Spec Compatiblity Check

mrhelp

mrhelp

mrhelp

Associate
Joined
28 Jun 2006
Posts
17
The £400 Budget Spec for music making and photoshop

Hi Sorry for the obvious question but I just wanna check that I'm buying the best compatible components... Sorry this is my first build! Upgrading my system as mine has self distructed!

I'm just after the minimum so I'm keeping my graphics card and hard drive. This is what I thought;

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939)*(£93.94*Inc. VAT)

Sapphire PURE RD580 CrossFire Advantage (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (£93.94*Inc. VAT)

Mushkin 2GB DDR XP4000 Extreme Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) CAS3 (991483) (MY-000-MK) (£142.12*Inc. VAT)

Next obvious/stupid question. Is this a dual core setup?

Appreciate the help

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Welcome to the forums, what graphics card do you have? Is it AGP or PCI-E as you will need to be careful to get a suitable motherboard.

That system isn't dual core, you need an X2 CPU for that. Any good quality PSU of 400w+ should be sufficient, Akasa, Antec, Enermax, Seasonic and Tagan are all brands worth looking at.
 
If you add me to msn I can talk you through all your questions if you like. :)

If your PC is very old, you may also need a new graphics card due to the change from AGP to PCI-Express.

Make sure you read the FAQ as it contains the rules, and your stay here will be a happy one.
 
Don't have the box anymore but by the looks of it its pci;

gigabyte GV-AF128D REV 1.0 graphics card

Sounds like I'm gonna need a new system!
 
Yewen's helped me out and come up with this, in very little time I might add;

Intel Pentium 4 805 Dual Core "LGA775 Smithfield" 2.66GHz (533FSB) - Retail (CP-116-IN)
£72.95 £72.95
Asus P5LD2-SE Intel 945P (Socket LGA775) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-141-AS)
£65.95 £65.95
Corsair 2GB DDR2 Value Select PC4200 Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT533D2) (MY-096-CS)
£108.95 £108.95
Asus GeForce EN7300GS-HTD 256MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-093-AS)
£37.95 £37.95
Enermax Liberty 400W ELT400AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-026-EN)
£40.95 £40.95


Subtotal £326.75
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £58.75
Total £394.45

What do people think of this? £400 is my budget and I'm not really using it for games. I use it for music making and photoshop :cool:
 
Not gaming, windows work with photoshop.

I have probably gotten the wrong motherboard, been out of the speccing circle for a while but under £400 which is the budget.

Does everything it needs to and at a very high speed, unless someone else has something better for the money?
 
Let me try...
  • Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN) £34.95
  • Asus M2NPV-VM Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-144-AS) £54.95 - excellent onBoard NVIDIA GeForce 6150 GPU ;)
  • GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB5300DC) (MY-030-GL) £54.95
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-166-AM) £181.95
  • Subtotal £326.80
  • Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
  • VAT £58.94
  • Total £395.69
More modern :)

hp7909 :cool:
 
Last edited:
So if I can afford to stretch my budget a little to 1GB ram will hp7909's system be better?

Think I'm gonna order it today once I/you experts decide on the best choice :D
 
Since your not gaming i don't think you'd notice much difference between CPU

I don't think photoshop needs 2 gig of ram either.

Anway if you can wait 3-4 weeks then you can either get the new faster Conroe CPU or be able to pick a cheaper X2 due to AMDs new pricing, to compete with Pentium's new chip
 
Last edited:
Yewen said:
Would that not be slower due to the ram in photoshop?
Click to expand...
Nah. I use Photoshop a lot and I just went from 1GB to 2GB and there's zero difference whatsoever unfortunately. The only things I've found that have benefited are my games performance and the time it takes for my PC to boot up.
 
The price also allows it to have 2gb ram, or a 1gb ram and a second hard drive for the swap file thing.

Is the motherboard that I picked out a good stable one, he does not want to try overclocking at the moment I think.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom