Spec Me, £800

JamesU2005

JamesU2005

JamesU2005

Soldato
Joined
30 Nov 2005
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London
Dear all,

What's the best spec PC I can get for £800.

I don't need a TFT, or a HardDrive as I recently bought a 250gb which I haven't used! :rolleyes:

So this could be used for a better spec Graphics Card, as I was thinking of getting an 3800+ X2 as from the sounds of things they overclock great!

The PC will be mainly used for gaming, 1GB RAM should be ok, 2GB would be ideal, but I can compromise, unless you recommend its worth more in terms of performance than a slighlty better GFX.

The only problem I have is that I have never built a PC before, and my main worry is that I will install the Motherboard wrong, e.g. short cirtcuit it or something, as this looks to be the hardest part?

Thanks , look forward to your suggestions.
 
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REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
MY-079-CS Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)
£119.95 £119.95
MB-040-GI Gigabyte K8N SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-040-GI)
£54.95 £54.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£127.95 £127.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£214.95 £214.95
CA-038-LL Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-038-LL)
£47.95 £47.95
CA-006-HP Hiper HPU-4B580 Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Blue (CA-006-HP)
£52.95 £52.95
CD-043-LG LG GSA-H10ABAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-043-LG)
£22.95 £22.95
KB-073-LG Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 - Black/Silver (KB-073-LG)
£34.95 £34.95
Subtotal £676.60
VAT £118.41
Total £795.01
 
Don't worry about building the pc, most of it is very simple and can only be attached one way so there isn't much you can do wrong.
Look at this guide if your not sure
http://sysbuild.corsairmemory.com/report.aspx?id=2

This spec has a dual core which will clock well along with a good quality psu and case. I've included a crossfire board incase you want to add another gfx card in the future. The X1800XT 512MB should handle most games that are out at high quality.
If you wanted to make it cheaper you could go for the Antec case with the 450W psu.

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM) 1
£169.95 £169.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£15.95 £15.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS) 1
£64.95 £64.95
CD-026-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE) 1
£25.95 £25.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL) 1
£89.95 £89.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) 1
£214.95 £214.95
CA-006-TG Tagan TG580-U22 580W ATX2.01 2Force SLi Compliant Silent PSU (CA-006-TG) 1
£69.95 £69.95
CA-038-LL Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-038-LL) 1
£47.95 £47.95
Subtotal £699.60
VAT £122.43
Total £822.03
 
Thanks for the super super fast response guys.

Lee I do like the look of your Spec, I have experience of installing a CD-ROM, RAM, GFX Cards, and PCI Cards, but have never installed a motherboard or CPU.

One thing do cases have mounts already installed, if not is it just a case of lining them up with the motherboard? Then screw the motherboard into the Mounts?
 
The cases should have mounts already installed, you just have to line the motherboard up and screw it in. Very easy to do
 
Don't worry about it, they will line up. I've built loads of pc's and have never had a problem with a motherboard not fitting a case. All skt 939, skt A even intel boards all have the holes in the same place.

rmuir said:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=237&chart=68&model2=241

would seem x2 is not worth the extra.

unless otherwise corrected. would better ram not be worth it for games?
Click to expand...
I would go for dual core as it is more future proof, the only reason dual core is not faster in that benchamark is because far cry isn't optimised for dual core. More new games will be made better to support dual core.
Quake 4 is 60% faster on a dual core over a single core.
 
At the moment the 3800 X2 is a good guy on the grounds that since its dual core once programs and games become multi-threaded the increase in performance will justify buying it now. As for the memory, in most cases 1GB is enough. 2Gb will remove the stutter and loading times will be slighty better but i find unless your doing video encoding 2Gb is way too much. The performance increase between 1.5gb and 2gb is less than 3%. Infact it can harm your system to run 2gb as the board is forced to run the memory with worse timings to be able to cope with it. And yes... your better off paring a nvidia SLi board with a nvidia card.

If i were you i would drop down to 1Gb. This would allow you to get a 7900GT and it will be closer to your chosen budjet.

As for building the pc from scratch, you have expierence in putting in drives, thats great, your 80% of the way there. As long as you make sure the motherboard is securly fixed to your case the rest should be a doddle. Nearly all motherboards unless otherwise specified will come with a manual which should tell you what goes where.

Hope this helps

Building a Pc Guide

And here's a suggestion for your system. Its a good system and its under budget

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£169.95

MB-088-AB Abit KN8 SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AB)
£69.95

MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£44.95

GX-098-AS Asus GeForce 7900 GT/2DHT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-098-AS)
£214.95

CD-016-AS Asus DRW-1608P2 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-016-AS)
£24.95

CA-017-TT Thermaltake VB1000BNS Soprano SuperMidi Tower - Black (CA-017-TT)
£39.95

CA-045-AN Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-045-AN)
£62.50

KB-011-LG Logitech Internet Pro Keyboard (Black) - OEM (KB-011-LG)
£8.95

KB-003-MS Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0A - OEM (N48-00022) (KB-003-MS)
£14.95

Subtotal £651.10
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £14.95
VAT £116.56
Total £782.61

And if you really want to round this system off to a truly great system and dont mind spending extra add this

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL)
£69.95

Only downside of adding the X-Fi is that it increases the price to £864.80.

If you want to add another 1Gb to this system i suggest you take ocuk value 2Gb Pack (2x1Gb) which would take the price up to £841.36
 
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Thanks guys.

I should have mentioned I will be doing Video Encoding so the system is just about right.

Are there many cases that include Removable Motherboard trays but don't look like a 1980's Server?
 
Believe me its easy to do.... best way to practice... get a old pc and take it apart...noting where everything goes (pc has to work first or its useless to do) then rebuild it and see if it works
 
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