Suggestions - Building a PC

Spawn

Originally posted by Spawn
I know thats what my brothers all say but like whats £40/£50 <<--- I rather be safe than sorry

Sorry Data that reply was for Mutant_Fruit thats why it was so short

Regarding the RAM I am getting the 'Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3200C2PT Platinum Registered CAS2 (MY-032-CS)' <<-- Costing £92 (I think this is outragous for 512mb / RAM) But I guess if its the best RAM I may as well get it. My brother said its stupid to get such good RAM if you are not going to overclock (Is this true)? If not what RAM do you think I should go for.

I think I will stick with the 3200+

Regarding the hard drive I think I will go for the 'Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA V 160GB - OEM (HD-009-SE' But then again im having doubhts because its costing me £110 and I dont think I would need the half of it because im only 56k and wont be downloading many programmes / software but both my brothers are on 600k and 1mb so they download what I want for me.

My budget was £900 but now in total my shopping list is £950

Below I have listed exactly what im getting :-

PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Retail (GX-006-PC) £220
AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-058-AM) £170
Antec Plus 1080AMG Metallic Gray File Server Case - 430W TruePower PSU (CA-001-AT) £110
Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA V 160GB - OEM (HD-009-SE) £105
Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3200C2PT Platinum Registered CAS2 (MY-032-CS) £95
Creative I-Trigue 2.1 3300 - Retail (SP-016-CL) £80
Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2 (Socket A) Motherboard (MB-028-AB) £73
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop - OEM (KB-010-MS) £47
Coolermaster Jet 7 ACB-V83 Cooler (Socket A) (HS-011-CM) £32 <-- Do I need this?
Asus DVD-E616P1 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM - Retail (CD-002-AS) £25

Total of £954 My budget is £900

I guess if I wanted I could remove the Coolmaster cause theres not much need for such an expensive cooler if im not going to overclock it is there? I could also remove the wireless Mouse and Keyboard and wait a few weeks after when I get the money to buy them. (I have a spare Keyboard and Mouse anyway). If I remove these two things that leaves me at £880 around which isnt so bad.

I will be ordering Monday Night if not Tuesday. Im selling my Dell PC Monday for €400 once I get the money for that sorted Even though its only like £300

Spawn

My brother thinks I should get the 'AMD Athlon 64 3000 (Socket 754) - Retail (CP-070-AM)' instead of the 'AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-058-AM)'

Anyone know anything about this?

Dempsey

You should shop round more, look in komplett and shop4memory.com, could save yourself more money. I'll give ya an example. I seen wireless keyboard and mouse(Creative) in compustore for €40. that saves you almost 50 quid right there. Shop around ya could save yourself more.

OfflerCrocGod

If you go for an Athlon64 you will need a new MB..... It could end up increasing the cost, look for Socket 754 boards and see what kinda prices you get.

Woden

with regard to ram its not stupid to get good ram if your not going to overclock it. for the system you getting you are getting the exact ram you need to match such that the fsb and ram are running in synch. the next important thing with ram is the timings. this is why you see things associated with ram such as 3-4-4-8, 2-3-3-7 etc.

i won't go into details (the real reason being i don't know the details ) but basically in general the lower these numbers the better. the ram your are getting has a low latency version or LL version, if you can afford this i would get better to go for this stick of ram

unkel

If you're spending that much, you should consider going Athlon 64

Originally posted by Spawn
I am going to get the 'Coolermaster Jet 7 ACB-V83 Cooler (Socket A) (HS-011-CM)' Link >> http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Coolermaster_122.html#aHS_2d011_2dCM

Is this the best or which one would you recommend on the overclockers website

Don't get that one get the mother of all coolers

AdMMM

Nice system, it seems like your brothers are trying to mislead you just a bit, by getting you to buy a Athlon 64 and a socket A mobo

IMO, you should stick to a Socket A mobo and the 3200+ as the Socket 754 mobo's still cost an awful lot, as do the processors themselves!

Spawn

Sorry I havenet been around the past 3 days

Well about this PC there is going to be a short delay on it. Aparently my brothers told my dad its a waiste of money and that I dont need such a powerful system. (I sense a bit of jealousy) My tweo brothers go to college they have built there own pc's but overclocked. So my dad took there advice and said can you take it down another £100 :ninja:

I said no way so we've rowed, talked about it and have now decided to order it next week instead :eek: Im going to sell my Nokia 7250i for €300 and then I can pay €550 and dad can pay rest

But thrust me that pc is mine

Dempsey regard what you saying about shopping around I have. Im not going to save myself massive amouts if I can save anything at all. I just want to buy all from the one place instead of buying off lots of different places. Leaves it more convenient

Dempsey

Well in that case i would suggest comparing what you have with komplett at least.

Spawn

Well to make you happy I might just do that

I really think Komplett will work out far more expensive. The AMD 3200+ was something like €400 from Komplett. I think Overclockers is the cheapest place I will get this stuff but as you said I may as well shop around while im at nothing else

sci0x

I was just checking there and some companies such as Elara and Fujitsu have great full PC Christmas deals but i spose you'd still get a better computer for a better price with buying the part seperately.

But anyway heres an example of an offer. Fujitsu Siemens have a Scaleo 600i retailing for E1,299. It is powered by a Pentium 4 2.6GHz processor. It comes with 512Mbyte on-board memory, 80Gbyte HD and 128Mbyte graphics card with TV tuning capability.
It c/w Ethernet network, USB and FireWire connections and offers a DVD ROM drive and burner. The monitor is 17in CRT, and Windows XP Home operating system. Security for Children Web Control is also included.

Elara is offering for E1381, a system with a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz processor, 512Mbyte of memory, and 80Gbyte hard diskm a 19in CRT monitor, a DVD ROM/CD RW combo drive and a Creative Inspire 5.1 5300 speaker system.

Col_Loki

I really think Komplett will work out far more expensive. The AMD 3200+ was something like €400 from Komplett

Thats not the same processor your comparing. Komplett dont stock the "Socket A" version of the Xp3200+ , they have the AMD64 "Socket 754" version which is by far a better performer.


On the whole Xp3200+ V Xp2500+ point , you can probably save over €100 if you go for a 2500+ and overclock it. The thing is there are risks involved, sometimes you get lucky sometimes you dont. If you want to give yourself a good chance of reaching Xp3200+ or more from a 2500 you need to invest in decent cooling. This leaves you with plenty of headroom for a voltage increase if need be.

The Xp2500+'s that are on the market now are generally multiplier locked, its fine for people looking for 2.2ghz (200 x 11 - 3200+) as its just an FSB increase that is needed. The general rule is the newer the stepping the more lightly it is to reach the upper market CPU speeds.

the abit NF7-s rev2.0 is a quality motherboard and supports 200mhz processors so there is no issues there. you are looking at a s-ata drive now i believe. as mentioned i use a 160gb seagate s-ata drive. with regards to performance at the moment s-ata drives don't outperform current p-ata (i.e. ide) drives but they do come with the advantage of nice thin cables which can give better airflow.

Couldnt have put it better myself.... great board.... and spot on about SATA (cept for the very nice WD raptors )

Seriously try Komplett, even try the uk site for sterling comparisons www.komplett.co.uk , they should be cheaper (specially on delivery).

BTW if your thinkin of a silent pc WD drives are noisey, Seagate are a lot quieter (think that was mentioned before) ...... other than that nice system.

Spawn

Got to put all this on hold for a week or two until after christmas

¬zero64

dual channel memory uses 2 matched sticks of ram of the same size ( you have to buy them in matched pairs)they almost double the speed of your memory which is great for games graphics etc

¬zero64

dual channel memory uses 2 matched sticks of ram of the same size ( you have to buy them in matched pairs)they almost double the speed of your memory which is great for games graphics etc
komplett.ie is alot cheaper

Woden

with regards to the matched pairs you don't have to buy one of the manufacturers twin packs containing to sticks. dual channel will work perfectly well if you by one stick of 512mb now and another stick of 512mb later or whatever way you wanna work it. i'd buy the same stick of ram the second time round though and wouldn't pc2700 and pc3200 etc nor would i mix manufacturer.

with regards to the performance increase you'd be doing well if you got 10%, i think its more like 5%

Col_Loki

With the intel rigs dual DDR will give a noticable increase in memory performance and is definetly worth having.

As data said this isint so with (AMD) Nforce2 boards, generally the increase is 3-5% which isint anything to get excited about (and you dont need to buy them in matched pairs). The exception comes when you are getting an AMD board with built in graphics (on-board), in this case Dual DDR will make a significant speed increase.