Help Buying new PC/Hardware

[Bodhi]

This has taken my eye, seems like a good solution for my budget? Anyone have any comments?

Looks a good deal actually, my Coolermaster case has been spot on. Prefer Corsair PSU's personally, but that case would get the spec I put together down below 500 notes.

Billargh I got that RAM from OcUK when they had some in stock. This was the first weekend in December, when they had loads. I asked the guy behind the counter for a recommendation for some cheap DDR3 which would work with an AMD board, and he came up with this. I have 4Gb and they have funky comb style heatsinks. Me happy.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Looking at maybe getting a slightly better CPU than the one Bodhi suggested as I think I can just about afford it. Are the Phenom II Quad Cores suitable? So for example are these any good? They look fairly good value, and AFAIK would work on the above mobo? What's the difference between the Black Editions and non-blacks?

Quick response valued, I'm ordering today.

 

[dysfunction]

Which mobo?

Yes the Phenom II X4 945, 955 and 965 are excellent...

 

[Wazzerphuk]

The one that Bodhi suggested. Annoying the one with CrossfireX support is out of stock on OcUK - how important/useful/good is it, would it be worth trying to get one from another retailer?

 

[dysfunction]

The Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AM3 Motherboard would be ideal...

Crossfire is only needed if you are going to have two graphics cards...prob not much use unless you are an intense gamer!

 

[Wazzerphuk]

So far I'm looking at:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £132.81
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £119.98
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - £74.58
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Mobo - £69.99
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler - £18.99
Coolermaster Elite 330 Case With Coolermaster eXtreme Power 460W PSU - £51.99
Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - £68.10

Total - £547.84.

Any final comments? I think I'm close to settling on this.

 

[dysfunction]

Looks great to me! I'm keen to buy that as well!
Do you need a DVD/RW drive?
How about a Card Reader?

Do you need any of this stuff?

http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Ah yes a card reader I do need! Cheers for the reminder. I got a new DVDRW pretty recently so I'm sorted for that. I doubt I'll need the cooling agent as the CPU comes with a fan so should have some, if not the CPU fan should have some, if not I might have some lying about somewhere

 

[old.Osy]

Looking at maybe getting a slightly better CPU than the one Bodhi suggested as I think I can just about afford it. Are the Phenom II Quad Cores suitable? So for example are these any good? They look fairly good value, and AFAIK would work on the above mobo? What's the difference between the Black Editions and non-blacks?

Quick response valued, I'm ordering today.

The Black Edition processors come multiplier unlocked, meaning you can OC your processor very easy, should you want to.

Also, if your mobo comes in the 790gx/SB750 flavor, you can unlock the X3 720 BE to X4 (quadcore), very easily.

 

[old.Osy]

So far I'm looking at:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail - £132.81
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £119.98
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - £74.58
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Mobo - £69.99
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler - £18.99
Coolermaster Elite 330 Case With Coolermaster eXtreme Power 460W PSU - £51.99
Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - £68.10

Total - £547.84.

Any final comments? I think I'm close to settling on this.

The motherboard is 785G, I recommend 790 flavor, like above.

460W PSU? If you'll be looking at adding additional HDDs, or upgrading your video card in 1 year, or OverClocking.... that amount of wattage will be stretching it.

On the other hand, if you're not planning to OC, the BOX cooler is enough, you wouldn't need additional cooling, as the default is pretty effective to start with.

LE: referring you to my thread

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Too late Osy, just submitted my order!

Got all of the above as stated, with additional cheap card reader for ~£5. Paid for Saturday deliveries so they best come tomorrow!

Many thanks to everyone who's helped me along the way, it's been much appreciated.

 

[old.Osy]

Well I'm @ work - don't wank over the forums that much

Anyway, fingers crossed with that PSU, to me it seems rather unsuited for what you have to power.

 

[Bodhi]

Antec's PSU Calculator reckons you'll need 258W to run that rig with 2 extra SATA drives and 2 USB's at 90%, so 430W (which that PSU actually produces) will be plenty.

Still, looks a good rig Wazz. Same as mine but with 2 extra cores and a graphics card, basically. I am still quite stunned by how this thing runs, stable as you like and pretty bastard nippy.

Good work nipper!

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Indeed, I shall have lots of fun opening shiny goodies tomorrow! I'll only be using the one drive in there I think anyway so should be fine, I'm not a USB whore either.

PS Bods you on FB? You strike me as the kind of **** I should add.

 

[Bodhi]

I am dude. Look for someone called John Kyle with a red T-Shirt on you'll be reet

Then add me and see what the T-shirt actually says

 

[Kryten]

happy days

It's amazing the difference the graphics card alone makes to power requirements. I'll be the first to rubbish the PSU requirement calculators available, as a rule of thumb you should add about 100w on top for overheads and oversights, plus a little for expansion. But as I'm famous for bleeting on about, it's a matter of quality over wattage where it actually matters and Bods is spot on - it will be more than enough for what you need. It's not like it's costing you an arm and a leg, if you need more in future you won't be losing out by replacing it.

Quite pleased with the price of the ram you got there too, shows things are moving forward a bit quicker and we're definitely out of the hole where DDR3 was enthusiast/rich bastard only and DDR2 was still doing the job.

Will be a damned quick system no doubt about it - you can't overestimate how much juice those Phenoms can chuck out, a quick look around any overclocking site will show how popular they are

£550 and you've got a top notch gaming system - let us know how it runs

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Just "waiting" for a copy of windows 7 to "arrive" before I boot it up. ahem.

 

[Billargh]

...and we demand opinions once you get it up and running Wazz! I'm tempted to just order the exact same rig you've bought on Friday

 

[nath]

Just "waiting" for a copy of windows 7 to "arrive" before I boot it up. ahem.

I thought you were rabidly anti piracy?

 

[Wazzerphuk]

It's an evaluation version, not used Windows 7 before.

No troubles on the install really, apart from the Arctic Cooling fan was pretty fiddly to get hooked up. It's very quiet, not checked temperatures or anything like that yet... will do soon.

Is that 3D benchmarking software still going? I can't remember what it's called but fancy running my rig through it to see what arbitrary score that means nothing to me it will get.

Any good FPS games I should check out? Bear in mind I like fun ones, not realism-based ones like CoD etc.

 

[nath]

3dMark I assume is what you're thinking of.

As for FPS - not sure how CoD fits under realism but you could look at the Serious Sam re-release. It's the weekend deal on steam and really good fun if you've got some mates to coop with. It won't tax your system but it does look quite pretty in some bits.

It's not FPS but I'd highly recommend Batman: Arkham Asylum as a good demonstration of a very nice looking game and it's also super dope kickass biff pow kapaff.

Mirror's Edge? Again, very pretty indeed, misses out the S of FPS but great fun too.

 

[Billargh]

Hai, whats nath said, Arkham asylum is the best game evwerarrr!

 

[Wazzerphuk]

you could look at the Serious Sam re-release

They've updated it for new machines, or reworked it? Really liked the original (and sequel), silly fun.

 

[nath]

Graphics update and coop update, nothing else as far as I can tell. It's just as it was in all other ways.

 

[Bodhi]

Well mine's currently running two ESX hosts and an Openfiler SAN under VMware Workstation, so they have plenty of juice to spare. Shame I can't get the farking ESX hosts to talk to the SAN, but that is a separate issue.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Graphics update and coop update, nothing else as far as I can tell. It's just as it was in all other ways.

Excellent, I'll look out for that and give it a bash.

 

[nath]

Excellent, I'll look out for that and give it a bash.

Might wanna be quick - it's this weekends steam deal.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I really don't like Steam and won't use it. Is there anywhere else I can get it? Not too fussed about price, it's a cheap release anyway as far as I can see? Boxed copies don't seem to be out yet.

 

[Ch3tan]

I really don't like Steam and won't use it. Is there anywhere else I can get it? Not too fussed about price, it's a cheap release anyway as far as I can see? Boxed copies don't seem to be out yet.

Why is it that you still refuse to use steam? It really is very cheap when things are on offer, and works very very well these days.

 

[nath]

I really don't like Steam and won't use it. Is there anywhere else I can get it? Not too fussed about price, it's a cheap release anyway as far as I can see? Boxed copies don't seem to be out yet.

As Chet says, it's a lot better than it was. It's still far from perfect and there are some very valid reasons to criticise it but it's certainly worth reconsidering if you've not tried it in a while.