Newb building new computer, ~£1k budget

MURDEROUS G

MURDEROUS G

MURDEROUS G

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Joined
10 Dec 2007
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445
In the process of building an entirely new machine. Here is the tentative shopping list:

  • Acer AL2416WB 24" TFT Monitor Widescreen 1920x1200 - two of these
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775 (2.40GHz)
  • Maxtor 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - two of these
  • Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 - two of these
  • Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
  • Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P iP35 Socket 775 8-channel audio ATX Motherboard
  • Arctic Power 700W PSU - With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors
  • Thermaltake Soprano VB1000SNS Silver Mid-Tower Case - No PSU

Total cost is like £1k

No graphics card for now as I understand some new ones are coming out in a matter of weeks, so I will probably hold on and get one of those.

I've built computers from individually purchased components before, but they've generally been done on a shoestring budget and I always bought the bits on recommendations from friends. I know very little about hardware myself and the last time I bought any parts was like 18 months ago so I'm even less knowledgeable now.

I'm looking to put together a nice powerful computer for primarily work (and perhaps a little play). Performance is really important, and while it's not quite money-no-object, I'm happy to spend more if it will realise a significant performance gain. How does the above strike you? Are any parts of it lagging behind / is any of it overkill compared to the rest?

I'm looking to overclock as much as possible (not that I know much about that right now); are these components suitable for that purpose?

TIA for any responses,
mg
 
neoboy said:
With your budget I wouldn't be looking at P35 but rather X38/P45 motherboard.
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Why is this?

unless you're looking to squeeze every last bit of OC out your CPU I would save money and get PC6400 RAM.
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OK, fair enough. Is there really not that much difference?

Also by "little play" you mean an occasional game or you a serious gamer and would be looking at new range of graphics cards or something on the lines of 8800GT would suffice?
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I'm not really a serious gamer, no. Right now I'm thinking I'll wait for the new range of cards, read some comparisons and then choose between one of those or a 8800 depending on how rich I feel at the time. TBH an 8800 will probably suffice.
 
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AcidHell2 said:
why two 500GB hard drives? Why not just get one 1TB samsung f1. What's going to be stored on there?
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The work use of the computer involves one databasing application collating data and writing near continuously to a ~10GB PostgreSQL database, and a bunch of other applications making a gazillion queries a second to said database. I was assured that two HDs in RAID would speed up HD access times significantly and would give considerably better performance than one 1TB HD. I don't know if that's right but it's what I was told.

Again why not get 1 set of 4GB ddr2 6400. It is very unlikely you'll need 8500 even if you overclock.
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I guess I will. My assumption was faster is better. If 6400 and 8500 are identical performance-wise then I'll go for the former.

And as for cooling if you want quite, you'll need to get some new case fans and a different cooler and a gfx card cooler.
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This is all well and good (and I appreciate you're trying to help me out) but I'm posting here because I don't know what to look for in terms of better or more suitable components; recommendations would be a lot more helpful than pointing to a couple of things and saying "you will need better XYZ".
 
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