New build time

DEL 707

DEL 707

DEL 707

Soldato
Joined
20 Mar 2004
Posts
4,642
Been meaning to do a new build for some years and I've decided the time has finally come!

The main purpose of this machine is gaming, I also want to overclock to get the most out of it.

Here's my basic spec at the moment
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000
4850 (512) Graphics card (This wasn't part of the original build)

I've posted on a few sub-forums and I'm starting to get an idea of what I wantIt has been recommended that I look into the i7 950 as well, but I'm unsure at the moment.

Graphics card wise, I'm still looking into things. but this card caught my eye.

Looking at the soundcards, I've noticed Pci-e cards, but I don't really have a clue at how they plug in or if there's room on the motherboard. I'm not after anything fancy, since I play with headphones most of the time anyway, so a good £30-£40 card will do.

As for the rest I'm pretty clueless, memory I don't know, is 4gb still the "max" you need these days?
For a hard drive I want a least 1tb, something fast, but without paying silly money for it and maybe a smaller cheaper hard drive for a backup. I've lost 15gb of music before, I don't care to repeat the experience.

A nice no nonsense case, I don't need fancy lights, just something with plenty of room and good ventilation.

I'm grateful for any help :)

Budget about £800, but I'm pretty flexable up to £1000
Software I plan to try out Win7, still using XP at the moment
I have keyboard/mouse/monitor, all I need is the guts for the machine.
 
Last edited:
after all that text, you have failed to give a budget, and what you need, keyboard, mouse, monitor, windows7?
 
4GB is probably all you need, but with the X58 boards you would be doing yourself somwthing of a disservice using dual channel RAM, when the board can support triple channel. I would suggest going for this RAM, but if you need to keep the costs down this will provide alomst the same performance in most applications.

If you really want a sound card, then you will have to pay £60+ to get a decent PCIe one. There are PCI ones like this that are cheaper and work very well. Otherwise, just stick with integrated sound - it is not too bad these days.

If you want a big 1TB drive, I suggest going for this as it is a great drive at a super price. As for a smaller backup drive, the 500GB version is also a bargain (or you could get a second 1TB).

As for the cases, I suggest you have a look through the OCUK product pages and have a rake for something you like the look of, since cases are a very personal thing. Personally, I would suggest this one. Personally, I like this one and it is massive. If you don't have that kind of money - this is good.
 
Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line
Total
Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz (Bloomfield)
(Socket LGA1366) - Retail £208.99
(£177.86)
£208.99
(£177.86)
Asus GeForce GTX 460 1024MB DirectCU
GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £171.98
(£146.37)
£171.98
(£146.37)
Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3
Motherboard £144.98
(£123.39)
£144.98
(£123.39)
Geil Black Dragon 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3
PC3-12800C8 (1600MHz) Triple Channel
(GB36GB1600C8TC) £114.99
(£97.86)
£114.99
(£97.86)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit -
OEM (GFC-00599) £79.89
(£67.99)
£79.89
(£67.99)
Sapphire Pure 625W Modular Power Supply £64.61
(£54.99)
£64.61
(£54.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB
Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £46.99
(£39.99)
£46.99
(£39.99)
Silverstone SST-PS03B Precision Midi Tower
Case - Black £42.99
(£36.59)
£42.99
(£36.59)
Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA
ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91)
£13.99
(£11.91)
Sub
Total : £756.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland
with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)
Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £134.44
Total : £902.64
 
Thanks for the quick replies, really need to get to bed but damned if I don't get excited just thinking about it :p

Had a look at both of those RAM suggestions and I'm willing to pay a bit of extra cash if the motherboard's going to use it.

Quick question about the hard drive though, reading the reviews, everyone loves the samsung, but there's a WD drive on there with 64mb cache instead of the samsungs 32mb for around the same price.
Does the cache make a big difference in drive performance?
 
You won't need a sound card, the on board sound is very good, especially if only using headphones, heck even when using speakers its top notch, i can't tell the difference between it and a separate card.
 
Quickly knocked this together, could people have a quick gander.

order1.jpg


Was looking at the i7 950, but from what I'm reading if I'm gonna use air cooling to overclock, I should just stick with the 930.

Still pretty unsure on what case to pick, with the total price at the moment, i'm starting to look at cheap and cheerful :p
 
Seems fine to me, gonna have to make sure your case choice is right though, that is a monster cooler u are getting, but a damn good one too. Nice choice.

About the 2 HD's, why not get 2 1TB ones, will only be slightly more, and will give u far more back up space.
 
I read a GTX 460 group test the other day, Palit Sonic Platinum and Gainiward GLH came out top of the 1GB cards. With the GLH pipping the Platinum at the post on noise. A different Asus was also tested and found to be louder but cooler than the other two, coming in 3rd.

Just thought I'd let you know in case noise level is at all an issue, seeing as you specced a very quiet CPU cooler.

Oh, and you forgot to add a case to your shopping basket. Although judging by some of the current threads, it was probably a wise move to avoid contoversy ;).
 
Burty88 said:
I read a GTX 460 group test the other day, Palit Sonic Platinum and Gainiward GLH came out top of the 1GB cards. With the GLH pipping the Platinum at the post on noise. A different Asus was also tested and found to be louder but cooler than the other two, coming in 3rd.

Just thought I'd let you know in case noise level is at all an issue, seeing as you specced a very quiet CPU cooler.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up about the Asus card, a quiet PC is always a nice bonus, gonna head to the case sub-forum and see if I can nail down the final part of this build.
Hoping to place an order by tomorrow night, so it's here for me to build on the weekend.
 
Also worth checking if the patriot ram will be ok along with the nocua nhd14, quite a large cooler and the patriots are taller than standard memory modules.
 
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