Spec me a possible rig

basmic

basmic

basmic

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10 Apr 2004
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Ok, not been keeping up with the hardware side of things. I'm saving up for a new computer, albeit slowly. :p:o

My budget will be in the £250 region - looking to spend about £70 on a CPU, £120 on a motherboard, and about £60 on a graphic card. If I sell my old bits, I might even have a budget of £300 - allowing me to push my CPU and graphic card budget up by £25 each.

Basically, I just want to see what I would get now for the baseline (£250) end of my budget for now. I probably won't be buying until after Christmas, TBH.

One thing I would like to emphasise on. When I installed my graphic card (approx last year, IIRC), my average electric bill rose by about £5/month. So something I'd like to do, is build an system that consumes less power than my current system. I'll try and get the system plugged in to my power meter later.

But I do want value for money, at the same time.

The machine will be used for moderate internet browsing, MSN, Bittorrent, etc. But I do want to be able to play FEAR smoothly - something I can't do as smoothly as I'd like right now.

I won't need new drives - I have all these. Same for fans, PSU and case (case is a full tower, 6x 5.25" + 2x 3.5" bay ATX).

I'm looking to get new RAM, motherboard, CPU and graphic card. Prefer not to have onboard stuff (except USB) - or I probably just won't use it, in favour of my existing PCI cards.

If I need a new case...well, we'll come to that if I do need one. But hopefully I won't.

Thanks!
 
Your budget is a little limiting so I've gone for what I'd consider a baseline system now (more or less) and it would still allow expansion as/when funds increase. The 7600GT is a decent card, marginally more powerful than the 6800ultra but actually uses less power overall due to efficiencies in design. The motherboard is because it has 2x IDE ports and is good for overclocking. :)

OcUK GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £55.99
(£65.79) £55.99
(£65.79)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel Kit (CT2KIT12864AA667) £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
Sub Total : £234.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £42.56
Total : £285.77
 
semi-pro waster said:
Your budget is a little limiting so I've gone for what I'd consider a baseline system now (more or less) and it would still allow expansion as/when funds increase. The 7600GT is a decent card, marginally more powerful than the 6800ultra but actually uses less power overall due to efficiencies in design. The motherboard is because it has 2x IDE ports and is good for overclocking. :)

OcUK GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £55.99
(£65.79) £55.99
(£65.79)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel Kit (CT2KIT12864AA667) £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
Sub Total : £234.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £42.56
Total : £285.77
Click to expand...
Really I'd like to stick with an Intel chipset - and I'm not sure what the difference between a P35 and 975X chipset is.

RAM - I'd spend the extra for some tighter timings.

Graphic card...is there any performance gain from a 7600 and a 8600?
 
I was just going on the information given in the first post, if you want an Intel chipset fair enough but then I'd go for either a 965P or P35 based motherboard as both should be able to overclock better via the higher FSB speeds than the 975X chipset. Also I'm not sure that many other than the Asus have 2x IDE slots if that is important.

Tighter timings aren't terribly important for Core2Duos but it is your money.

Not too sure on the graphics card question, the 8600GT does offer DX10 compatability but it might well be like the SM3 issue and only of limited usage before the cards are redundant anyway. You are also going way over your initial budget.
 
semi-pro waster said:
I was just going on the information given in the first post, if you want an Intel chipset fair enough but then I'd go for either a 965P or P35 based motherboard as both should be able to overclock better via the higher FSB speeds than the 975X chipset. Also I'm not sure that many other than the Asus have 2x IDE slots if that is important.
Click to expand...
After I buy my next hard-drive soon, I will only have two IDE optical drives (DVD-RW and CD-RW) - and two S-ATA hard-drives. So I could live with one IDE port - or just buy a cheap IDE controller card to tide my optical drives over their lifespan.
semi-pro waster said:
Tighter timings aren't terribly important for Core2Duos but it is your money.
Click to expand...
I've always felt the general consensus was that you got a more responsive machine with tighter timings. I'm not disputing what you're saying, but I'm only using what I've learnt/heard.
semi-pro waster said:
Not too sure on the graphics card question, the 8600GT does offer DX10 compatability but it might well be like the SM3 issue and only of limited usage before the cards are redundant anyway. You are also going way over your initial budget.
Click to expand...
I was just wondering if a £60-odd 8600 would compete or better a £60-odd 7600.
 
Core2Duo != amd

They don't care much for latency's, rather they like bandwidth.

The crucial ram that semi as spec'd you is great, clocks like a monster, cpu is good and the P5N-E is also rock solid and a great overclocker with ram and dual core cpu's.
 
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