Spec check please

celliott · 15 Dec 2006 at 17:51

I have quickly put this spec together for a mate who has a Max budget of £550 for a new PC.

This system is to be used for gaming at 1280x1024 resolution. He is not willing to overclock, hence I opted for a AMD Athlon64 AM2 CPU.

One thing I am sure about is the retail cooler. Are the retail coolers on these chips different from the original 939 ones? My 939 AMD cooler was absolutly awful at cooling a 3500+ newcastle. Do you think the cooler will be ok?

Spec:

Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case - No PSU
Hiper HPU-4M580 Type R 580W ATX2.2 PSU - Black
MSI K9N Neo-F nForce 550 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail
NEC AD5170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB ST380811AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
Gainward BLISS GeForce 7900 GS "Golden Sample" SILENT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC)

£548.57 Inc VAT & Postage.

Opinions please

celliott · 15 Dec 2006 at 18:33

Thanks for your comments. Yes I know Core 2 Duo is better and the ATI card you specified is better, but as I stated £550 is the ABSOLUTE MAX he can spend on the system. I already had a Core 2 spec and it came out too high.

If you can spec a Core 2 Duo system for £550 inc postage then great, as I certainly cant!

celliott · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:08

Exactly. I know Core 2 Duo's are the CPU's to go for but for his budget AM2 is just fine and it still allows him to upgrade in future.

He is upgrading from an AMD Athlon Thoroughbred 1.1GHz with a Geforce MX440, so anything is going to be a huge improvement!

Chris.

celliott · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:12

What games cant you achieve full settings in?

My rig with X1800XT (see sig) runs everything in max no probs.

celliott · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:24

What sort of temps are you getting? They do run quite hot.

I put a Accelero X2 on mine a few days ago, Idles 43c, after a couple of hours of gaming its around 58-60c. Thats overclocked to 680/790.

BF2/2142 both run just fine online. I dont particuarly like the latest drivers though, im running 6.10 as the 6.11 seemed to slow things down.