my 160gb seagate hard disk died a couple of weeks ago, so I took that as an excuse to upgrade my whole system, I've been looking around dabs.com and overclockers for the best prices because they're the best suppliers I know in the UK, I already have a DVD drive and hard disk so I came up with this:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 OEM - £234.94
Thermaltake shark case - £82.19
Antec True Power II 550 watts - £76.32
BFG 7900GT OC 256mb - £184.42
Abit AN8-32X - £124.53
Corsair XMS PC3200 2GB (2x1GB) - £136.28
which makes a total of £838.68 (the motherboard and ram are from dabs and the rest are from overclockers) although overclockers did raise the price of the processor this morning so the total is something like £856 now
I do 3D animation so processing power and graphics are pretty important, I originally chose an MSI 7900GT, but the BFG card was faster and a little cheaper with the downside only being more noise from the fan I think. I'm sticking with socket 939 because from what I've heard AM2 isn't much of an advantage, and I think a 550 watt power supply is enough to run all that hardware without any trouble
I was just hoping I could get some advice from some of the more experienced builders here who've also got a better understanding of the current hardware choices, I've been looking around at the new core 2 duo stuff and it seems that the lowest processor performs just about as good as the highest AMD one, so maybe I could get an even better machine with intel for a similar price to what I'm paying now with AMD (although US prices seem to be a lot cheaper than the UK prices)
and one more thing, with the last 2 AMD computers I've built I've always gone OEM on the processor because it's cheaper, and I've always recieved a processor in a box with the heatsink and fan, although I was just told today that OEM shouldn't come with a cooler at all, can someone set me straight on this? I'm starting to think maybe I've just got lucky because they've sent me the retail processors both times even though I've only ordered OEM both times
so anyway if you have some suggestions for better hardware or perhaps a core 2 duo machine then I'd love to hear them before I spend all the money, thanks
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 OEM - £234.94
Thermaltake shark case - £82.19
Antec True Power II 550 watts - £76.32
BFG 7900GT OC 256mb - £184.42
Abit AN8-32X - £124.53
Corsair XMS PC3200 2GB (2x1GB) - £136.28
which makes a total of £838.68 (the motherboard and ram are from dabs and the rest are from overclockers) although overclockers did raise the price of the processor this morning so the total is something like £856 now
I do 3D animation so processing power and graphics are pretty important, I originally chose an MSI 7900GT, but the BFG card was faster and a little cheaper with the downside only being more noise from the fan I think. I'm sticking with socket 939 because from what I've heard AM2 isn't much of an advantage, and I think a 550 watt power supply is enough to run all that hardware without any trouble
I was just hoping I could get some advice from some of the more experienced builders here who've also got a better understanding of the current hardware choices, I've been looking around at the new core 2 duo stuff and it seems that the lowest processor performs just about as good as the highest AMD one, so maybe I could get an even better machine with intel for a similar price to what I'm paying now with AMD (although US prices seem to be a lot cheaper than the UK prices)
and one more thing, with the last 2 AMD computers I've built I've always gone OEM on the processor because it's cheaper, and I've always recieved a processor in a box with the heatsink and fan, although I was just told today that OEM shouldn't come with a cooler at all, can someone set me straight on this? I'm starting to think maybe I've just got lucky because they've sent me the retail processors both times even though I've only ordered OEM both times
so anyway if you have some suggestions for better hardware or perhaps a core 2 duo machine then I'd love to hear them before I spend all the money, thanks
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