***Building a PC HELP***

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:09 pm

My PC is completely shagged, at the moment I have to run it with the case open and a desk top fan blowing into it, the amount or crashing,freezing and slowness has finally done it, I cant take no more.

Sorced some funding I have £500-£1000 to spend and want to bag the best value, setup possible.

As most of you have nice setups and know you stuff where else better to get some advise, I have asked before ad been give some top advise but as bits change every month Im asking again. Very Happy

This will be a complete new system, I dont really want to swap anthing form my curent machine apart from, mouse, keyboard & monitor.

w00p wrote:

Buy the core 2 duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 200quid), an Intel bad axe motherboard (150 quid), a thermaltake big typhoon cooler (40 quid - but silent and best cooling) and 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM (150) and you can pretty much overclock that chip to 3.6GHz. This will make it faster than anything in existance, including the 800 quid Intel extreme C2D chips, the AMD FX62 etc. Note that with a cheap motherboard, this doesnt work Wink

so that 150 quid is money well spent.

As for directX 10 cards, I'd wait a while. The 8800GTX is the top dog at the moment, but within a month ATI are releasing a card which beats it by 50%. Also note that DX10 cards are not fully supported by vista yet (no drivers). So seriously, wait until they are or you have a piece of hardware devaluing bigtime during the wait!!!

w00p aka uber-g33kman Sad

This sounds good, but for some reason AMD is my pref chip. anyone run the above?

Your help please.

Joined: Apr 24, 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Manchester UK

Heh - I just saw this and was going to write somethign very similar to my post you quoted! ... Laughing

Yes I too am an AMD fanboy, but these new Intel ones are faster and cheaper. If you want to save a bit of money, but the E6400 Intel (2.13GHz core duo) instead of the E6600 (2.4GHz) - theyre about 100 quid cheaper but can still be overclocked to about 2.8GHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=2

The above link shows an E6400 reaching 2.8GHz with little extra effort. Remember when Intel produces a line of chips, what they usually do is make them all the same, and the ones that perform slightly better get branded with "Extreme Edition" and sold for £800.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=9

This link shows the powa of the E6400 when overclocked. For 100 quid, you can buy a processor that will beat almost every other chip, Intel & AMD, on the market.

In order to overclock successfully, make sure you buy DDR800 RAM (a good brand, not some unbranded rubbish), a good motherboard (Intel Bad Axe 2 are amazing at overclocking) and good cooling (Zalman CNS9500, Thermaltake Big Typhoon - see below).

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/cooling/Tt_Big_Typhoon/

Overclocking is not dangerous to your PC componets until you start increasing voltages. My advise is to increase the clock frequencies, but dont touch the voltages Wink

You should be able to get a good 15-30% boost out of a E6400 chip.

As for video cards, well its your preference, but best bet out there is the 8800GTX at the moment, plus note that you can buy a 22" widescreen TFT for about £230 nowadays Shocked

Happy shopping! Cool

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:00 pm

Cheers W00p.

Its a mine field, All I know is I want a fast PC that can run the newest games.

Just been searching on scan, ect pfffff. lol.

So how hard is it to build then? Inc all the cooling Ect.

How important is power supply I.E Wattage.

Going to make a pre build list now see what I come up with. Very Happy

Joined: Apr 24, 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Manchester UK

Its pretty easy to build, to be honest. When you make your first PC, it will take you a while, possible a few evenings or weekends of messing about. However once you've done it, you'll be like "oh, is that it?" - for instance, for me to make a PC now takes approx 45 minutes, then a further 2 hours to install the OS - but the first one I made took about a week of evenings :S

All you need is:

Case, PSU (500W+), Motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD / DVD drive, Hard disc, floppy, Graphics card, CPU cooler (including a tube of arctic silver heatsink grease) + a screwdriver.

The motherboard screws into the case, the CPU plops in a socket and the cooler needs to be attached with a couple of screws. All the rest of the hardware screws into the case and cables are designed so its pretty much impossible to plug them in the wrong way around. Just make that the power is off and unplugged throughout all modifications!!!

Here are some websites I found on building your own PC:

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2002/09/04/building_your_own_pc/index.html
http://tweakhound.com/xp/installxp/installXP1.htm --- WinXP install

I suggest you leave your old PC up and running while you do the new one, so you can refer to the internet / cry for help on TS etc... as you go!

Good luck! Very Happy

PS: Some of those websites go into far too much detail on setting clock frqeuencys and bios fiddling. With modern motherboards its pretty much just plug-in and go, so dont fret, just go for it Smile

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:27 pm

Here is my list so far.

Case - £40.00 - Not sure which one
Power Supply - 600w - £60.00 - Not sure which One yet
M Board - Inter Bad Axe - £150.00
Ram - 2gb Good Quality - £200.00 - (SEEMS DEAR)
CD/DVD RW - £50.00 - Not sure which one
Pros - Intel - E6600 Due - £195.00 (AMD FX 70 is £10 more)????
G CArd - Gainward - 7950Gt - £200.00
H Driver - 250Gb - £50.00
Extra Cooling - £50.00
Software O/S - MMMMM not sure on this one, dont like to pay, prob XP, on multi user. Wink

Think thats it. Any suggeston, recomendations, cheap parts going just pop them on here.

Total of Above - £995.00. - MAX budget £1000.00. Laughing

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:33 pm

w00p wrote:

for instance, for me to make a PC now takes approx 45 minutes, then a further 2 hours to install the OS - but the first one I made took about a week of evenings :S

45 Mins, Manchester, Be quicker to come and blag you to build it for me. Wink

Nice one for imput. Cool

Joined: May 17, 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Portsmouth

Hi Drewcat,

Just to add to the stuff thats been said.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-062-GI

£110 but got everything you'd need to overclock.

I am not a fan of SLI / Crossfire. The PCIe x16 bus is more than fast enough to transfer data. I find that 1x bigger G-card is faster and less expensive than 2x middle. Unless you want very high frame rates and 2x 8800 cards, otherwise I'd get one. 1x higher is always better than 2x lower, in my opinion. see Tomshardware video guide. (tomshardware.com)

Processor wise its best to go for the bottom of a range, eg 6300 over the 6400 and 6600 over the 6700, you can overclock it as fast anyway and save some money. The 6600 has twice as much cache as the 6400 and if you have the money its worth the difference.

The key in my book has to be the memory, if you intend to overclock get some fast memory. DDR2-6400 = 800Mhz. The way the computer overclocks is to increase the memory bus not the processor bus. Hence you need good memory.

I have a raid array but it makes little difference. the computer gets around the harddisk access times but cache, hence thats important. otherwise its loading game and os. If you want look at one of the rapter disks.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-069-WD

get a pretty case of your choice but get at least 550W of power supply Smile

Hope thats at least made you ask more questions Smile

Warrent

Joined: May 17, 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Portsmouth

by cache....

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:02 am

Cool More Imput.

So whats the difference apart from price on the two boards.

Intel @ £165.00 prob get a bit cheaper
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-016-IN

Gigabite @ £110.00
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-062-GI

Would agree with the processer better to spend now than regret later.

This is the one mentioned.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-128-IN

Memory - I have left £200 for that so probably somthing like.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-124-CS

As for a card, Nvidia have always been my pref, and the 8800 put me over budjet, it still baffles me all the diff manufacturers and price difference.
this is the one I looked at. all this PCi does my head in to.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-048-GW

Was thinking hard drive maybe a smaller one.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-087-WD

Sort of my list for now. Laughing

Joined: Aug 04, 2006 Posts: 188 Location: Portsmouth

This power supply is the one i use, its got the watts you need 600, plus its modular which means you only plug in the actual power leads you need, for me i dont use a floppy disk drive i dont use an internal dvd rom drive so hence i dont need to plug them into the power supply which means not soon many wires nice and tidy equals better air flow and cooling

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?JEA-600AP

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:37 am

Hi drew, shame your not on ts this is easier to talk through, but i will give you your options as far as i am concerned. There are a lot of things to consider when buying a system, you need to identify a budget which you have done, this helps. Some people think that by bunging a few high end pieces into a machine will do, ie dell! this is not the case, every part has to be the best you can get, you cannot overlook things like the power supply, hard disk and even the case! Anyway here follows my advice.

Here is some advice, i havent as yet found the right mboard gunna do some reading on this really, coz it is key. Defo get that hard drive tho

£337 Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, Socket 775, 2.67 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB Cache, Retail scan

£191 Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail scan

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£399 BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail ocuk

£340 EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS KO ACS3 SILENT 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail ocuk

£270 Gainward BLISS GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail ocuk

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£46 250 Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) 0A31636 Deskstar T7K250, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ scan

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£226 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2, PC8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15, EPP scan

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£111 Seasonic M12 Modular 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply ocuk

LT!

Joined: Aug 04, 2006 Posts: 188 Location: Portsmouth

Is that ram 800mhz LT??

Joined: Sep 19, 2006 Posts: 408 Location: KERB CRAWLING

I would think it is 1066 Mhz as he has it in brackets mate!

Personally i would opt for the 150gb hard drive if i was you as it is only a few quid extra for double the size but i would deffo go for the wd raptor as it is very hard to beat and its a very important part of your pc especially for gaming!

As far as cpu's go ive just bought the E6700 and it rocks but the 6600 will aswell and they beat the AMD cpu's hand's down every time.

Also as far as your mobo i've got an evga 680i but if your on a budget i've heard the asus commando from scan is a fantastic board which for the price beats the other versions hands down! and asus are very good quality!

also the memory LT has advised you on is also very good i know memory is expensive but you do need to get a good manufacturer as it's probably in my eye's the second most important part for gaming!

I hope i have helped you a little bit

Cheers
Geordieste

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:35 pm

No that is 1066 ram, PC8500, thats the cheapest i could find. This ram is expensive because it is the top spec stuff, you could put slower ram into the machine but it would just slow the whole thing down.

If i were you drew i would get the best processor you can afford, and if anything, and this is gunna sound stupid, get the cheapest Dx10 graphics card for now. That way you will be ok to play all this years games at a fairly good speed, and have Dx10 support so you will be able to use all the flashy new graphics! However after another year has gone by you can then buy a shit hot top spec graphics card and that will slot into your system nicely. Whereas if you do it the other way round your system will bottleneck at your CPU, Mboard etc!

Hope this makes sense. You really do need a stable and unfortunately pricey power supply otherwise things may not run to their potentially and you might get freezes and crashes etc. Basically the more you pay the more stable the supply to your nice expensive parts and the less likely you are to fry anything.

The hard disk i have recommended has been the recommended HDD for the last 8 months, its a monster and i would never consider buying anything else, i have one and i get into game extremely fast even if i havent defraged in ages!

And i know £100 is a lot to blow on a case but you want room inside this thing. With at the very least a 12cm intake and exhaust. Dont buy a case without this, really really dont. This again has been strongly recommended everywhere and will last you for years to come. Its the rolls royce of cases.

If you go for the less expensive cpu and graphics card it will be under a grand, personally i would stretch as much as poss to get the better CPU, it will be a good idea in the long run, and i know what you are like with keeping a PC for a while! LOL!

Plus you need to get a bloody headset!

LT!

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm

Cheers for the info lads.

I know I do need to get a new headset, once I get my funds I will go and buy one. Very Happy

This PC I want to last and be upgradable in a few years maybe. (My current PC's M Board is un upgradable to what I want).

Interesting comment of the G card LT that was one reason I chose the 7950GT instead of the 8800 one keep costs down and upgrade in 6 months or so. when I should get a good price back on the 7950GT.

Good point on the case. Any recomendations?

I have the Powersupply Parky mentioned in my machine at the moment, I could rip that out put a 400w in its palce, this would save £60/£100 I could plow into something else.

I def have £1000.00 could streach a little further but would pref not to well at least all in one go. maybe in a few months or so when more funds will/may be available.

I APPRECIATE all you help guys Cool

, as if I was to do this alone I would of given up by now. Laughing