Right so i have some money for the first time in my life, and i have decided to spend it on a new computer, and ive realised that if i build one, i will get a much better computer for the money. Before i started i knew a little bit about computer hardware, ive been working on this list for a while now, and i have put it bellow. If there are any major compatability issues with the stuff im buying please say before i buy it, and if there is anything that i should change that will give me a big price cut please say. Well heres the list:
Ive decided to downgrade my 9800gtx to a 8800gtx. Its a £30 difference that i could barely afford anyway, and ive decided that for what im doing i probably wont need it.
so what you got there look excellent but here is a few things you many want to think about....
first off i am in the USA so sorry if i use American currency i believe the ratio is about 1:1.5 so...
you may want to look at the 4870 or the 4850 the 50 is cheaper and almost equal performance the 70 has better performance and is just alittle more obviously you would need a different motherboard if you went that direction like an X38 or X48 but nvidia is fine if you like them better
the next and probably biggest thing i see is the 650 watt PSU i love corsair but for SLI you would probably want a little bit more i would go with their 750 watt it just gives a little elbow room if you know what i mean.
finally OS???? i don't see one and here is the big thing you need to know if it is 64 or 32bit ok. if it is 32bit you will only be able to use 3gb of memory total to use all 4 you will need a 64 bit version and that can be a problem
Ive made some changes, looking at the P35 motherboard it looks a lot better for overclocking, ive looked at reviews for the 650i chipset and it loks like it doesnt overclocks as well. As for the CPU cooler is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler that i was origionally going to get still worth getting.
Just wondering what does the chache on a Hardrive do? I only selected the one i have because it has a 32mb cache. Is that spinpoint F1 still better then the one i already had selected eventhough it has a 16mb cache.
The exchange rate from pound to dollar is 2 to 1, You really cant find any 8800 cards for less then 240 dollars? None of the American distributers sell overseas?
You can save on the power supply if you go with the 4850:
ATI Radeon HD 4850 System Requirements
450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode) Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products.
The power supply that i have selected at the moment seems good, do you recon i can keep it with the ATI Radeon HD 4850.
Normally im a nvidia fan, so this graphics card better change my mind T_T im risking it, its quite a lot of money off, which is always good. Also the powersuplly that i have selected at the moment says it is SLI ready, im guessing that means it can take CrossFire as well, i wont be buying straight off with 2 graphics cards, but i may well upgrade in the future to 2.
So basically, i dont know how to edit my first post for some reason it wont let me. But these are the things i have changed so far:
Changed to ATI Radeon HD 4850
Changed to a P35 Mobo
Things i am looking into are the Memory, im looking for a nice 1066mhz ram with low lattency, but for not much more then i have atm.
Not sure about the PSU
Your initial list is quite good. Any changes are just nitpicking and personal preferences.
What will be the primary use of this PC? If it is for heavy multitasking, then the Quad core cpu is good. If it is for gaming, or running one task at a time, then the higher clock speed of the E8500 or E8500 would be better for the same price. If the main use is gaming, then the vga card is most important.
Cache on the hard drive allows the drive to satisfy a request out of cache memory instead of a mechanical reading of the drive. It's benefits are highly application dependent. For their new high performance velociraptor, WD went with only 16m cache because they found that more did not help. More is probably better, but I would not make a buying decision on that.
If you want to save a few pounds, then there are some minor changes you can make.
1) look at the Antec300 case. Good quality and cooling for less.
2) look for a more basic motherboard. There is no need to pay for SLI and extra pci-e slots if you aren't going to use them.
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E8400-stock, GA-P35-DS3R(rev2.1), Corsair 4x2gb 6400C5, EVGA 8800GTS-512-G92, Vista home premium-64-bit, WD velociraptor-300gb, PC P&C silencer-610, Antec SOLO, 2 x Samsung 275T, Samsung-203b-dvd
