Need to build a new PC - advice please

benf

benf

benf

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Hey there, two nights ago my PC blew up (I think the CPU overheated or something, but there was a blue flash and some burning electrical smell)! It's around 3 years old now anyways (AMD athalon 2000xp, 512Mb Ram on an Asus K7S8X) and I was planning on an upgrade. Well I figure a whole new machine is in order, because the graphics card I have is a Nvidia FX5200 128Mb, and it doesn't seem like that's going to be compatible with what I want to build (and probably is pretty slow by todays standards).

So, I was having a look through the overclockers store and I've put some items together in the basket, just wondering if anyone has any additional advice on the components? I'm a web developer, so mostly I'm going to be doing coding, photoshop/illustrator work, plus I have a DV camera so I plan on doing plenty of home movies (we just had a baby!). Really I don;t want to get the Vista upgrade as I'm happy using XP pro, but by all accounts that will only recognise up to 3 gig of RAM. Is that true? Do I really need 4 Gig then?

Here's what I plan on buying so far (I've got a budget of around £800 possibly):

PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 "Special Edition" 1024MB GDDR4 TV-Out/Triple DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

GeIL 4GB (4x1GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB8500C5QC)

Asus Rampage Formula Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.83GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail

2 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD2500AAKS)

Any advice would be really helpful. I've never built my own machine before, so I'm just getting to grips with what is compatible with what. I'll keep reading through the other advice threads in the mean time and see what is suggested.

Thanks in advance,
Ben.
 
i'd swap the memory for the pc6400 version, mobo to the asus p5q pro, hard disks either the 640gb or 1tb versions of the samsung F1's, along with a tuniq tower or Thermalright Ultra cooler for the processor.

not sure why you'd want the 3870 x2, maybe swap that to a 4850.
 
Is it for more general use rather than games. I see that you want it for some video editing but is that likly to be a small amount.
And any other things it may be used for.

But from that i would go for.

Intel q6600
Asus P5Q Pro or E version
Geil 4GB
Then Samsung 500Gb or 1TB which ever.
Then the graphics card is subjective to if your gaming or not.

~Slash
 
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (£170.36)

Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£93.99)

GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB6400C5DC) (£48.16)

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (£115.14)

Pioneer DVR-215DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (£16.44)

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) (£90.46)

Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775 (£41.11)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case (£66.96)

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK (£70.49)

No point getting a Q9950 or PC8500 ram, Q6600 along with the PC6400 ram and P5Q Pro should allow you to overclock the CPU to at least 3GHz if not 3.4GHz.

The Samsung 1TB drive is a very very fast drive and you should not be running out of storage any time soon. That system coupled with the 4870 should be very sweet indeed for games, video editing and anything you want to do.

You should try out Vista otherwise your ram is going to be wasted, if you really don't like vista then get x64 XP your motherboard should have all the necessary drivers for x64 XP. You may want to check your printers, scanners cameras all have drivers for x64 XP too. Even though you will be using a 64bit OS all your 32bit apps will still work.
 
not sure why you'd want the 3870 x2, maybe swap that to a 4850.

It was mainly the price, I was trying to keep it all under about £800. Plus I'm not 100% on the compatibility of the graphics cards, so it was kind of a stab in the dark of what looked like a good card.

Is it for more general use rather than games. I see that you want it for some video editing but is that likely to be a small amount.

I'd say there's going to be a fair bit of video editing with the possibility of learning After Effect and maybe some 3d modelling. I've been meaning to get back into PC games, haven't played many in a few years, so I'd be inclined to start gaming some more with a system that could handle it well.

You should try out Vista ...

Okay, I'll consider it. Again, it was kind of that I know how to easily set up a dev environment in XP and that the software I have will run on it (printers etc.). But if it's worth upgrading to Vista for the speed I may well do it.

Thanks for all the answers, you've given me a lot to think about.

[edit]

I should also say that I'd prefer a fairly quiet machine. My office is shared with the baby, so something that isn't overly loud to keep her awake at night while I work would be preferable. Plus quiet machines are always nice.
 
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If you like XP Pro, stick with it.

Other suggestions in thread are spot on regarding mobo/cpu/ram.

p.s. I'm a web developer too and those graphics cards are overkill for just the odd bit of gaming.

There's a weekend special on graphics cards at the moment, the 8800GT for < £80 I thought was fantastic. You can get the Accelero S1 cooler for it and run it completely passively too.

For hard drives I would get a 320GB Seagate for OS/programs and a Samsung F1 1TB drive for data + another to backup to (preferably external).
 
Imy - thanks for that. I'm probably going to look into buying something in the next week or so, plenty of time to make a choice.
 
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