Spec me up scotty

gobbledygook

gobbledygook

gobbledygook

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Joined
31 Mar 2006
Posts
17
Im going to build a whole new PC, thanks to the great advice I got on here a few years ago my current PC has lasted longer than any I have had before, with a few upgrades every now and again. I am therefore pretty clueless as to what to buy now.

I already have a good keyboard, mouse, monitor and optical drives.

I have about £1000 to spend, but could stretch a bit more if needed.

I need:

CPU
Mobo
Memory
Graphics card
HDD (needs to be fast but doesn't need to be big)
Sound card (if onboard is poor)
Speakers (inc. woofer, suround sound would be nice)
Case
Case and CPU Fans
PSU

The spec needs to be fast, have some options for overclocking (nothing extreme) but most of all it should be reasonably QUIET. I mostly use my comp for games, but do a bit of video and picture editing which can be very resource hungry.

Thanks in advance....
 
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail - £246.74
Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £140.99
G.Skill 2GB DDR2 PK PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit - £146.86
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail - £217.36
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM - £58.69
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - OEM - £58.16
Thermaltake VA7000SWA Shark Aluminium Full Tower - Silver - £82.19
OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply - £82.84

TOTAL - £1033.23 inc.VAT

Only thing is the speakers, I haven't added any. :)
 
Thanks, that looks like a good spec.

Do you know how loud the OEM fan on the Intel Core 2 DUO CPU is?, also how loud is the fan on the Radeon card?. I'd strech a few extra quid for quiet fans if there would be a reasonable improvement over OEM, but I'm not sure which to buy!
 
Ah if you can stretch an extra £10 or so, this card will be better for your needs,

HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail - £234.99

It has a better cooler as the ATi standard cooler is loud during start-up so this is silent. Plus is exhausts the heat out of the case. :)

I'm not too sure on the Reatail Intel Cooler, perhaps someone with the CPU can let you know, but if it is like the AMD one's then you should be ok as they are pretty quiet. :) Perhaps ask in the CPU section?

Thanks!
 
That looks worth the extra £10.

I think I'll go for the Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler and maybe a some Papst 120mm fans for quiet cooling. Add a couple of packs of Acousti Ultra-Soft Arrowhead Fan Mounts and hopefuly it should keep things reasonably quiet.

I'm not sure about the case, I like the look of the shark, but I'm not keen on the big hole in the side. I might go for a Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS with a Window Side Panel instead. It looks a bit dull (flame suite on), but is a better fit to my needs.

Does anyone know if you can get HDD shockproof pads seperately?
 
gobbledygook said:
That looks worth the extra £10.

I think I'll go for the Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler and maybe a some Papst 120mm fans for quiet cooling. Add a couple of packs of Acousti Ultra-Soft Arrowhead Fan Mounts and hopefuly it should keep things reasonably quiet.

I'm not sure about the case, I like the look of the shark, but I'm not keen on the big hole in the side. I might go for a Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS with a Window Side Panel instead. It looks a bit dull (flame suite on), but is a better fit to my needs.
Click to expand...

Hey I don't mind, Lian-Li make good cases, I used to have the old P60 case. :)
 
I have been rooting about and I'm thinking of getting the following:


BU-043-OK Intel Core 2 DUO LGA775 E6600 2.40GHz Retail / Asus P5B Deluxe / 2GB GeIL PC2-6400C4 DDR2 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-043-OK) £457.97
GX-053-HT HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-HT) £193.99
HD-079-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-079-SE) £49.95
HS-003-SY Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, LGA755) (HS-003-SY) £27.95
SC-043-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - OEM (SC-043-CL) £49.50
CA-038-LL Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-038-LL) £47.95
CA-063-LL Lian-Li PC-60/PC-7 Window Side Panel - Silver (CA-063-LL) £18.95
CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG) £62.99
FG-007-PA Papst 4412 F/2 GLL Silent 120mm Fan - 3 Pin (FG-007-PA) x3 £35.85
FG-001-AF Acousti Ultra-Soft Arrowhead Fan Mounts - 8 Pack (FG-001-AF) x2 £5.90
AC-000-AC Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) £5.50
SP-057-CL Creative Inspire 7.1 T7900 Speakers - OEM (SP-057-CL) £49.95

Total (inc VAT and delivery) £1,211.90

Will that PSU be enough?
Does anyone know how good the onboard sound on the PB5 is? I'm not sure I need a seperate sound card and the Asus website is down at the moment.
 
The PC-7 is a lovely case, you can't go wrong for looks. If you want to show off the internals the window is a good choice. I personally don't want to show mine off so have the standard panel.

The Acousti fan mounts are nice, as yet I haven't used the fans that are mounted with them as the rest of my rig doesn't get here till mid next week, but the fans are solid in the case but have some play in the rubber (if the vibrate all the vibration will be taken up by the mounts and not the case providing less noise).
Fitting them is daunting as you think you are going to rip them in half, but pull and they will pop into the fans nicely (make sure you've fitted the mounts to the case first :p)

Due to the fact that you get 6 mounts in a pack, you should only need to order one pack (it is only £3 though so if you need more in future you have them).
 
gobbledygook said:
Will that PSU be enough?
Does anyone know how good the onboard sound on the PB5 is? I'm not sure I need a seperate sound card and the Asus website is down at the moment.
Click to expand...

I would say that PSU would be fine, a decent 480w PSU or above will run that lot. So no problems there. :)

I would defo recommend the sound-card though, it blows any on-board sound away quite easily. ;)
 
I was just about to place the order when I noticed the Scythe Ninja had mysteriously disappeared from my cart. I went to add it again and its now out of stock :mad:

Looks like someone bought the last one while I was putting the order together.

I was going to take Wednesday off to wait in for the delivery and to put it all together. Looks like I'm going to have to wait a bit longer....
 
Oh FFS, the Lian-Li PC-7 is out of stock and looks like it's never coming back.

Everything else arrived today (mine cooler instead of Ninja though grrrrr), but with no case to build it into there wasn't much point.

OCUK phone lines are engaged 24/7 and with the citylink depot a 2.5hr round trip away it looks like I'm going to have to take another day off work waiting in for the case. I'm quickly losing my patience with OCUK....
 
That's a lovely spec you've worked out, and almost exactly that which I would have recommended for your budget :)

Lian Li cases are simply lovely, so well built and I love their simple but quality appearance. The Tagan PSU is really nice as well, a fine choice. The only other thing I would change is the HDD - I'd get a Raptor for fast loading ;)

I built a PC of almost this exact spec just a couple of weeks ago for a friend of mine, and it was a beast! I just wish he would have let me overclock it as well ;)
 
Now they are having a laugh:

Thank you for the webnote, your order was shipped on the 7th and as there are no notes left on the system I assume the case did not arrive with the rest of the items? If this is so we have to wait for the case to either arrive with us or for City Link to admit that the item is officially lost which they claim a 28 day period for unfortunately.

Regards,

Peter Pallister
Customer Service
Click to expand...

So their idea of customer service is that when they screw up your order you have to wait 28 days before they sort it out!!!. I am not a happy customer. In future I will be using this forum to research what hardware I need, but I will be buying it from somewhere else.
 
Well to be honest if it's left OcUK on the 7th and not arrived and the otehr stuff has it's Citylink you should be anoyed with and not OcUK. Citylink will have different policies to OcUK regarding goods, so if something is lost OcUK can't do anything as it's in Citylink's hands. Citylink should send it back to OcUK, but it'll probably get lost in which case it's up to them to sort it all out with OcUK.

You'll find that if you buy elsewhere this can easily still happen, and lots of people use Citylink as their main courier so you'd still have the 28day wait if they lost something. I'm sure most couriers run by a policy like this too.

There is nothing you or OcUK (or any other retailer) can do about lost in transit items other than try to get Citylink to sort it.

InvG
 
The guy I spoke to on the phone when I finally got through after trying all afternoon said the case wasn't sent because it wasn't in stock. He said I could change the case if I sent a webnote.

The guy who answered the webnote had different ideas. Someone has got it wrong somewhere. Was the case sent or wasn't it?

Either way, if citylink have screwed up, it's not my problem. OCUK should send out a replacement to me and take up the problem of the missing parcel with citylink. They should also refund my charge for "next day delivery" and apologise. Any costs they incur is between them and citylink.

When Im spend £1200 with a company I expect good customer service. Having to wait 28 days after I paid for next day delivery because they can't be arsed to argue with their sub contractor is poor service IMO.
 
You've just reminded me!! I need to speak to OCUK about a delivery refund as well, totally forgot! CityLink again failing to deliver a next day item, promised a refund and haven't got it. :rolleyes:

(Oh and this thread will probs get closed soon as shop talk is not allowed :( )
 
The items you ordered are the responsibility of OcUK until they are delivered to you. You should speak with them again and ask them to find out what the situation actually is, as by that webnote they give two possible explanations.

When you bought the goods, you made a contract with OcUK. A part of that contract should be a stated delivery date, or a manner of knowing when the goods will be delivered (such as next day delivery). In order to fulfill this contract, OcUK should make sure that you receive ALL of the items in the time that was specified, unless informed otherwise before hand (for example if an item was out of stock).

You do not have to wait 28 days for a claim to be made to the courier company. You should speak with OcUK and give them a reasonable date on which to deliver the goods (a reasonable date imo is next day if the item is in stock). If they do not meet this deadline then you have the right to claim compensation, including costs such as taking time off work to receive the goods. You also have the right to cancel the contract and get a full refund (and this will likely be for the whole order, not just one item).

Sorry if this upsets anyone but this is the law which EVERY retailer should obey.
 
Well it was a happy ending. A couple of web notes later and the very helpful sales team sorted me out with a PC-60 case and a few changes to the case fans I needed. Its now sat on my desk doing 3.034Ghz without even trying too hard.

I probably will use OCUK to buy stuff again, but with the system I have now it won't be for a while!
 
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