Building a new pc (£1200-1400 limit)

[Lonefox]

Hay guys been milling about the past few days reading reviews and what not for pc parts, havnt built a pc in 2 years so im a bit rusty, im waiting for the intel duo's so ive got till the end of the month to make my mind up but id like some feed back on this lot:


CPU: Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz

MOBO: Asus P5B (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Case: Antec Titan 550 Tower Case - 550w TruePower PSU

Video card: Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

Hard drive: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 300GB 6V300F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

RAM: Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Ballistix Dual Channel Kit

Monitor: Samsung SM-940BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black

total so far is £1,257.

im totally unsure on the RAM so any comments on that would be great, and anything else that doesn't look quiet right

cheers
Si

 

[Akifuddin]

Nice selection of parts although I would change the RAM to either Corsair XMS or OCZ Gold DDR2-800 RAM. (2GB of course) The rest looks awesome, good luck!

 

[mesarectifier]

Looks pretty good...where are you ordering from?

 

[Lonefox]

ordering from www.overclockers.co.uk

just looking at the XMS ram, unsure on these 2:

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB), this has 800Mhz but 5-5-5-12-T1.

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400 TwinX (2x1GB), this is only 667Mhz but the cas is faster (i think) 4-4-4-12.

which one of them would be better? or should i be looking at different ones?

 

[mesarectifier]

I'm pretty sure the extra speed on the memory is much more useful than ever so slightly tighter timings.

Have you tried eBuyer? I don't think they have Conroe available yet but they certainly will do at some point.

 

[Lonefox]

just been looking at the eBuyer i thought it would be some sort of ebay milarky .. i was wrong. seem's its a bit cheaper too!

 

[jamesgig]

there is some Corsair xms ddr2 800 at 4-4-4-12 for $250usd...sorry i do not know the exchange rate.

 

[Lonefox]

£199 that would be is there a big difference between the 4-4-4-12 and the 5-5-5-12 ? dont fancy paying £80 more if its just minor

 

[Akifuddin]

£199 that would be is there a big difference between the 4-4-4-12 and the 5-5-5-12 ? dont fancy paying £80 more if its just minor

Nope. Get the DDR2-800.

 

[nick_000000]

I agree get some ddr 2 800 and swap the maxtor for a Seagate or WD, I would recommend the Seagate.

 

[ethel]

Oh how I envy someone who is buying a new CPU now, with Conroe coming out :mrgreen:

I'd get a faster hard drive as it's your PC's bottleneck. You could consider one of the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drives - they use perpendicular recording and are faster than traditional 7200 rpm drives.

Or if you don't want acres of storage and don't mind paying more per GB, get a WD Raptor - they are even faster.

 

[Lonefox]

ok ive updated a few things heres how it currently stands:

CPU: Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

MOBO: Asus P5B (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB)

VIDEO: Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3056)

CASE: Thermaltake VA8000SWA Armour Aluminium Super Tower - Silver

PSU: Antec TruePower 2.0 550W PSU

MONITOR: Samsung SM-940BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black

HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

total: £1290

The mobo may change if any new conroe boards are released between now and release, but if anyone would like to suggest one?

comments appreciated

cheers
si

 

[mesarectifier]

That all looks great. Which website(s) are you ordering from?

 

[Lonefox]

still overclockers.co.uk, wana keep it all one place and ive shopped there before without any trouble

 

[mesarectifier]

I'm reliably informed that the cheapest Conroe around at the moment is to be found at www.tekheads.co.uk but I haven't checked it out yet.

Look around Overclockers.co.uk, Overclock.co.uk, Tekheads.co.uk, eBuyer.com, Dabs.com (might be lucky!), Komplett.co.uk......there's probably some more, but Overclockers, Overclock and eBuyer are usually the best.

 

[ethel]

You might want to consider this monitor if you are going to be doing a lot of gaming (which I guess you are with that superb gfx card). It's got the best response time of them all:

ViewSonic VX922

If you haven't already, check out this review of the latest TFT's anyway:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/03/27/the_spring_2006_lcd_collection_uk/

 

[fatcat]

I certainly agree with the change of HDD. I have had very bad experiences with Maxtor during the last year or so. My home PC got a defective Maxtor and 2 at the office on rigs the run 7/24. Not only their quality is not what it used to be but they are fussy when it comes to replacing them.....

 

[nick_000000]

Looks good I don't like the look of the Asus P5B mobo though. I would go for the the Intel DP965LT 965 the it is at a cheaper price and looks to be a better mobo.

With the money you save on that you could put on a better HSF for the CPU like a Zalman CNPS9500-AT or CNPS7700-CU.

You could put some money on a cooler for the 1900xt cause they get HOT and NOISY either an Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 or Zalman VF900-CU would be good for that card.

That Thermaltake VA8000SWA Armour is a very big case make sure you have enough room for it why did you get rid of the Antec Titan 550 Tower Case it's a good case as well.

Hope this helps and good luck with your build!

Overclockers.co.uk is a good site some say that their support isn't that great but I have never had any problems with them and they sent me 2 Creative S750 Gigaworks speakers instead of the one I ordered (this was ages ago) which was a bonus sold the second set :lol:.

11 days to go

Lets just hope the send them early, come on overclockers you can do it!

 

[nick_000000]

I'm reliably informed that the cheapest Conroe around at the moment is to be found at www.tekheads.co.uk but I haven't checked it out yet.

Look around Overclockers.co.uk, Overclock.co.uk, Tekheads.co.uk, eBuyer.com, Dabs.com (might be lucky!), Komplett.co.uk......there's probably some more, but Overclockers, Overclock and eBuyer are usually the best.

Overclockers.co.uk is cheaper

 

[mesarectifier]

Not so, I just checked it out.

Tekheads E6600

Overclockers Conroe range (scroll down)

It's about £20 cheaper, that's quite substantial.

 

[nick_000000]

Oops I was looking at the wrong price (without VAT).

 

[Lonefox]

ive decided to change monitors and mobo as suggested after reading the review , i changed to the armour mainly because i have lots of space for it and im hoping that extra space inside will help a bit more with the cooling.. which brings me onto the fans suggestion, i dont mind replacing the cpu fan but ive never really medled with graphics card fans, are they a pain to swap around or is it pretty simple?

 

[nick_000000]

Genrally pretty simple, just taking the stock HSF off with a screwdriver and replace with the new one or you could just but the HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB only an extra £10 and it has a beastly HSF with heatpipes GET IT!

 

[ethel]

Yeah, it's easy to replace the fan on a gfx card - I've done it a few times and I'm certainly no handy andy

However, I agree with nick_000000 - if you can get a heatpipe one for only a bit more, that would be worth it as the warranty situation could be a bit dodgy if you replace the fan.

 

[Lonefox]

whats the difference between:

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

and

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

the heatpipe one seems to be cheaper? i thought this would be the other way round ?