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Hello, I've decided it's time to upgrade my PC as my 'ol faithful is starting to struggle just a tad when it comes to some new (and some not so new) games. I'm going for a completely new build and I've already identified the parts I want to buy and a budget. I'm not a Vista fan, so I'll be sticking with XP with the hope of being able to go straight to Windows 7 (or whatever it's called) when it's launched in a year or 2 with minimum upgrades (RAM being the most obvious). I would also like to be able to upgrade the GPU in a year or 2 without it requiring other major upgrades. I've never overclocked anything in my life and, while I might dabble with this new system, it's not a major concern. Will what I'm looking at work? Can I improve without spending more? Is it worth it - Is something literally about to hit the market that will make what I'm choosing very old news?) I would greaty appreciate any advice or guidance you might offer. Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case £94 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £98 Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £68 Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) £40 XFX GeForce 8800 GTX Extreme 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £234 Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU £88 Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler £14 Total build cost at present - £636 I plan on salvaging the DVD writer and Hard-drive from my current rig just to keep costs down, and will upgrade as and when necessary. I am however, travelling to Canada in a little over 3 weeks, and can pick up the Antec case for about £25 cheaper. I could also pick up an ever so slightly slower BFG Tech 8800GTX (Memory : 768MB DDR3 (900MHz x 2) rather than 768MB GDDR3 Memory running at 1900MHz) and save another £15 plus tax on top of that. Last but most certainly not least I could change the CPU to an Athlon64 X2 6400+ 3.2GHz Dual-Core AM2 w/ 1000MHz FSB / 2x1024KB L2 Cache / AMD64 / NX Bit / CnQ / AVT (125W) for a further saving of £10 plus tax. Newly proposed build cost - £ 586. Obviously I'm looking to save money where I can, but as I was prepared to spend the £636 originally, if I can upgrade further or "future-proof" anything I would certainly consider it. Any help or advice greatly appreciated. |
New PC Build
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SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years ago -
chopsen 21,958 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoWhy AMD over intel for CPU? -
SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoI thought AMD were the better gaming CPUs, or is that a thing of the past? In case you hadn't guessed I'm no technical whizz, and this will be the 1st PC I've ever tried to build myself.
How about a Core2 Duo E8500 S775 3.16GHz 1333MHz FSB 6MB Cache instead?
Although this rig will be used almost entirely for gaming, I'm not someone who has to run games at eye-watering resolutions with all settings on full.
I've got a 17" monitor and will be quite happy running things at 1024 x 768 on high settings... -
chopsen 21,958 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoYeah. Having recently built a PC myself and looked in to this stuff it would seem that intel definitely have the upper hand at the moment in terms of performance.
Hardly an expert myself but I think core 2 duo intel chips are a very good choice for gaming. I went for a quad core personally. I use a lot of AutoGK for video encoding and converting a dvd to vxid in 45 mins instead of 4 hrs was a major improvement.gif)
But games don't really use multiple core, so the benefits of quad over duo for gaming purposes are slight. -
Nabokov 103 posts
Seen 5 months ago
Registered 15 years agoIntel is more powerfull and uses less power, E8400 is good value. And then some P35 based motherboard, max £60.
I would get 4GB of RAM, it's so cheap at the moment, even if you can only use 3GB with XP. And you should be able to get 2x2GB for £40, don't pay too much for brand and latencies, those are meaningless especially if you don't overclock much. Just check that it's 800MHz (which guarantees you decent overclocking).
8800GTX is old model, 8800GTS is as fast and cheaper, or get 9800GTX which is same price and little bit faster. -
darrenb 1,179 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 19 years agoWhat hard drive and DVD have you got in your old system??..
If you old build is more than a couple of years old then your old drives may only be IDE.
I'd assume that board only has one IDE channel for 2 drives but plugging a hard drive and a DVD drive will set the channel at the speed of the DVDdrive.
If you havent got one spend £50 and get yourself an SATA2 drive. that more likely make more of an improvement then the obvious graphics card and CPU upgrades.
If SATA then ignore this and build away!!
Also, if you arent going to overclock just stick with the cooler that comes with the CPU. -
ilmaestro 32,932 posts
Seen 10 months ago
Registered 18 years agoDefinitely no need to shell out for the GTX if you're not bothered about very high resolutions, an 8800 GTS 512MB is what you're looking for. -
SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoWhoa - ok thanks for all the information being offered!
Nabokov - Good shout on the E8400, it's about £40 cheaper and only 0.16Ghz slower which seems much better value - much appreciated.
Haven't settled on a motherboard yet, still trying to read (and understand!) all the reviews.
With regards the GPU, I've been reading reviews on the various models and I know the 8800GTX is an old model, but I thought it was still right up there as 1 of the best available. I'd also read some fairly poor reviews about the GTS and 9800s, although to be fair that was probably saying Nvidia had only made minor improvements and so they weren't really worth the wait.
Now it's now looking like an EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB - It has faster speeds and works out almost £70 cheaper but how much will the fact that it's 'only' 512MB rather than 768 hurt it?
darenb - Aha yes, it would appear they are both only IDE which plants a slight spanner in my works. However if I'm going for the cheaper graphics card, having to shell out for new HD and DVD drives is an easier pill to swallow.
Although I'm not bothered about super his-res, I am kinda hoping that if I get a card beefy enough to handle really hi-res graphics now, then when games improve it'll still be able to handle the new stuff with high(ish) settings on my normal resolution.
Thanks muchly for all the advice so far, it really is greatly appreciated! -
DodgyPast 9,353 posts
Seen 3 hours ago
Registered 16 years ago512Mb GTS is about 5-10% faster than the 8800GT.
Both are faster than the 9600GT.
As to the OS, if you're going to want more than 3Gb of RAM then you should start to think about Vista x64.
I'd say that in the lifetime of the machine you would want this. -
SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoThanks groovemeister, for reaffirming my views about Vista, however I did go on to say in my original post that I can pick up the case in Canada for about £70, on top of which I can reclaim the tax once back in England.
Having used Vista on a family-members' PC I just don't see me getting on with it. I'd happily purchase 4GB of RAM and not be able to benefit from all of it with XP, knowing that I had a system capable of coping with whatever comes after Vista with minimal upgrades.
What about the PSU? The Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 has a ton of rediculously good reviews at overclockers, but it's £88 and for £58 I could get an Antec TruePower Trio 650W. Are Corsairs that much better? -
Vista has grown on me a lot, but if you plan on getting it get Business or Ultimate! With the Home versions you can't turn off the User Access Control (which basically makes you confirm every single time you install something that you actually want to), but you can switch the bugger off with the other versions. -
Oh, the website that told me how to turn it off said you can't do it with Home, my mad!
FeZZ do you have 64bit version then? As 32bit can only use 3gig or so...I ask because i'm thinking of getting it but not sure how supported it is. -
SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoSome of this is starting to go over my head.
The 9800 GTX I was considering: improved performance over the 8800 GTS 512MB appears to be marginal and I can pick up the latter for £20 less...
I've been trying to read up on Vista since my last post and I just don't know. My GF advises that as I'm going with a 64-bit processor I should get the 64-bit OS - fair enough in theory but I just.....I want a PC that will be low hassle. I don't want to have to scour the web for drivers and hotfixes - and will the hardware I'm looking at purchasing be compatible? -
SupaT 6 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 14 years agoAlthough this rig will be used almost entirely for gaming, I'm not someone who has to run games at eye-watering resolutions with all settings on full.
I've got a 17" monitor and will be quite happy running things at 1024 x 768 on high settings
Although I'm not bothered about super his-res, I am kinda hoping that if I get a card beefy enough to handle really hi-res graphics now, then when games improve it'll still be able to handle the new stuff with high(ish) settings on my normal resolution. -
FeZZ, how's the support for 64-bit now? Any problems? -
DodgyPast 9,353 posts
Seen 3 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoI haven't had any since SP1.
Been really happy with it. Admittedly I do have 6Gb of RAM, on 2Gb it was more painful to use than XP but with 6Gb it's much nicer than XP. -
PhoenixFlames 9,263 posts
Seen 6 years ago
Registered 14 years agoThis tool may help people...
Not tried it myself though. -
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RIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!
Forgive the thread bump, but couldn't find a more suitable one via the search.
Despite being old as fuck (35) I am a complete console-tard and am about to build my first PC. I've planned it out, and have (stupidly) started buying components.
I'm going for a mid/high spec PC which I'm building specifically to do some niche data modeling among other things - for which I determined the Ryzen 2700x was my best option. Of course, I want to game on it too but am leaving the GPU until last to see if 1070ti/1080 prices drop any time soon.
I'm slightly constrained in that I need the PC to be as quiet and small as possible, whilst still be reasonably priced, including peripherals and display.
So my first, of likely many questions is:
Will a 120 liquid cooler be sufficient for the processor? I highly doubt I will be overclocking.
Here's my part list, https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/vc9dq4 comments welcome, don't make me cry.
.gif)
But games don't really use multiple core, so the benefits of quad over duo for gaming purposes are slight. 
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