Is this spec good value

donalfm

Hi,

Can any experts take a look at the below spec and let me know if they think it is a good buy? I've got a budget of €980 incl VAT. Cannot go any higher. Want to be able to play games, but latest&greatest isn't important.

Komplett seems to be about the only decent site I can find that service Ireland directly with customisable machines. Any other suggestions, please let me know. No problem assembling machine myself, but handy to have it pre-assembled.

Have gone with SLI parts to allow easy cheap upgrade in future and really like the case, although can't decide between orange and silver. This setup, I hope, should also be easy to upgrade with better CPU, RAM, GPU, HD, etc in the coming years if I need to. Want to get about 5 years out of it (including future upgrades).

Here goes:

NZXT Apollo Silver,steel Chassi w/window ,Screwless design
NorthQ 4775-400BULK, ATX 400W, 120mm Fan, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin
ABIT KN9 SLI, nForce 570 SLI,Socket-AM2, DDR2, 2XGbLAN, Firewire, ATX, 2xPCI-Ex16
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.5GHz Socket AM2 1MB, BOXED w/fan
Corsair TWIN2X 5400 DDR2, 2048MB PC5400 Kit w/two matched CM2X1024-5400C4 Dimm's
Gainward GeForce 7300GT 256MB "BP7300GT-256-TV-DVI"
Samsung SpinPoint T166 320GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
NEC DVD±RW burner IDE Silver, LabelFlash, Multirecorder(Ram)
Vista Home Prem 32bit
LG 20" LCD L204WT TCO-03 Silver 1680x1050, 5ms, 2000:1, DVI/VGA
Total cost €978

Have gone for cheap hard drive and RAM as these are easily upgradeable in a couple of months. One question regarding RAM: With DDR2, you must deploy in identical pairs. This machine has 4 RAM slots. Will a be able to put a different pair in the other two slots? Not sure if you have to have 4 x identical (4 x TypeA) or two pairs of identicals {i.e (2 x TypeA) + (2 x TypeB)}

Would really appreciate it if someone could help me with this. I think it seems like a good setup having done a little reading, but I haven't put together a machine before.

Thanks,
Donal

Anti

If you are into gaming you would probably be best to drop AMD and go with a INTEL core 2 duo setup. You will find the bundle/kits on komplett.ie too.

Also a 7300gt is not going to be able to play hardly any games from the last 5 years at the ntive resolution of your monitor!.

You might be better of dropping down to a cheaper and smaller screen and going for a better graphics card. And also drop from vista to xp.

And with ddr2 you generally need identical ram. As the timings and voltage is different from one manufactrer/range to the next.

jor el

Do what Anti says about the graphics card and Vista. Something like this 7600GT would be better. A 20" monitor is nice for high res, but without a serious graphics card behind it you won't be able to run that resolution on games, so a 19" might make more sense.

I'd also recommend swapping the hard disk for a WD one, the 320G WD is €10 more, but surely you can find €10. And when you find that, find €30 more and get the 500G, you'll be surprised how fast a 320G disk would fill up. I'd always use WD disks, I've found them to be the most reliable disks. I've just had a Samsung 120G disk die on me, strangest problem too it keeps loosing the partition information. It is 4 years old so can't complain too much.

Do you really need an SLI motherboard though? Surely without using two graphics cards an SLI is a waste of money. This MSI is only €72, this or other cheap boards could save you €50 on that SLI board.

AlmightyCushion

jor el wrote:

Do what Anti says about the graphics card and Vista. Something like this 7600GT would be better. A 20" monitor is nice for high res, but without a serious graphics card behind it you won't be able to run that resolution on games, so a 19" might make more sense.

I'd also recommend swapping the hard disk for a WD one, the 320G WD is €10 more, but surely you can find €10. And when you find that, find €30 more and get the 500G, you'll be surprised how fast a 320G disk would fill up. I'd always use WD disks, I've found them to be the most reliable disks. I've just had a Samsung 120G disk die on me, strangest problem too it keeps loosing the partition information. It is 4 years old so can't complain too much.

Do you really need an SLI motherboard though? Surely without using two graphics cards an SLI is a waste of money. This MSI is only €72, this or other cheap boards could save you €50 on that SLI board.

Yeah save the money on the board and spend it on the hard drive.

DirkVoodoo

Terrible value.

There is a thread on building&upgrading where a chap has whittled a E6420/8800GTS job down to under a grand. Check it out.

donalfm

Any suggestions on actual specs or an config from Komplett? i.e. Anyone bored? Wanna put together a system on Komplett with a budget of 980 including monitor? Treat it like a puzzle


(BTW - thinking I can buy base components now & upgrade others later. Treating GPU as an other)