Spec needed, £1000 budget for basics

Bahney · 23 May 2006 at 11:04

ok well forgetting about the case for a moment, this is my shopping cart as we speak and i am hoping my final shopping cart as it looks pretty good at the moment(i think).

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI) X2
£52.95 £105.90

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£264.95 £264.95

Mushkin 2GB DDR EM3200 Enhanced Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) CAS3 (991461) (MY-006-MK)
£109.95 £109.95

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3056) (GX-047-CO)
£239.95 £239.95

DFI LanParty UT NF3 Ultra (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-016-DF)
£64.95 £64.95

CoolerMaster Praetorian 732 Aluminum Case (No PSU) - Black (CA-087-CM)
£89.95 £89.95

Tagan TG420-UO2 420W I-XEYE ATX2.0 Silent PSU (CA-003-TG)
£43.95 £43.95
Subtotal £919.60
VAT £160.93
Total £1,080.53

phew!

BigDom · 23 May 2006 at 11:08

I'd choose from

MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£59.95 £59.95
MB-088-AS Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)
£54.95 £54.95
MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95

Probably one of the Asus ones are you really don't need SLI with you getting a ATI chipset. Top one is my favourite.

hp7909 · 23 May 2006 at 11:17

Bahney said:
{snip}DFI LanParty UT NF3 Ultra (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-016-DF)
£64.95 £64.95{snip}

AGP m.board NOT PCI-E!

& watercooling's only good if OCing like crazy & don't think you'll see any real huge befits on rig spec'd above. Also, if you are coming from a 'low' performing PC you'll be amazed by the suggestions so far, i.e. keep WC off for a few months or even maybe a year.

EDIT:

Bahney said:
Tagan TG420-UO2 420W I-XEYE ATX2.0 Silent PSU (CA-003-TG)

Get something beefier, 420w is chancing it with the above rig, i.e. could power it but later on say you add another hard disk or graphics card it might no be up-to-it. Plus wear & tear affects the PSUs meaning it might draw more as it gets older

Bahney · 23 May 2006 at 13:53

right then ! finally, lol looks like this is it, sorry about the mobo i got mixed up Doh newb mistake! and i will give the WC a miss then i have added a cooler to my order instead, i have gone back to the thermaltake case....i just love it, lol and now i have the lan party mobo i can put a UV light in there for some kicks

right then, this will get ordered in the next day or so, so any suggestions or changes people can recomend would be good before then ;P does it get the final thumbs up from u guys?

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI) X2
£52.95 £105.90

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£264.95 £264.95

Mushkin 2GB DDR EM3200 Enhanced Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) CAS3 (991461) (MY-006-MK)
£109.95 £109.95

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3056) (GX-047-CO)
£239.95 £239.95

Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-001-SS)
£69.95 £69.95

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£11.95 £11.95

Thermaltake VB1000BWS Soprano SuperMidi Tower - Black (CA-015-TT)
£42.95 £42.95

Akasa Serial ATA 45cm DAYGLO Blue Data Cable (CB-001-AK)
£2.95 £5.90 X2

Subtotal £931.45
VAT £163.01
Total £1,094.46

i am going from 512 2100 ram / 2500barton cpu / geforce fx 5200 - a big diffrence i assume ? i remember playing games like counter strike etc and my pc owning, lol ahh how times change

thanks once again for all the help u guys have been great, thank you !

hp7909 · 23 May 2006 at 14:27

Bahney said:
{snip}geforce fx 5200 - a big diffrence i assume ? i

Yes! Had that card and it was rubbish in games! Only good thing about it was it had Video-In

Above spec looks fine to me (/wait for 2nd opinion because been staring at a monitor for quite a few hours now

). If you want to find out what performance is like, i suggest you do a search for 3DMark, Super PI, etc. Basically just have a wonder round the threads & see what you've just gotten yourself into

BigDom · 23 May 2006 at 14:33

You've got two disks.. your NOT going RAID 0 are you?

The benefits are negligable at best and you carry double the chance of losing data.

lucifersam · 23 May 2006 at 14:51

if your going to RAID the go RAID 1 double fault tolerance and increased read speed from reading both disks at the same time, i would do this if i was building a machine now

Bahney · 23 May 2006 at 14:56

aww ********...i know nothing about raid, lol suppose i should read up on it but i was just going to mirror the drives?

my idea was just to wack 1 drive in and get the os up and working etc and then read up on it and sort out installing the second one a week or so later, lol would i be better off getting 1 larger SATA drive and an external usb one for all my other stuff ?

BigDom · 23 May 2006 at 14:58

Mirror is great, no extra capacity but gives excellent redundancy which is nice and quicker read times ( then even AID 0 which is overally popular). Mirror'd = RAID 1, Striped = AID 0.

As for what I would do? Well 250gig should be ample for a good time.

lucifersam · 23 May 2006 at 15:33

basically:
rapid performance + capacity + price of 2 disks - bad reliabilty = RAID0 (striped)
Good read performance only + price of 2 disks + very good reliabilty - capacity of only 1 disk = RAID1 (mirrored)
Single disk the obvious stuff but its cheaper to get 1 320GB disk than 2 160GB disks and RAID

im still a fan of RAID1 because of disk redundancy

Bahney · 23 May 2006 at 15:39

ahh sod this i will just get 1 SATA drive and use that, and get an external usb hard drive, lol

if i buy 2 SATA drives i mirror them but i loose half the storage space? that is crazy, lol i already use over 350GB on my current pc

Monstermunch · 23 May 2006 at 16:27

Bahney said:
right then ! finally, lol looks like this is it, sorry about the mobo i got mixed up Doh newb mistake! and i will give the WC a miss then i have added a cooler to my order instead, i have gone back to the thermaltake case....i just love it, lol and now i have the lan party mobo i can put a UV light in there for some kicks

right then, this will get ordered in the next day or so, so any suggestions or changes people can recomend would be good before then ;P does it get the final thumbs up from u guys?

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI) X2
£52.95 £105.90

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£264.95 £264.95

Mushkin 2GB DDR EM3200 Enhanced Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) CAS3 (991461) (MY-006-MK)
£109.95 £109.95

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3056) (GX-047-CO)
£239.95 £239.95

Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-001-SS)
£69.95 £69.95

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£11.95 £11.95

Thermaltake VB1000BWS Soprano SuperMidi Tower - Black (CA-015-TT)
£42.95 £42.95

Akasa Serial ATA 45cm DAYGLO Blue Data Cable (CB-001-AK)
£2.95 £5.90 X2

Subtotal £931.45
VAT £163.01
Total £1,094.46

i am going from 512 2100 ram / 2500barton cpu / geforce fx 5200 - a big diffrence i assume ? i remember playing games like counter strike etc and my pc owning, lol ahh how times change

thanks once again for all the help u guys have been great, thank you !

Excellent spec.....The only thing I would change is the case to the Lian-Li PC7 cos it's better built, cools better and is just...well Better!

hp7909 · 23 May 2006 at 16:43

Bahney said:
ahh sod this i will just get 1 SATA drive and use that, and get an external usb hard drive, lol

if i buy 2 SATA drives i mirror them but i loose half the storage space? that is crazy, lol i already use over 350GB on my current pc

You can still get 2 SATA hard disks and have them as JBOD giving you a total space of roughly 500GB (in your case)

Bahney · 23 May 2006 at 17:20

JBOD ?

i really need to get back into the loop, lol what is this and how do i enable it? use it ? etc sounds good to me

ideally i want 2X sata drives and 500gb and if i need anymore space i will get an external usb hard drive

BigDom · 23 May 2006 at 17:33

Bahney said:
JBOD ?

i really need to get back into the loop, lol what is this and how do i enable it? use it ? etc sounds good to me

ideally i want 2X sata drives and 500gb and if i need anymore space i will get an external usb hard drive

Ok JBOD = RAID 0 = Just a bunch of Disks... i.e. a group of disks combining their capacity without any redundancy ( if one disk fails you lose all your dats ).

Mmm 500gb... well can't do it one disk.. Best solution is to accept your two disks will have seperate partitions, plus the one you install windows on so effectivly 3 disks.

hp7909 · 23 May 2006 at 17:37

Just a Bunch Of Disks

While out of the 'loop', this fascinating tool called search* was invented – saves you the embarrassment

Advice also you refer to stickies at the top of each Hardware section. Nice little guides you'll find there

* also Google

hp7909 · 23 May 2006 at 17:38

BigDom said:
Ok JBOD = RAID 0 = Just a bunch of Disks... i.e. a group of disks combining their capacity without any redundancy ( if one disk fails you lose all your dats ).

Mmm 500gb... well can't do it one disk.. Best solution is to accept your two disks will have seperate partitions, plus the one you install windows on so effectivly 3 disks.

JBOD is not RAID 0 :mad:

!!!
EDIT:

JBOD stands for Just a Bunch of Disks or also called spanning, refers to hard disk that are not yet configured according to RAID. The JBOD configuration stores the same data redundantly on multiple disks that appear as a single disk on the operating system. Spanning does not deliver any advantage over using separate disks independently and does not provide fault tolerance or performance benefits of RAID.

Bahney · 24 May 2006 at 15:56

thanks for that guys, i have read up on it now and i am a bit more clued up on it

and Doh i never noticed the search facuility !

just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone who has had an imput on this thread and offered me advice i am VERY grateful !

i cant wait to get my baby now!! i will let you know how i get on