 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor £144.51 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-003-AS

CPU - Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 £213.84 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-141-IN

CPU Cooler + Heatsink - Tuniq Tower 120 £34.06 inc VAThttp://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-000-SB

Motherboard - Asus P5B Deluxe £123.36 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-150-AS

Memory - CellShock 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 £223.24 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-000-CK

Graphics Card - BFG GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB £397.14 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-035-BG

Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB £66.96 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-078-SE

Sound Card - Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional £89.29 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-044-CL

Case - Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium £58.74 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-054-LL

Power Supply - Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular £99.86 inc VAT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-004-CS

Total : £1,466.22

That ASUS Monitor is amazing, i recently bought one and the picture is so clear and for that price well :) WOW
 
stickroad said:
No i dont think so :)

Or if you have enough go for a 22inch screen :)
Click to expand...
I feel that the 8800GTX would be overkill and restricted hugely on a 19" Screen. But i could be wrong.

The reason my spec is near the £1500 mark is due to the Motherboard & Monitor/RAM. Which can be changed to lower the budget.
 
the card isnt overkill, it lets you turn on all the "eye candy" for example:

anti-alaising
antistrophic filtering
shadows
lighting (differnt from shadows)

so basicly the better the card is, the more cool effects you can run while playing games and you wont get a crap laggy frame rate

while with a lower spec card (lower clock speed, less memory etc etc) you run the risk of not being able to play at a high rez (1440x900 standard for 19"). depending on the game and the other card in question, you may experience lower frame rates (lagg) and genraly more unstable gameplay (freezing, skipping frames)

so the rez isnt always the main resen for getting a powerfull card, infact quite a lot of the time its the opposite.

i have a 19 inch and i have an X1800XT i wish i had saved more money and got a better card because while the X1800xt is a brillient card it has only 256mb of ram and this simply isnt enough for games like tomb raider legend to be run on top max settings with all of the next gen effects on whilst getting a good framerate and smooth gameplay.


in my opinion stickroad was correct, except maybe go for cheaper ram (if u can find something good) and a better screen (acer's tend to be quite bright and unable to separate very bright whites, i have one 19")

sorry for the long post and the spelling errors ;)

Alex
 
hey all sorry for my late reply i work nights so i sleep mostly during the day. thanks for all the advice given so far @ stickroad i do plan on doing some over clocking but not anything crazy like 40-50% because id like my chip to live as long as possible :D. im currently leaning toward the

CPU - Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 £217.36 inc VAT

CPU Cooler + Heatsink - Tuniq Tower 120 £34.06 inc VAT

Motherboard - Asus P5B Deluxe £123.36 inc VAT

Memory - CellShock 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 £223.24 inc VAT

Graphics Card - BFG GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB £397.14 inc VAT
(Just because the Asus P5B dont have dual x16 PCI-E Slots)

Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB £66.96 inc VAT

Sound Card - Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional £89.29 inc VAT

Case - Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium £58.74 inc VAT

Power Supply - Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular £99.86 inc VAT

Total £1310.01

as for the moniter anyone got a belinia?

Oh and would some one please explain all this about week 28 conroes and fully unlocked conroe chips?
 
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