Building new PC - Does spec look OK?

[Spectre]

Case - Chieftec BX tower Case £73
M/Board - ASUS P4C800 £127
CPU - - P4 2.6 PC800 £173
RAM - Corsair TWINX512-3200LL DDR-DIMM 512MB £138
Graphics - Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB £280
DVD drive - Samsung SD616Q - 16x/48x £30
Sound - Soundblaster Audigy 2 £58
Speakers - Creative labs Inspire 6.1 6700 £85
Mousemat - Icemat £21
Mouse - Razor Boomslang 2100 £60

From current system
H/D - Seagate Barracuda 40GB 7200rpm x 2
CDRW - HP8100i CDRW
Monitor - Eizo Flexscan T662 20"
NIC - Netgear 10/1
Floppy
Keyboard

Gonna be playing mainly EF2, EF1, Enemy Territory.

 

[Ch3tan]

THat mobo supports dual channel mode for RAM. Get two of the same sticks if you can afford it, or else get two 256mb sticks, you'll notice a slight performance gain.

 

[Spectre]

This is what I don't quite understand.

I thought by getting one of these i.e. 2 x 256, I was getting a matched pair in one.

Corsair® 512MB TwinX Dual Memory [2 x 256MB] XMS 3200 DDR 400MHz

 

[Ch3tan]

Ooops, sorry didnt read properly Get 1 gig if you can afford it

 

[Spectre]

Thanks - I think I will try to afford 1GB RAM.

What I'm worried about is there enough power (360w) to run everything - I heard somewhere that the ATI graphics card needs a lot of power.

Do I need additional cooling to what the case supplies.

I've only got experience of building my current PIII 750 which is not in the same league heatwise.

 

[(Shovel)]

With regard to cooling:

Save £20-£30 of your budget for after you've built the system. Chieftec cases tend to be excellent and spacious, so it's hard to predict any problems.

Should you find that you're suffering from any overheating or instability after you're up and running, you then have the money put aside to fix it in the specific area that it's needed. E.g. If memory overheats, you can buy memory heatsinks, or you can buy a case fan combination to to suit what you need. If you buy cooling first then you risk not solving the potential problem - unless you know for sure that something *is* going to overheat for sure.

Should you find that your system actually runs hunky dory when you test it out, then you also have £30 to spend on a shiny new game with which to pace your graphics card

 

[ECA]

first up, avoid the razor and the icemat, get an mx500 or a msie v3/4 ( if you can get hold of a 4 yet ).

Dont bother with corsair, its a little overpriced, go with geil.
You will get just as good performance - OCZ, corsair and geil are all very close together.

You can get the cpu a bit cheaper as well.

Visit www.planetprices.co.uk save yourself a bit of cash.

Also micepads - get a richochet or a dkt pad, anything else isnt worth it, icepads certainly aint.

 

[Ch3tan]

I'd also say that its not really worth getting a mousemat at all with an optical. Try it on your surface before buying one at least.

And as ECA says, the MS and Logitech are the top of the bunch for mice -and far cheaper than that Boomslang.

 

[Spectre]

Thanks all for your replies.

Good advice (Shovel) - I'll forget about heating and only fix if broke.

Good link ECA and ur right I can save £20 - but I was going to wait 'till after 26/10/03 4 processor coz supposed to be a price drop, don't know how long it will take to come into effect tho.
Think I will go with Geil - £50 saved. Found one review that said Giel outperformed Corsair.

I've tried mice on table surface Ch3tan - trouble is my hand keeps sticking to table and mousemats, thats why I want Icemat because it is a sort of frosted glass that my hand slides on easily.

I've actually got a Memorex optical mouse keyboard, but I went back to cabled because I hated that uncertainty if cursor freezes for any reason. With cable it's 100% reliable - mouse/keyboard always work.

The Powercolor Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb is £60 cheaper than Sapphire
I found a roundup of different 9800 Pros here for anyone who's interested
www nordichardware com/reviews/graphiccard/2003/Radeon9800Roundup/index.php

 

[ECA]

Rah good to see we saved you some notes.

The main reason for avoiding the boomslang is simply that its crap about optical mice etc is complete rubbish.

the mx500 and the msie v3/4 give the best performance a mice can give.

Pads - Its personal preference really, but I've tried a few of the expensive pads and I'm currently using a richochet, i've tried funcs/gigantas/fatpad/ice/and a few more.

The richochet has a good surface size, too sides rough/smooth so you can use which one you like most, its very stable and wont slip ( unless you play games with UBER low sens - around 1-2 sens so i can turn around 180 in one turn :/ - like I do, but it doesnt slip much or often ).

 

[Ch3tan]

I dont mean wireless by optical. Optical mice don't use a ball, so no cleaning of it is constantly needed.

 

[Spectre]

I didn't realise the Richochet had 2 useable sides and I would like a larger mat.

I misunderstood. I see what you mean - no ball and no dirt to mess up tracking. MX500 Got some good reviews for gaming although some complaints about drivers 9.76 and earlier. Maybe the latest drivers 9.78 are better.

 

[Ch3tan]

Iknow everyone loves the logitech mice at the moment, and in the cordless field I think they are far ahead of everyone else.

However the MS Explorer is still IMO the best corded optical you can get, and its very well priced as well now. Mine has never let me down ( I had a few faulty ones when they were new, but MS replaced them within 3 days). The drivers are very good and they are perfect for gaming.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I have a really cheap (Cost me about £10) Trust AMI Mouse 300 Dual Scroll 5-button mouse, seems pretty good to me. I'm getting a Wireless Optical Trust 250SP mouse too, only £20