Take a look new pc spec before I click buy

nigelhooper

nigelhooper

nigelhooper

Associate
Joined
26 Jan 2007
Posts
13
I am looking for a new pc around the £900 mark, primarily for programming, but it will also be used as a media centre. I haven't built a pc in a long time so would appreciate some comments on the spec. No current plans to overclock, but might do especially as the C2D's seem very overclockable. I am planning to use the two drives in RAID 0. Not worried about looks, but would like it to be reasonably quiet, how does this look?

Also, do overclockers do a saturday delivery?

pcspeczu5.png
 
Out of the C2D's, the E6400 is probably the worst for the price, if you are planning to overclock, you might as well save the money annd get a 6300/4300 (4300 clocks better as the multiplyer is 9) or spend extra and get a 6600.

Edit: i've noticed that your post actually reads you won't overclock, I strongly advise it, especially as most of the chips hit 3Ghz with ease.
 
Last edited:
Thats a very nice set up their actully :) Though might as well change the E6400 to a E6300.

I just bought the Lian Case and a Corsair PSU, great combo pretty quite to :)

The only thing i regret is not buying that DVD Drive i bought a ASUS Light scribe drive, its quite but when you shut it takes about like 5 secs to settle down lol Its anoying.
 
If i were you, I would..

>Switch the corsair RAM for some of this OCZ, it is £14 cheaper and offers better overclocking ability.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-072-OC

>Buy the 64 bit OEM version of Windows Vista Home Premium, 64 bit OS for a 64 bit CPU. Support may be slower for it than the 32 bit initially, but you will be glad that you bought 64 bit in the long run.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-037-MS

>Buy the Gigabyte S3 over the DS3, it is £10 cheaper and offers practially the same performance and overclockability.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-063-GI

>Buy two 250GB seagate hard drives, you will still have 500GB (half a Terabyte) worth of storage space on your pc, 640GB is possibly overkill.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-079-SE

>Buy an E4300 and have a go at overclocking it to ~3.2GHz, giving performance slightly less than that of the X6800 at stock speeds.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-142-IN

With these parts, you will save approximately £80 over your current setup, which can be spent towards a more expensive and better graphics card, e.g. 8800 GTS, but you would have to stretch an extra ~£55 for it.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-043-GW

At the end of the day it is your call on what parts you wish to buy, but please keep the options that I have listed in mind :)

HyBrId
 
Spent a lot of time reading up on the E6300 and E4300, they both seem to be very stable at 3GHz, so I have decided to drop down to the E6300. Also added an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler and some arctic silver 5. The new spec is as follows:

pcspecez2.png
 
tHe_HyBrId, thank you very much for you input. I was originally going to go for some cheaper RAM, either the OCZ or the Geil, but I read a lot of problems stories of people having problems with ram on this board eg here although I assume it is probably all fixed in the latest firmware, I decided to be safe and pay the extra money for the Corsair which the gigabyte website lists as compatible.

I am going to stick with the DS3 instead of the S3, purely because of all the good reviews it has got, plus the good rating it got on motherboards.org. I appreciate there is probably very little between the two but, I'm willing to pay the extra £10.

As far as hard drives go I always seem to run out of space, the 320's also have the better cost per GB.

I have choosen the E6300 over the E4300, purely because the E4300 is brand new and so current overclocking has only been tested over the short term.

I very rarely play games, so I am not to bothered about a better graphics card, but any money saved will end up in more RAM or a faster CPU in a year or twos time.
 
Why buy an X1950 if you "rarely" play games? Why not just a 7300GT or something? Also, I don't see the point in Vista for the time being...even if something you use works faster in Vista, driver support appears flaky at the moment.
 
tHe_HyBrId said:
Buy two 250GB seagate hard drives, you will still have 500GB (half a Terabyte) worth of storage space on your pc, 640GB is possibly overkill.
Click to expand...

Wrong !

You can never have too much storage..............
 
nigelhooper said:
Is it worth getting the artic silver 5 or not? A couple of people have said that the paste that is already on the heatsink is rubbish.
Click to expand...

It is worth getting the artic silver 5 because it is probably more effective than the one on the CPU but in the long run you can reapply more and more when needed.
 
As far as the GPU goes, I was really after something that would last the lifetime of the system. I dont pretend to know anything about graphics cards, but one first looks, the X1950 seems a decent card for reasonable money. However I have just checked and the Leadtek GeForce 7300 GT Extreme is about £50 cheaper (about half the price). So I't probably makes sense to drop down a level.

Any suggestions on alternate GPUs, decent value for money for a non gamer?

I'm going to stick with vista, my current box is XP so I can test under both and switch back to the XP box or even install 2K if the worst happens and the drivers are completely useless.
 
tHe_HyBrId said:
If i were you, I would..

>Buy the Gigabyte S3 over the DS3, it is £10 cheaper and offers practially the same performance and overclockability.

HyBrId
Click to expand...
I don't think the S3 has RAID. But I'm also looking for similar kit as the OP. Will go for a Core Duo 4300 and 8800 GTS. Meets my budget of under a grand.

Cheers
--
Grumps
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom