Spec for £2000 Please

[Aidoscuz]

Hey all

A friend of mine is thinking of building a PC and he's got £2000 to spend. He needs everything, computer, keyboard, monitor, windows, etc. So far I've come up with this:



How does that look to everyone?

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

It looks fine, all is compatible although I'd question the inclusion of the floppy drive as probably unnecessary but for the sake of £5 I suppose it does no harm. I'm not too sure on the soundcard and what benefits it offers over a standard X-fi but if your friend has a very good speaker system it might be worth it.

 

[Cupra]

im glad i got my floppy drive as i needed it for my raid drivers... always good to have one even if you take it out once windows is installed

 

[Edward01]

Whats he going ot be using it for? is he a hard core gamer or mainly internet or work? Personaly i'd probably spend my money like thus.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Samsung SH-W183 18x18 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
Samsung SM-225BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £189.99
(£223.24) £189.99
(£223.24)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £94.99
(£111.61) £94.99
(£111.61)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £169.99
(£199.74) £169.99
(£199.74)
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £104.99
(£123.36) £104.99
(£123.36)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £46.99
(£55.21) £93.98
(£110.42)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Lian-Li PC-V600 Aluminum Mid Tower - Black £74.99
(£88.11) £74.99
(£88.11)
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 Black - Retail (BV3-00007) £23.99
(£28.19) £23.99
(£28.19)
Creative Inspire 7.1 T7900 Speakers - Retail £69.95
(£82.19) £69.95
(£82.19)
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM - 1Pk (M93-00200) £65.99
(£77.54) £65.99
(£77.54)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £339.99
(£399.49) £679.98
(£798.98)
Sub Total : £1,701.81
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £54.95
Vat : £307.43
Total : £2,064.19


Yes thats right, 2 x GTX in that bad boy, that thing will fly. slightly smaller monitor tho but it is half the price, i'd raid those hard drives and stick with XP as it is faster and has better support. and yes I know they're cheap keyboard and mouse but again thats just personal prefrance, I like the simple design stuff, less fancy buttons the better.

 

[semi-pro waster]

slightly smaller monitor tho but it is half the price

It is a very healthy system but the monitor has a lot lower native resolution I believe 1680x1050 if memory serves compared with 1920x1200 of the Dell so I think the dual 8800GTXs might be a bit of a waste there.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Thanks for the replies.

It looks fine, all is compatible although I'd question the inclusion of the floppy drive as probably unnecessary but for the sake of £5 I suppose it does no harm. I'm not too sure on the soundcard and what benefits it offers over a standard X-fi but if your friend has a very good speaker system it might be worth it.

I thought I may as well stick in the floppy drive, I still feel better flashing the BIOS from a floppy rather than within windows. My friend's got some Aego Ms so they should make good use of the X-Fi. Money isn't really an issue so I may as well include the model with the X-Ram

Edward01, that's an interesting system but I think 2 8800GTXs might be overkill. He'll be gaming on it a good bit but probably not enough to justify SLI. It'll be used for photo editing and just general stuff as well. I think he'd benefit more from the bigger monitor and higher resolution as well as the better peripherals.

 

[Edward01]

I'd have to agree, i'f his not a serious gamer go for a better monitor and poss more ram

 

[masslac]

Change the mouse to red when it comes back in stock. SLI is almost entirely needless.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Just a few things before I tell my friend to order - are there any compatibility problems with Vista and the parts in my spec? Have Nvidia released any decent 8 series drivers yet and how are the X-Fi drivers. Also, my friend has an iPod. Is iTunes working properly with Vista 64-Bit yet?

 

[richjs]

If it's for gaming save a little on the components and splash out on the headset, mouse and mousemat, the highest price : performance upgrades by far on a new rig.

Go for something like the Deathadder and the exactmat, feel the smooooooth

 

[Darg]

I personally like the folded over A4 envelope for my mousepad, includes notepad compatibility.

masslacs spec looks excellent. 4GB of RAM will help everything from gaming to photo editing. Even with 2GB I feel that photoshop still slows down a bit when I have a good few 6mp images open in it.

I envy your friend

Apparently the Gigabyte DS3 or DS4 is supposed to be easier to overclock but it seems to be completely down to personal preference as performance is fairly identical between the Asus and the Gigabyte boards.

The Antec 900 case may have better air circulation then the case specced by masslac as well even though it's cheaper. I would let your friend look at both and see which he prefers the look of as the case style is a very personal choice.

 

[Aidoscuz]

I envy your friend

Me too My comp's definitely not too bad, but a shiny new Core 2 Duo and 8800GTX would certainly be nice...

I've used a DS3 before and it was really nice for overclocking as you said so I'd say I'll stick with the DS4. I've heard that the P180 can be a bit of a hassle to work with so I think I'll keep the 900. I'll see if I can squeeze in a better mouse and mat, but I thought the IntelliMouse 3.0 was meant to be one of the best mice ever?

I was thinking of 4GB of RAM but it kind of seemed like overkill. Apart from really heavy photoshop use, would it really ever get used? Do any games out now need that much?

 

[richjs]

Intellimouse is good for high sense, low or very low sense and it's awful, get a deathadder / mx518 in that case.

 

[Darg]

4GB will definitely help everything like I said, of course how much it helps depends on the applications running. In my opinion you can never have too much RAM. I think that we'll definitely start seeing games make use of 4GB soon. I've had some games chew up even my 2GB.

 

[furnace]

Higher res monitor = lower in-game settings later on... I would get a smaller monitor and spend the money elsewhere, personally

 

[HighlandeR]

Seems E6600 and 8800GTX and 2gig and Corsairs the standard spec for just about any 2k pc now adays

No quadcore in there? it may proove useful now that SC uses it nicely and stalker has support for it not to mention upcoming games also....