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

InvaderGIR · 15 Dec 2006 at 18:15

Core2Duo is the way to go, overclocking or not! I have an AM2 and it really isn't worth the cash I paid for it.

Also most people on here don't like the Hiper PSUs...personally I have had no problems with my 580 Type-R (in black of course).

InvG

Trusty · 15 Dec 2006 at 18:16

Amd is really out the window, even if hes not overclocking.

I put this spec together which would be far better, its £600 but definatly worth it! Compared with spending £550 on an Amd system!

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£124.54)

Gigabyte GA_965P_S3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Gigabyte
(£88.11)

OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
(£146.86)

Antec NSK6500 Super Midi Tower Case - 430W PSU (CA
(£69.31)

Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
(£30.54)

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1950 Pro Extreme SILENT Heatpipe 256MB GDDR3 VIVO HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£135.11)

NEC AD5170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£19.96)

Sub Total : £522.93
Total : £627.31

The ati card is better aswell, better image quality than the 7900 series and is faster.

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!

InvaderGIR · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:01

How's this setup?

It's £10 over budget...I had to skimp on the RAM, and slightly on the graphics...admitidly I don't know how well that card would run the sorts of resolutions he wants....I can't belive I am about to say this...but it may well be cheaper/better to go the AM2 route :eek:

InvG

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.

InvaderGIR · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:12

Yeah. that system spec will deffinatly be better, and should run well on current games...just not full settings. I know mine can't do full settings well, but the X1800XT I have is holding the whole system back...and I spent about £1200 on mine in Sept.

InvG

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.

InvaderGIR · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:15

It just cooks the card a bit.

BF2 looks good full settings, doesn't run that well online though. NFS Carbon it's a little techy with, and it heats up a lot on most games...don't really have that many that I run though...I have a Zalman aftermarket cooler on it aswell...I recon the thermal compound isn't that good, shall be replacing mid nextweek when I give my components a good xmas clean...and some high performance thermal compound turns up then aswell

InvG

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.

InvaderGIR · 15 Dec 2006 at 21:31

I'm not sure what drivers I am running on, it idles at about 44C with the VF900-Cu running half speed, don't know what it hits in games, but I have the fan up full and after a while the PC crashes...I'm guessing it's the GPU overheating...could be anything though admitidly.

InvG