Out of Touch and Stuck for Choice - New system specs on £3,500?

HCRTrooper

HCRTrooper

HCRTrooper

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Joined
29 Aug 2007
Posts
12
Hi guys!

I'm a British soldier serving in Iraq, and out here it's really, really difficult to keep up to date with the latest and greatest releases as far as gfx and mobo's go, not to mention all this white-man magic SLi and Crossfire stuff.

I've got a budget of £3,500 that's negotiable, and I'm looking to get a beast of a system for the end of December.

Several priorities are dual display, SLi, wads of space and very, very quiet, like an unborn child. You know it's there, but can't hear it. :P

I've also got a Dell system that's less than a year old, cost about £800, is there anyway I can harness its resources in this new system?

I'm tempted to offer a prize to see who can come up with the best specs and the sexiest look, so stay tuned for more on that!

This'll be a buy-the-bits-slap-it-together job, as I'm happy and confident enough with that. I've checked those custom sites too, such as (List of pricey companies), etc, and I notice the price always seems to rocket after a bit, so rather buy them all seperately and do it myself anyway.

Any input would be appreciated!
 
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Hi trooper, welcome to the forums!

I'm sure you'll get plenty of people wanting to help you spend that much, you could probably get two top of the range rigs with that budget!

One thing though, its against the forum rules to mention competitors to OcUK, so I should edit them out before they get grumpy.

PK!
 
I dont see what the big deal about UFO's is personally. Yes they are big but they look like a plain dull cube and a bit home-made in my opinion. There are other big cases out there (mozart, and I think there's a Lian Li one too) that look a lot better made.

PK!
 
With that amount of cash you could pretty much buy whatever you want.

You can go Quad Core for certain. The Q6600 for starters at £187.99
Cooled with a Tuniq Tower around the £40 mark
Sit that on a Asus P5K deluxe for around £160.

I don't see why you will need to go Sli or Crossfire just yet, but a single 8800 GTX like BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB for £350 is more than sufficient. If you want a sound card, I would go with the X-Fi at £58.74.

You could house it in anything you like, I like the Antec P182, but its all down to your preference really, and what the 8800 fits in.

Ram is again down to preference, some like the Ballistix, but I like the OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2 especially if your considering SLi at £117.49

If you dont go SLI then the Corsair 620w is a sufficient PSU at £90 and for storage you wanted plenty of space, then Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB is a good starting point, or you can add more if you want more space, at £66 you cant go wrong, and its quiet.

Finally, for dual monitors try Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - at £870 for the pair.

This comes in, with delivery at just over £2078 so plenty more to play with.

Oh, and finally, welcome to the forums.
 
You want some real advice?

Buy your pc in one go and spec it up when your ready to buy.

Not worth speccing up a machine when your thinking about buying it in 4 months time.
 
Hi guys! Thanks for the welcome!

All fairly good suggestions so far, but I take the point onboard that in four months time, the world could explode and what'd be the point then? :P

However, I'm taking it from the angle that some things can be decided upon now, on the basis that they're top of the range now, and so the prices will only drop. Such as hd's, sound cards, etcetc. I'm of the opinion that as far as sound cards go, c'mon, there is a limit to what you're going to get out of them, and once it effectively plays the music, it's all down to the speaker set you've got to give it the best results.

Same goes for TFT's, in that the top of the range ones now, in four months time, will have been surpassed, but not by a vast deal. Again, the price will only drop.

So what could be a three grand machine now, by then, will be two, two and a half.

I'm quite keen on getting the base setup worked on, if nothing else.
To be honest, main reasoning behind it, is it's something to keep my mind busy when I'm not doing work out here, so I need the distraction!

You guys have been great so far though, some really good suggestions, so keep 'em coming!

[EDIT]

Widescreen? The way forward or not? Not 100% on this one, I've never experienced widescreen before. Comments? Opinions? What about one widescreen, the other standard? Or does that make no sense?
 
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Especially as there will be new stuff out then. New Nvidia cards, Penryn, k10 maybe, X38/48. Complete waste of time pricing up now even if it is just to get an idea as everything will be different come December.
 
personally i would recommend one large monitor over two smaller ones.


something like the dell 30" is very nice, if you wanted you could throw in two more dell 24" on either side.


£3500 is a very big budget! you sure you want to spend that much? £2000 will get you more than a great display and uber rig



personally id say

30" dell 2560x1600 pixel = £800
dual GTX = £600
quad core = £180
2x 500GB = £120
nice mobo = £125
4GB RAM = £130
64bit Vista = £50
DVD RW = £15
Nice case and PSU = £150
add £120 for other

and you have a £2300 rig.

i don’t think you will get more performance than that! more is mostly a waste!
 
^^^show me a case/psu that can fit 2 x GTXs, and power them both.... for 150 quid, and il buy 2 m8 lol:D

to op, i could have gone for dual monitors but decided on the 1 x 30" dell, trust me ,there is enough space.
case: if you are not going on water,forget the mountain mods/Li-Lianv2000b ,but if you are , they are the only ones to consider.
cells offers good advise on rest of spec though m8
 
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