please check new pc plan...

mac · 28 May 2007 at 19:30

this is what iv come up with, would be good to keep around the budget of £500

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail - £111.61

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) - £19.96

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) - £72.84

2 x Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 80GB 800AAJS SATA-II 8MB Cache
- (in RAID0) - £56.38

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £70.49

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI - £99.86

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) - £63.44

TOTAL (inc VAT + Shipping) = £506.27

also overclocking is deffinately intended

Jaffa_Cake · 28 May 2007 at 19:47

Whats your total budget for the system? ( don't want to go work all that out

)

mac · 28 May 2007 at 20:12

sorry, just updated the original post. budget is £500 +/- about £20.

Azza · 28 May 2007 at 20:15

mac said:
sorry, just updated the original post. budget is £500 +/- about £20.

Why the 2 x 80Gb hard drives?

You can get a 320Gb hard drive for that much cash.

mac · 28 May 2007 at 20:16

so i can raid them for double transfer speeds (raid0)

Jaffa_Cake · 28 May 2007 at 20:17

mac said:
so i can raid them for double transfer speeds (raid0)

Not quite double. I have 500GB of space in RAID0, not worth it IMO. Theres also the issue that if one goes bang, wave bubye to your data! It does make boot a tiny bit faster but after that theres not much difference. The amount of time you spend slotting in floppys at Windows install you have wasted the amount of time that will be saved by booting from RAID ( if that makes sense )

*goes to make new spec*

Azza · 28 May 2007 at 20:20

mac said:
so i can raid them for double transfer speeds (raid0)

It wont make a huge real world difference.

Especially in games etc. You would be better off with a bigger hard drive with a bigger cache.

Jaffa_Cake · 28 May 2007 at 20:21

Just noticed, you don't have a case. Is that on purpose or do you need one?

mac · 28 May 2007 at 20:37

yea its ok i have an atx case, tft monitor and keyboard + usb mouse. iv also got a pata cd writer drive.

it seems that everyone on ocuk seems to fall into either the 'pro raid' group or 'anti raid' group - its like marmite. iv seen hdisktune graphs that show average transfer speeds doubling with access times not increasing much...the only draw back being increased cpu usage. but moreover, iv heard people insisting theres no difference. the result of which leaves me a little confused (as does crossfireing gfx cards but lets not get into that

)

and also, iv heard the performance of the raid is heavily dependant on the hardisks used and the sata controlers their using - and the motherboard.

btw, space isnt really an issue as i use external drives to keep the things id want to save in case of a fire

mac · 28 May 2007 at 23:20

...so anyway, what about the rest of the system? how about an e4400 instead? also is the psu a bit over the top or is it just right?

Jaffa_Cake · 28 May 2007 at 23:31

Hope you bend well because this is quite a stretch.

GFX will massivly pwn the X1950.