Spec - please advise and make suggestions...

MrX

MrX

MrX

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Joined
27 Oct 2002
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Location
Nuclear Bunker
Here is a spec that i am pondering over - any opinions and suggestions welcome... Also should i go for an opteron and where can i bring the price down a tad?

Case
Antec P180 or coolermaster praetorian 732 88.07 or 93.41

Cpu
AMD 64 x 2 dual core 3800 217.32

Cpu Cooler
x Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro 17.57

Dvd Reader
Samsung or Sony 15.00

Dvd Writer
HP Lightscribe 840i (black) 44.59

Gfx Card
XFX 6800 XT Extreme 256 or512 version? 93.94 or 135.07

Hard Drive
Boot - 80 gig samsung sata 2 42.24
Storage - 250 gig samsung sata 2 72.79

Keyboard & Mouse
Logitech Cordless Desktop Rechargeable 35.19

Memory
3200 400 bus Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX 164.44

Monitor
Samsung 930BF 246.69

Motherboard
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi or deluxe version? 123.32

PSU
Tagan 530w or Seasonic S12 500w 70.44 or 89.24

Sound Card
Creative X-FI or HiTec HDA 91.06 or 46.94

Other
-

(prices include VAT)

Ta,

Paul
 
go for the OcUK GeForce 6800 GS 256MB @ £129.19 Including VAT (better card)
Dont bother with sound card as the onboard is very good.
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case £58.16 Including VAT
Do you need 2 DVD drives? Are you going to copy on the fly? Lose one!
Gigabyte K8N SLi nForce4 SLi £64.57 Including VAT
The money saved here you could get the X2 4400 instead of 3800 (nice)
Opteron is good if you want to go for the whole overclocking thing (up to you)
 
You could drop the DVD-Writer to a NEC or Lite-on.
You could change the motherboard to a DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra without SLI support (if you don't want SLI)
The DFI has excellent onboard sound, so you could drop the soundcard completely
You could swap the ram for G.Skill 2GB DDR ZX PC3200
This should let you swap the CPU for an Opty 165
 
Changing the case could save you quite a bit of money but since I'm assuming you like the cases there isn't too much of an option to change :)

If you want to try overclocking go for the Opteron 165 which costs about £270 last time I checked and has 2mb L2 cache, if not you could get the X2 4400 which has 1mb L2 cache and will still overclock well but maybe the Opteron will overclock slightly better.

The HP drive seems overpriced and I think the Lightscribe technology has been replicated by NEC and done better, try the NEC 4551 which is the newest and all their previous drives have been highly thought of as well.

I'd agree you should change the graphics card, either a 6800gs or X800 GTO16 for the same price as they are both better cards. 512mb Ram is a waste of time on a graphics card like the 6800XT.

You could also get GSkill or even Mushkin memory cheaper as well.
 
Interesting to hear about just using soundcard on motherboard as I have seen some interesting results from custompc mag, saying that they would advise shoving a soundcard in as it takes a lot of pressure of the cpu? - any thoughts on this?

I am still undecided on a case, as I do like my cases and here is my shortlist...
Antec P180 88.07
or coolermaster praetorian 732 93.41
or silverstone temjin (silver) tj05 81.66
or silverstone temjin (black) tj05 87.54
or silverstone temjin (black) tj06 90.18

Many thanks for the comments...

- I have changed the gfx card to ocuk 6800 GS one
- I have changed the cpu to an opteron dual core 165
- I have changed the memory to gskill
- I need the 2 dvd drives in there
- May consider the DFI Lanparty board, over the Asus
 
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