Building a new PC

MrJoeSoap · 09-10-2004 1:59pm #1

I'm currently in the process of building myself a budget PC (€800 or less), but the whole situation has made me realise how little I actually know about hardware. So far, I have myself:

* Q-Tec Midi tower ATX 6023MD, Silver. Value Line, m/350W AMD/P4
* MSI CD recorder 52x/32x/52x IDE Retail
* MSI DVD recorder DR8P IDE Retail

Pretty basic I know. Anyway, my main concern is my CPU, CPU fan, heatsink, Motherboard and RAM. I have been looking at the Komplett PC upgrade deals, and have decided that €400 will be my limit for these items. Can anyone tell me if I would be making a mistake in buying the:

* AMD Sempron 2600+, Mainboard, PC3200 DDR 512MB, Fan (at €240)
(http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=120751&cks=PRL)

with

* Maxtor DiamondMax 10, 200GB S-ATA 8MB cache 7200RPM (at €109, special offer)
(http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302257&cks=PRL)

They seem to be quite good deals, and considering that I'm not a massive gamer (Championship Manager and Half Life are about as far as I stretch!), would this be a suitable backbone for my system?

If anyone has the time, could you also point me in the direction of a decent graphics card for around €100.

Your help is greatly valued and appreciated.

Yours,
The Soapster.

BloodBath · 09-10-2004 3:20pm

What is the system mainly going to be used for?

You don't need seperate cd and dvd burners on less you plan on doing a lot of burning. The dvd burner burns cd's as well.

Avoid q-tec psu's and maxtor hard-drives. I'll rcomend some parts if you say what the system is going to be used for.

BloodBath

grimloch · 09-10-2004 6:13pm

BloodBath wrote:

You don't need seperate cd and dvd burners on less you plan on doing a lot of burning. The dvd burner burns cd's as well.
Avoid q-tec psu's
BloodBath

bloodbath is right there, its a bit wasteful spending an extra 30 quid on a cd writer and q-tec psus are by all accounts crap

as far as a graphics card, komplett have a 9600 pro for around 100, but you wont need that for half life though, an fx 5200 (62 euro) or even less would do you there

unklerosco · 09-10-2004 7:07pm

Whats wrong with maxtor HD's.... They new Diamondmax 10 with the 16mb cache is nearly as fast as a WD raptor.

astrofool · 09-10-2004 8:03pm

You won't need a cd writer and a dvd writer.

AVOID Q-TEC

A sempron 3100+ might be a good bet (built on socket 754 rather than socket A), or if you can stretch an athlon 64 3000+. MSI do good s754 motherboards, as do Abit. The stock AMD heatsink is fine and easy to install if you don't plan on overclocking much.

Paired with 512-1024mb pc3200 ram, a Western Digital SATA 120-160gig drive, a radeon 9800pro (or maybe a vanilla Gefioce 6800 if u can stretch). GET A FLOPPY DRIVE (for the sata drives).

Optikus · 09-10-2004 8:08pm

Get an DVD Rom and a Burner Not a CD Burner and DVD Burner, better for on the fly burning.. stay away from Maxtor ans Q-Tec.

Dalamar · 09-10-2004 11:06pm

Just get the dvd burner. Two drives is a bit pointless. On-the-fly burning is one of the worst ways to copy a cd of any description.

Stephen · 09-10-2004 11:08pm

What are your problems with maxtor drives? I've had several over the last few years with no failures.

Optikus · 09-10-2004 11:12pm

Dalamar wrote:

Just get the dvd burner. Two drives is a bit pointless. On-the-fly burning is one of the worst ways to copy a cd of any description.

Please explain this to me because as far as i know its one of the fastest and convienent ways for copying direct, i know that there is risk of dodgy copying with damaged disks and what not, but with todays bufffer under-run technology you can get a perfect copy everytime..especially with newer drives the risk is alot less then a few years ago.

Optikus · 09-10-2004 11:26pm

Stephen wrote:

What are your problems with maxtor drives? I've had several over the last few years with no failures.

I know a number of people and few on here who have had nothing but problems with these drives, ok its probably only a small percentage of all the drives they sell but its seems to be a hell of alot more prob's as compared to other HD manufactors.. so its only a warning really im sure there are plenty who find them fine. As for the the Diamond Max 10 i have never used or know of anyone yet who has but like most Maxtors they seem like pretty good value.. and id like to find out more about them.

Col_Loki · 09-10-2004 11:44pm

On the whole maxtor thing, its really down to personal opinion......... last time i checked the figures western digital had the higher failure rate and were a good bit over maxtor.

Some people dont like maxtor, some people swear by them. If you've had no problems and like the drives then id say go for it. Ive had a seagate and a WD fail on me so far, but ive had 5/6 WD's and 2/3 Seagates. I personally like Samsung, very quiet and no problems so far with them, but they definetly dont perform aswell as the WD's do.

grimloch · 09-10-2004 11:45pm

astrofool wrote:

Paired with 512-1024mb pc3200 ram, a Western Digital SATA 120-160gig drive, a radeon 9800pro (or maybe a vanilla Gefioce 6800 if u can stretch). GET A FLOPPY DRIVE (for the sata drives).

he says he wont be gaming much so a 9800 pro/6800 is most likely out of the question, everything else is very good

MrJoeSoap · 09-10-2004 11:56pm

Thanks for the great response, I'll take it all into consideration!

I already had the CD Drive when I wanted the DVD drive so...

Plus I already have the Q-Tec Case, is the PSU really that bad? What is the problem with it (obviously I havent had a chance to use it so far)?

Cheers Again.
The Soapster.

Ciaran500 · 10-10-2004 9:24am

Qtec PSUs don't supply anywhere near there rated voltage and I've heard alot about them frying and taking everything connected to it with them.

If you do a search on these forums you will also get alot of people with stability problems caused by cheap PSUs.

unklerosco · 10-10-2004 10:21am

Check the for sale forum... Some good deals in there. Theres a 9600pro for sale at the mo, would suit ur gaming needs perfectly and there's a kickin power supply for sale too(mine!!!) There's a load of monitors for sale too...

grimloch · 10-10-2004 1:34pm

Ciaran500 wrote:

Qtec PSUs don't supply anywhere near there rated voltage and I've heard alot about them frying and taking everything connected to it with them.

my friend has a qtec and it produces quite a bit of heat

Ciaran500 · 10-10-2004 4:43pm

I actually meant that eventully something inside them goes and it overvolts everything connected to it.

But I have heard people complaining about the heat they create.

Diabolus · 10-10-2004 5:31pm

Mine fried and took my board and chip with it.
Luckily it was after 1 month and Komplett replaced em.

Steer clear!

MrJoeSoap · 10-10-2004 5:35pm

Seeing as how I already have the Q-Tec case with power supply, is it possible to simply buy another power supply and easily replace it into the case?

Optikus · 10-10-2004 5:37pm

No its a very simple job just dissconnect the cables from the Q-Tec from the CD/DVD, Hard Drives and Motherboard, unscrew the Q-Tec insert the new one screw it in then reconnect eveything.

MrJoeSoap · 10-10-2004 5:41pm

Cool, cheers. I havent got them all connected yet so I guess that makes it a hell of a lot easier. I would have checked the case myself but its a whole 2 flights of stairs away and I'm lazy.

BloodBath · 10-10-2004 6:20pm

You still haven't answered the question. What will the system mainly be used for?

BloodBath

naitkris · 10-10-2004 7:20pm

on the topic of hard drives - stay away from Maxtor! I've had 3 of them (IDE versions) over the last 2 years and all 3 have failed on me.

now have a S-ATA Hitachi and a S-ATA Western Digital for a while now and performance is top notch (particularly from the Hitachi) and they both haven't failed yet, which is... good. the Hitachi is also very quiet which is a bonus.

Optikus · 10-10-2004 7:24pm

Well i've been reading alot of reviews about the new DiamondMax 10 with 16mb cache... it it seems very good the best 7200rpm harddrive money can buy infact, and performs nearly as good as the WD Raptor and at a fraction of the price considering the space you get 250Gb and 300Gb.. might be looking into one of these myself.. so dont be to quick to rule out Maxtor.

BloodBath · 10-10-2004 7:34pm

Well everyone's been basing their opinions of maxtor drives based on previous models where the performance isn't great and the reliability seemed to be a problem.

The latest round-up I read had the hitachi drives on top but it didn't have the new maxtors included in the review. They seem to be really good, hopefully they sorted their reliability out.

BloodBath

Optikus · 10-10-2004 7:39pm

Yeah thats why im gonna wait a bit Blooders, till a few more reviews are out and wen i get some reliable info from peeps who have got them... also i put in a bid for a hitachi deskstar 160Gb for 80e but the fella selling hasnt PM'd or E-mailed me yet.

MrJoeSoap · 10-10-2004 10:30pm

Sorry, it'll mainly be used for playing Champ Manager, Football Manager, probably a bit of Half-Life and a few similar games. Nothing really strenuous, but I do intend to build a large mp3 collection, and possibly to connect it to my TV to use its as a means of recording television onto DVD's, so it will have to have quite a large hard drive.

BloodBath · 11-10-2004 1:42am

Your going to want a vivo graphics card then or a seperate video card. Jes-computer have a 9600xt vivo for 166e. This is over what you wanted to spend on a graphics card and might be overkill for the games you want to play. If your not planning on playing the likes of Doom3 or far cry without turning the detail down then a 9550 will be good enough and jes have a vivo version for 75 euro.

If your going to be encoding the stuff i'd recomend intel or if you will be mainly gaming i'd say get an a64 but the games you mentioned aren't exactly intensive so it doesn't really matter.

Intel processor, mobo and ram, total 405e;

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=15261

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=14771

2x http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=14150

Now that might seem like overkill but you are getting more than your moneys worth. With that ram and mobo you are set for a nice safe overclock to at least 3.6ghz. The new D0 steppings will go higher even with stock cooling but you should reach near 3.6ghz on stock vcore. If you don't want to overclock you can just get 2 x 256 sticks of ddr400 instead of 500 but you won't save much money.

Amd processor, mobo and ram, total 420e;

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=15246

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=16393

2 x http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=14548

Again this setup is with overclocking mind. You could get lower quality ram and save some money and not overclock.

I'd say give the q-tec a go but i'd recomend upgrading to a better one down the line. Good brands are antec, enermax, thermaltake, tagan and fortron. There are plenty of others.

Does your case have decent cooling? You want at least 1 intake at the bottom and an exhaust at the top. If the case doesn't have the fans it should at least have places to install fans. If there are any then you should get fans for them.

That's about it for now, good luck with the build.

BloodBath

Optikus · 11-10-2004 1:52am

You should try the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 16Mb cache 300Gb or 250Gb you will be able to fit enough Mp3s on there and with a good TV card, you will have enough space to store them programs and movies. So far the reviews are great and its excellant value for money too. Here is a good TV Card.

MrJoeSoap · 11-10-2004 1:47pm

Cheers guys, really appreciated. I'll take it all into consideration, wont be ordering for a little while because money is tight (isnt that always the way!). I'll let you know how I get on and how everything performs.

Cheers,
The Soapster.

BloodBath · 11-10-2004 5:16pm

If funds are tight and you want to build a good budget system then the athlon xp mobile is the way to go.

Xp processor, mobo and memory, total 230e;

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=16803

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=14442

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=14555

That 2400 mobile should go to around 2.5ghz from it's stock speed of 1.8ghz. That's the eqivilent of about a 3.2ghz p4 for a lot less money. I had a friend of mine order the same parts recently and he is running at 2.5ghz and his system is pretty damn fast. It's the best you can do on a budget and the q-tec psu shouldn't have any trouble powering it.

If your only playing old games i'd say the radeon 9550 vivo is good enough and you can record from the tv with it but if you plan on playing the likes of HL2 or any newer game then you should really go for the 9600xt vivo.

http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=17375

The money you save on the other parts can go towards it. It will handle far cry, hl2 and doom3 pretty well and any other newer title. You can record from the tv with it as well saving having to fork out extra for a video card.

So that's your processor, mobo, ram and graphics card for less than 400e.

BloodBath

Building a new PC

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