hi guys, new pc build ive got..any suggestions please?

[mlb08uk]

hello all ive put together few bits for a near enough top of the range pc i want. im just wondering if you guys can give me your thoughts and drop any suggestions you might have? thanks!

CPU - E8400 2 x 3GHz / 1333MHz FSB

6MB L2 Cache £105

Mobo - Asus P5Q Deluxe

LGA775 Core 2 Quad Extreme P45 FSB1600 16Gb DDR2 3 x PCI-Ex16 Crossfire SATA2 Raid 6 Port 2x1394a Audio GigaBit LAN £135

Memory - 2x Geil 4GB PC2-8500 1066Mhz Black Dragon Quad Channel Kit

CAS5-5-5-15 £163

PSU - OCZ 600 Watt Game X Stream PSU

600 Watt

20+4 Pin

SLi Ready £55

Case - NZXT Apollo - Black

5x External 5.25"

1x External 3.5"

4x Internal 3.5" £50

Cpu Fan - Scythe Andy Samurai

Tool Free installation

For Sockets 775 / 478 / 754 / 939 / 940 / AM2 £29

OS - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit (OEM) £59

GPU - BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB PCIe 2.0 £148

Sound card - Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio OEM

7.1 Channels £28

Optical Drive - Samsung 22x SpeedPlus SATA DVD-Writer £14

All these together costs £800 with delivery and tax. Any suggestions, thoughts please? Basically i want this to be a gamer, but also fast pc i wont really need to upgrade for least year or two. MANY THANKS!

 

[lamboman]

How big is your display? Under 24 inch, go with a 4850. I won't include parts like hard drives, because you haven't included them yourself.



Add on to this an Xigmatek HDT-S1283 with rentention bracket (around £30), and Vista Home Premium OEM 64 bit for £59. Although I did this at OcUK, you can find cheaper prices elsewhere.

 

[gotmaxpower]

8GB RAM is complete overkill, unless ofcourse you do animation or 3D modelling. For a high-end modern gaming PC, I would suggest 4GB maximum. If you insist on getting more than ~3GB RAM, you should buy a 64bit operating system. This allows for the usage of more than ~3GB RAM, taking into account video memory and the like. Hopefully someone else can go more into detail if you are unsure of the differences between 32bit and 64bit operating systems.

Everything else is spot on though.

The only two things I can think of are;

- Some Scythe HS/F's are notorious for being hard to install. My Scythe Ninja Copper was a fairly hard install, took ~1h to take out the motherboard, attach the standoffs and fit according to the manual.

- My experience hasn't been too good with Samsung DVD drives, went through two (which both died on me within ~2 weeks altogether) until I decided to switch to an LG DVD drive. I'm not sure of the problem, but it may have been a clash between some components on my part. Samsung are a good quality popular make that specialise in anything electrical.

Good luck with your new PC, hope it comes together nicely.

 

[mlb08uk]

hi all, soryr i meant to include ill be using a WD raptor prob around 70GB for the OS and stuff, also ive used a scythe samurai before was fairly difficult install but then again most CPU coolers are right.

 

[lamboman]

As gotmaxpower said, and I forgot to ask, what are you using this for? Most people know if they are going to use 8GB of memory, but I am just checking.

 

[TJS]

I'm going to back up Lamboman on the GPU choice, go with an ATI HD4850 instead of the nVidia 9800GTX. I've always liked the way ATI Radeons look visually compared to nVidias offerings, only went nVidia the last 3 years because ATI dropped the ball and never got back on track (until now). Come '09 I'm going to grab an HD4870X2 for a new system build, can't wait to see what it can do.

If you're working on a budget, forget the Raptors and go with 7200RPM drives.

Good luck, and have fun.

 

[Ghosthud1]

defo go for the 4850, just purchased one ,and the results do beat my 9800gtx in most games there also single slot and look very nice