buying a new pc!!! advise would be appreciated :)

[Faelinor]

Hello all!!

I'm wanting to buy myself a new Custom built PC. I am not loaded, being a student, but have managed to scrape together 3 - 400 quid to invest!

I am bang into my games, so i wanted something generally upto date, and something that won't need upgrading for a while...

after a bit gleg on ebay, i found this::
Desktop Gaming PC Quad 10.6Ghz 8GB RAM 500GB 8600GT 1GB on eBay, also, Desktop PCs, Computing (end time 18-Jul-08 16:41:54 BST)

it seems like, totally ideal ... but i didnt think you could get uber pcs this cheap now?? is there something fundamentally wrong with this machine?
or should i snap it up as soon as possible??..

havent bought a new pc in years so am not technically upto date on what it needs, but it seems pretty decent. could anyone let me know if it's worth buying for playing all manners of new games?

Thanks a lot in advance!!

[Helme]

That PC is 'alright'.

If you went up to the £400ish line however you could get a PC that will vastly outperform it - infact it will max every game graphically for the next year or two easily, and after that still play on high settings.

I would suggest something along the lines of;
CPU: E8400(or E7200, if money is tight)
GFX: ATi Radeon HD4850(this is really, the only proper card to get currently, it's top of the line but costs next to nothing)
RAM: 2x1GB DDR2 PC6400(800MHz) from Corsair/OCZ/Geil should be just fine, after a month or two you add another 2 sticks identical to the first for the full 4GB.
Motherboard: I would suggest the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L - have a number of friends who got just that motherboard with no problems at all.
PSU: Corsair 450W - without doubt the most priceworthy PSU out there, don't cheap out on this part. You could probably find a cheaper place to get the parts from, I don't really know of any UK price compare sites and the only reason I used Aria was because it was the only other place I knew off in the UK other than overclockers(who from my experience, are shit expensive).

The other parts all depends on what you want, 500GB HDD, 250GB and so on and a case - any case will do really(hell you can use your old one). What you want to pay is what limits you here.

I put a computer together on Aria.co.uk and it went up to £430 or so, but that's with a 500GB HDD and an E8400 so it could easily go down cheaper(especially if you skip the case and use your old one, including the DVD you have now!).


Another idea to be able to afford a better PC is to look at what parts you currently have, then upgrade it in portions when you get more money - even just changing your CPU would be a huge upgrade, make sure if you go this route btw that your other parts will fit!

[Faelinor]

Firstly, thanks for bothering to reply - sound of you...

just a few questions, erm - surely that quad core processor is better than the E8400?? As i said before im not technically gifted, but arn't they like - the upgraded versions of dual core's? like better newer versions?

and the problem i have with building my own PC, is that im sure i will fuck it up, and end up not knowing what i've done wrong, and ultimately having to grind and save for another :/ ... so although it's a good idea re-using old parts or whatever, would have to build it myself, and i'm a bit funny about it - what if it fucks up and i havent got it under warranty ? :/

so that ATi Radion outperforms the 8600GT?? i thought that the GT was one of the top of the range cards? read some reviews etc and they were all five stars.

so that PC won't say, be able to play multiple versions of daoc at once? or play say the likes of Diablo 3 etc when it comes out??

cheers mate!

[Helme]

The 8600GT card is from the 'old' generation of graphic cards, and even back then it was very midrange, ATi's new 4000 card series is magnificent, probably the most priceworthy graphic cards ever released. They've forced nVidia to cut prices on some of their cards by up to 30-40% just to stay competitive.

Regarding the DualCore vs. QuadCore, the E8400 is generally faster than most quadcores(except the Q9000's, which costs twice as much) because it runs on a faster bus speed, aswell as being built on 45nm chips instead of 65nm, another pro for the E8400 is that you can easily get it up to 3.8-4GHz with the standard cooler and a decent case, and yet another pro is that games are having problems as it is using DualCores fully - they are a long way away from using Quads

That said, the PC you mentioned will run Diablo3 with no problems aslong as you turn off some of the fancy graphics because of the card, one option I guess would be to get that PC and then in some months or so, just buy an HD4850(or HD4870, depending on how they are priced then) and it'll be able to go full out.

Regarding fears of breaking something; Only really shady stores will refuse to exchange parts you got from them and installed yourself, and chances of you actually destroying parts are fairly low, most stuff only fits in 1 place - and theres thousands of "how to" step by step guides on the net, including videos etc. this is not even mentioning the manuals for all the parts which also have picture guides(my old Athlon came with a 45 step guide on how to install the CPU, what it boiled down to was - put it in the socket and put the fan ontop and press down the fan secure lever). Not to speak about the silly sums of money you will save in the long run knowing you can do it yourself


- Ah just remembered another thing, apparently word got out a few days ago that all the 8600GT cards were shipped with faulty chips that were very prone to failure, nVidia being the immature little child that it is refuses to take blame and instead tosses it onto several, independant manufacturers fucking up rather than their chip being faulty -.-

[Faelinor]

cheers for the imput Helme

yeah, it may well be cheaper building it up yourself, but I really am still funny about it. the only experience i've had with that kinda thing is putting more ram into it .. which was a piece of piss tbh as all you had to do was put it in a slot and clip it in.

so your saying ATi Radeon HD4850 for a card ... is this like totally neccessary for a decent computer nowadays? or is it just kinda the "leet" card to have at the minute or whatever?

nice additional information about the 8600's, but theyre cheap as chips!!
are they really not that good?

and another thing ... is it really worth getting a legitimate operating system? or will a copy of xp pro do just fine?

i really don't want to spend more than £400 quid as well, as the girlfriend will go sick :/

[Helme]

XP will do just fine, you will need Vista or XP64bit(which I really don't recommend, it lacks drivers for most hardware) however if you plan on using 4GB or more RAM. Else there's... less legal ways to get ahold of Vista.

The reason I'm going on about HD4850 is that, it's not only a VERY VERY good card, it's also very cheap. If you go with the 8600GT, you may be able to play for a year or two at most with decent graphics(most of the new flashy stuff turned off however) and then you'll start to hit the low/very bad performance spot. The HD4850 will without a doubt let you go full out graphics wise on todays games, and next years games, and probably the year after that is the first time you might have to start turning stuff off, but it'll still perform well. The HD4850 has a longer lasting power so to say. Anyways as I said before, you will be able to play the games you mentioned fine with the 8600GT - but what about the games of next year that you don't know about yet?

As I said before, you could just go with the computer you linked - and then after a few months or so put in an HD4850(it's even easier to install than RAM).

And it's Helme, not Himse!

[Faelinor]

aye Helme!!! note my quick edit above lol :].

after having a bit think about it and stuff, i've decided to grow some balls and build one up myself, cos i've read up that the hardest part of building one, is getting components that are compatible with each other .. the rest is like an adult jigsaw apparently so im gonna give it a go!!!

im gonna go with the card you've said .. gonna order it on friday.. will also go with the processor and motherboard that you've suggested, unless you think that theres a processor say, 40 quid cheaper that works nearly as well as that one? the problem is, is that when im going on price comparison sites etc with the components you gave me, by the time i've got the Motherboard, CPU, PSU, graphics card and RAM its already £398.. plus theres the HDD to think about, can use my rewriter and dvd drive from my old PC so thats a plus ... still gonna be quite pricey though :/

so aye, gonna buy the motherboard and Graphics card first, and buy individual parts on a weekly basis until i've got it sorted ...

one more thing sorry Helme - wanna get my facts straight before i give it a go!! what is the jist with fans and such like? does the cpu and graphics card come with fans included? or do you need to buy fans and randomly put then inside the case? and how do you know how many fans/what type of fans you need to put in? sorry for the constant questions, just a bit nervous and don't want anything to go drastically wrong!! :]

[Helme]

All Intel CPU's for home use to my knowledge comes with fans included, graphic cards fans depends entirerly on the model and maker, but the more powerful ones always have fans, you could always go for the E7200 - abit cheaper but still a very good CPU.

If you could list your current computer parts I could help you get better performance with each upgrade; CPU-Z this is a good program to get motherboard/cpu/ports info, I would be mostly intrested in what type of RAM you have, if you have PCI-E and what CPU socket you have, or just go to the about tab and press registers dump(.txt) and put the text here

edit: list not link oO

[Faelinor]

jesus christ that'll be quite embarrasing tbh! lol. My PC is like 3 + years old, has an Athlon XP2600+ in it, and thats as much as i know :E
i don't have the internet at my flat at the moment,
am using the net at work so can't download that freeware and get you the socket info etc :/ is there anyway to do that like in system tools or whatever?

will find out as much info about me pc as possible tonight and post it tomorrow morning, for you to reply to at your own leisure if you don't mind!!

i think however the motherboard will be too old and shit to support any kind of decent upgrade :/ will try though.

so yeah, if you don't mind check this thread tomorrow at some point Helme!!
would be nice of you .... aye and thats very much for your help, legendary.

[Helme]

It's quite hard getting socket informations without having the handy manuals or a program made for retrieving it, see if you can grab ahold of a floppy and put the program on that? or just an mp3 player or whatever.

Else, I guess try get a motherboard model number, that'll be enough(if you have the manuals that should be quite easy, else they usually either put a lable on it or it's printed on the motherboard itself).

Problem with the older AMD's is that they are either Socket A(very likely) or Socket AM2, Socket A motherboards are very unlikely to support PCI-E, which makes upgrading in portions very difficult, as you can't go for graphic card first as it won't fit, and if you go for motherboard+cpu first - your old graphic card wont fit in the new motherboard.

[old.windforce]

one should never upgrade more then 2 components, and certainly not on 3+ year old systems.

I would certainly go with Helme his advice in the indicated price range

[Faelinor]

wey aye ... gonna have to spend about 400 quid getting an alright system. gonna go with Helme's spec he mentioned above, but im keeping my old dvd drive and cd rewriter and case ... will be able to buy all the parts for about 360 quid!! pretty decent, considering i haven't found anything as good as that for like 500 or less on the internet.. will be saving loads of money by building it myself :] just hope i don't bollocks it up!! lol.

is it easy to install windows etc? never done it before :/

[old.windforce]

i would replace your power supply

[Faelinor]

how come? what do you think's wrong with the 450W corsair?

[Bahumat]

Originally Posted by Faelinor

how come? what do you think's wrong with the 450W corsair?

It wont be powerful enough, you wanna get a 600w psu minimum as graphics cards these days are using more a more power.

Just regarding the 10GHZ CPU!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You probably already knew, but if you have a quad core cpu @ 2.5ghz it does not mean you multiply it by 4 to get a 10ghz processor