New PC - Gaming + Development

tristala

tristala

tristala

Associate
Joined
18 May 2007
Posts
10
Hi all,

Brand new to these forums and have been looking at building a new PC have thrown together the spec below and would welcome any feedback. Gonna stick a couple of 22" widescreen monitors on it, just not decide which ones yet! Samsung SN226BW are the favourites at the mo. Anyway have a look, rip it apart and generally tell me what you think :) . Thanks

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Welcome to the forums, it isn't a bad specification but there are quite a few changes I'd suggest to make it a bit better and cheaper.

The cooler is decent but there are a lot better available - Noctua NH-U12F or Tuniq Tower being two obvious candidates.
The DVDRW would be better as a SATA model - NEC and Samsung do good models.
The PSU is overkill, the Corsair HX 620w is more than sufficient, even if you decide to SLi 8800GTXs.
Unless you are seriously overclocking the Ram might be overkill, the Crucial Ballistix PC5300 C3 uses the same chips as the Crucial Ballistix PC8500 and is much cheaper.
I'd change the hard drives to AAKS models as they are newer and quicker.
Finally the motherboard is very expensive even for an Nforce 680 SLi based version, if you aren't likely to go for SLi (and with 22" monitors I wouldn't bother) the Gigabyte DS3P will offer great performance and overclocking for less than half the price. :)
 
Welcome to the forums! :D

For what it's worth, I'd say the RAM and the PSU are a little bit overkill. Are you planning on adding another 8800GTX and more hard drives? Only reason I can see for needing that much juice. What about OS? You'll need 64bit to use 4GB RAM.

The 680i motherboards are also a little expensive for what you get. 650i board will do most everything you want for less cash.

And if you're clocking, maybe a heavyweight cooler like a Noctua or Scythe Ninja.
 
give that man a cookie, tore it apart in a single paragraph.

/me nods to give a approval and gets back to revision.
 
Just to give you another option this is probably what I'd choose going on the information you have given so far. It should be cheaper or on a par plus it includes Vista which, as was pointed out is necessary for 4gb of Ram or over (with a 32bit OS you will only see somewhere around 3.5gb). :)

Noctua NH-U12F (Socket LGA775/754/939/940/AM2) Heatsink £27.99
(£32.89) £27.99
(£32.89)
Samsung SH-183LBEBN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.96) £16.99
(£19.96)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £48.99
(£57.56) £97.98
(£115.12)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £314.99
(£370.11) £314.99
(£370.11)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3P (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £291.99
(£343.09) £291.99
(£343.09)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Lian Li PC-A16B Aluminium Full-Tower - Black £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £63.99
(£75.19) £63.99
(£75.19)
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK) £114.99
(£135.11) £114.99
(£135.11)
Sub Total : £1,183.89
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £209.45
Total : £1,406.29
 
any reason you want to go quad core, as its pretty pointless at the moment considering their isnt many dual core games/programs out their isnt that many quad core programs or games, you could sacrafice about £150 of that quad core for a e6420 or e6600 and get a quad core when they become more mainstream, and from what i hear the quad cores will be the same price range of the current dual cores in a month or two.
 
Taking onboard your commments about the RAM and Power supply and have changed to the OCZ RAM and the Corsair PSU.

I'm going to be running Vista Ultimate on the machine, as I have this already and the reason I want to go for Quad Core as this machine is unlikely to be updated in the next 3 years, by which time Quad cores will be given away with cornflakes, so I'm just going for the a slightly bigger hit now rather than later.

I would like to eventually got to SLI'd 8800GTXs but if the Corsair PSU will handle that I'm more than happy. I would always go for 2 HDD (1 for OS, 1 for Data) and the I backup to the network or usb/esata external drives

Case, At this level I think has to come down to personal style as much as anything! And I'm not a big fan of the Akasa or Lian-li cases, lookswise anyway :p.

So I think the only thing I really need to decide on now, is the mobo.

My reasons for going for the Abit were as follows :
Nividia chipset and fully SLI comptaible
Dual gigabit network
3 x PCI-E 16 slots
2 x e-sata
and the free PCI-E wifi card is a bonus

Hope this all makes sense, and I'm still open to suggestion :)

thanks again for all your help
 
Case is fair enough, it is mainly down to personal preference like you say, I just saw the Stacker was out of stock so I picked what looked like a suitable alternative.

The Abit is expensive but then it isn't hugely cheaper to buy any other Nforce 680 SLi motherboard and then add a wifi card so if you will likely be going for SLi then the Abit is probably as good as any other solution. :)
 
ok.. think i'm there...

Hi all,

After much deliberation I think i've finally got a spec down so was hoping that y'all in your infinite wisdom could cast an eye over it and let me know of any compatability problems etc.

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Or if I'm missing anything obvious !

Thanks in advance for you help :)
 
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