Spec check please

Associate
Joined
27 Feb 2007
Posts
390
Location
England, Plymouth
Building a pc for a mate,

He wants it specifically for gaming,

This is my basket, total is £801 with delivery with a few fans and neons to go on. His maximum was arround £900

Anyone recommend anything better, or would use different components?

Thanks Shr3k

Basket.JPG
 
Swap the case for an Antec 300 or Coolermaster 690.

Swap the two 9800GT's for one ATI 4870 (trust me, it will be much faster/more efficient).

Maybe swap the PSU for a Corsair TX650W too?

Oh, and swap the P35 board for a P45.
 
Well theres a p45 on offer for the same price so ive gone for that one

You will not get sli with a P45 chipset board though so the two 9800GT's are a waste of time. For sli you need a Nvidia chipset board. Surprised nobody else picked that up. If it's just for gaming then you are better off with a E8000 series cpu. Ditch the Hiper psu for something like the Corsair HX620. That case is'nt that good for cooling either.
 
i would go with a tuniq or noctua cooler over the one you specced too - especially if you must have a quad
if its going to be used for games - then a dual core E8400 would suit you better than the quad - the dual core i mention is higher clocked and will be faster in games

my quad is used for encoding and editing HD video from my camera.

get a nec sony dvdrw £16 - nice and cheap. better rep than the samsung
unless you NEED lightscribe
 
ok, theres a lot of changes you should make to the spec in the pic, here is my suggestion:




The 4870 is better than nvidia's equivalent in its price range: the GTX 260 and much better than a 9800GT. like pasty muncher said above, you can not have 2 Nvidia cards in SLI on an intel chipset motherboard(p35,p45,x38,x48) but you would need an Nvidia chipset (650,690,750,790 etc) but Nvidia chipsets are not as good as Intel chipsets for stability and overclocking.. and are more expensive. I chose the 1Gb version of the 4870 rather than 512mb as its only a couple of pounds dearer and will help your mate especially if he has a high res monitor.

The p45 ASUS motherboard is a very popular board, stable and good for overclocking, considerably better than the p35 in your pictured spec.

i chose a 640gb hard drive as 320gb or 640gb hard drives have denser platters and are therefore faster than 250/500/750 gb hard drives.

If your mate is using the pc primarily for gaming and not video encoding etc then a dual core is better than a quad core as games are not optimised for 4 cores at the moment, and won't be for a while. It's better to get a higher clocked dual core which overclocks really well such as the E8400 which should get to 4Ghz very easily with the p45 motherboard i recommended and the CPU cooler that i will come onto..

The antec 300 is a really good gaming case with lots of helpful features such as dust filters and a cable management section at the back... it also comes with 2 pre-installed fans with speed switches. Its still good for the price at overclockers but can be bought for about 12 pounds cheaper if you look elsewhere. It doesn't have frontal intake fans but has slots for them which is why i added in 2 Xilence fans which will definitely improve airflow from the front to the back of the case. This case is by far the best one in its price range, you wont find many people that would go for another case..

The Hiper Power supply you have in your spec isn't a very good choice, they are renowned for blowing up. i made the mistake of getting a cheap power supply when i bought my pc a few months ago and it didnt have the connectors i needed for my graphics card and some cables weren't long enough, so i ended up buying another one. The corsair 520 (the one i got) is easily powerful enough for the spec i made and is modular, meaning you have individual wires you plug in and use only the ones you need, improving cable management. if you would like some more juice then you can get a Corsair 650Watt for the same price but it isn't modular, id recommend this for if your mate is considering adding another 4870 in the future.

The noctua CPU cooler is just as good for cooling your CPU as all the other premium ones, but is much quieter, noctua being renowned for their quiet fans whilst still peforming well.

the 8000 ram you chose is a good choice as regular 6400 ram can struggle a bit if your clocking up to 4ghz on your CPU if you want 1:1 RAM/FSB timings which is helpful.

hope iv helped, if you have got any questions then just post here :)
 
Any reason why not to get 2 4870's?

its obviously the price of another 4870, but also to get full crossfire support (16x lanes for each 4870) you would need to get an X38 motherboard such as:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

X38 motherboards are more expensive than p45 boards and slightly less stable/overclockable.

You would need an X38 for 2 4870's because the p45 board only has 16x for one card, and switches to 2x 8x when another is added, which results in a bit of a performance hit.
 
Last edited:
Ok flinco, i have 900 to 1000 to spend here, and another 4870 adn that board is affordable but is it worth it?
 
Ok, if i was you i would definitely go for a 4870x2 which is basically two 4870's in one graphics card. It will be a little bit better than two 4870's in crossfire and quite a bit cheaper. you can also fix it in one PCI slot in your motherboard and will get full 16x support (as its just one card), therefore you can go for the cheaper, better P45 motherboard that i recommended in the pic i posted.

get this one:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

This is the fastest card you can buy....

as to whether its worth it, what resolution is the monitor your mate will be playing on?
 
Last edited:
Edit: Quad is for video encoding, so not only gaming? Is this ok or stilla dvise dual core?

OK seams to be sorted,

This spec ok?

basket2.JPG
 
If you're not doing much video encoding, then the Quad Core is pretty much useless.
Would rather go with the 8400 or the 8500.
 
Both processors will game and encode, however the Dual Core i recommended will be better for gaming but worse for encoding.

The CPU cooler in the pic above would not be the one i'd choose because:

The noctua i recommended sucks in air from the front of the case where fresh air has been drawn in from the frontal intake fans. It then expels the hot air from the heatsink straight out of the exhaust fan at the back of the case. This reduces the cases ambient air temperature, reducing the temperature of all your components.

The zalman one you have above pushes out air at all angles, not straight out of the back of the case, increasings the cases temperature and therefore all the components inside.

if you want to save some money on the CPU cooler then go for:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...oling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775)

The RAM you have chosen is good, but not as good as the set i recommended if you plan to overclock above about 3.6Ghz (with the dual core chip i recommended you can easily get 4Ghz), for the reasons i stated in my first post. If you are leaving the processor without overclocking it then the RAM you picked is fine.

Here is the RAM i recommended:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ)

other than that it looks a really good setup! again, what resolution or screen size is the monitor your mate will be using with this PC?
 
Back
Top Bottom