I have had enough....

[Deebs]

of my shuttle.

It's past it gaming pc age so I am going back to a grownup pc

Now, I bought an AGP GTX6600 which I want to continue to use so please bear that in mind when recommending:

an AGP motherboard
an intel processor
a full size case
a decent powersupply.
2 gigs of RAM

Question:

If I replace the MB in a years time say for one with PCI-e will I have to change the powersupply to accomadate?

Any advice welcomed. Can't play WoW properly due to framerate issues and it is pissing me off bigtime so I am gonna treat myself to a chrissy pressy

 

[Dommers]

Before people can reccommend stuff, they need to know your price range mate

 

[TdC]

wild guess here Deebs matey:

• Asus P5P800 Intel 865PE (LGA775) Motherboard (MB-082-AS) £54.95 (£64.57 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Intel Pentium 4 640 "LGA775 Prescott" 3.2GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology - Retail (CP-093-IN) £139.95 (£164.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) £144.95 (£170.32 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-045-AN) £62.50 (£73.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• CoolerMaster Praetorian 731 Aluminum (No PSU) (CA-081-CM) £79.00 (£92.83 Including VAT at 17.5%)

everything taken off of overclockers.co.uk qua pricing.

niggles:
I'm not that clued in on Intel stuff. At the least you now have a pricing indication.

cpu: not the fastest, but certainly fast. it's a prescott, so you'll need a mobo to match.
mobo: this is the only asus that ocuk stock that a)takes prescotts and b)still has agp. and it's cheap-ish.
ram: you can prolly go faster and cheaper if you shop around a bit. 2GB is nice futureproofing though. getting 4 512MB sticks may save you a bunch compared to 2 1GB sticks as well.
psu: 500W should see you through quite a bit. it's also reasonably priced.
case: CM praetorian is a decent case. not much to look at but good quality imo. you could also get a centurion. it's their cheapass case but still decent. I have one of the early cent models and it's quite good for the price imo.

Question:
If I replace the MB in a years time say for one with PCI-e will I have to change the powersupply to accomadate?

imo no: 500W should see you through. if in doubt, you could use this handy tool to chart your power needs. ofc Dommers is right too. I've kept things more or less to a reasonable budget. you can fiddle about and make things fit better I suppose.

 

[Deebs]

Actually fuckit.

PCI-e motherboard and a cheapish PCI-E graphics card, PCI-E powersupply as well.

Budget around 700quid inc vat.....

Help me out peeps before I do a TedTheDog and put a claw hammer thru my current pc.

 

[inactionman]

2Gb (2x1Gb) Corsair DDR400/PC3200,2x128Mx64, non-ECC, 2x184 DIMM, Unbuffered, CL3, Lifetime Warranty £129.99 £152.74 (todayonly)
256MB ScanFX PCI-E *Extreme Edition* GF7800GT *450 Core 1.05Ghz Mem* (256bit) ViVo 2xDVI £216.00 £253.80
LN12380 Gigabyte GA- 8N-SLI nVidiaCrush19+MCP-04 FSB1066 PCIEDDR2 10xUSB, 4xSATAII, 2xPATARaid, 8Ch, £58.89 £69.20
640 Intel Pentium® 4 LGA775 CPU (3.20 Ghz 800FSB) HT 2MB Cache with Intel® EM64T *Retail* £117.50 £138.06 (todayonly)

From Scan, and for the case/psu:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=311799&cks=PRL

Comes to about £20-30 over, but you get an SLI motherboard, a 7800GT, and it will last a bit!

Of course I'd got for AMD, probably an Opteron 146 and overclock the bugger, but it's your choice.

 

[TdC]

in that case I'd do something like this ; same comments as above apply:

• Intel Pentium 4 640 "LGA775 Prescott" 3.2GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology - Retail (CP-093-IN) £139.95 (£164.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Asus P5LD2 Deluxe Intel 945X (LGA775) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-108-AS) £114.95 (£135.07 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-101-SP) Price: £134.95 (£158.57 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• Samsung Original 1GB DDR2 PC4200 533MHz (MY-014-SA) Price: £64.95 (£76.32 Including VAT at 17.5%) x2
• Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-045-AN) £62.50 (£73.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• CoolerMaster Centurion 531 - Silver (No PSU) (CA-084-CA) Price: £49.99 (£58.74 Including VAT at 17.5%)
• total: £ 742,90

in fact, ocuk say that gfx card is available on special offer for £129.95 +VAT. saves you another 19 quid. I scaled the components a bit to fit your budget a bit. further tweaking will get you a better deal maybe. again, I'm not that versed in intel kit. I like the gfx card and the ram though.

 

[TdC]

wow, looking at Inactionman's findings I'm inclined to say that ocuk are expensive *****. you get more poota for less with Scan it seems.

 

[inactionman]

You just have to know what to buy from who, ocuk are good for specialised performance parts (CAS2 RAM, super graphics cards etc.), but in a £700 budget you don't really have the budget for it. Scan are normally consistantly good value.

Also with postage costs, it doesn't often pay to shop around, but the case is a bargain, and not available from scan yet.

 

[Embattle]

Out of interest why Intel only Deebs?

 

[Deebs]

Out of interest why Intel only Deebs?

Call me old but ive never had probs with them so why change?


I can change but need to be convinced..... 700 squid...........

 

[UndyingAngel]

Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE Gamers motherboard P4 SKT775 PCI-E X16 graphic slot On-Board 7.1 Channel Audio 1066FSB Dual Channel DDR2 Dual LAN SATA RAID - Retail Boxed 083836 1 £93.96 £93.96

Intel Pentium 4 640 3.2Ghz Socket 775 800mhz 2mb Retail Boxed 087128 2073 £113.12 £113.12

Sapphire X1800XL 256mb 256bit GDDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI/VIVO 097761 14 £234.01 £234.01

Antec Plusview II EU Tower Case With Windowed Side Panel - No Psu 099134 35 £49.35 £49.35

2x Kingston 1024mb 533mhz Ddr2 Sodimm - Non Ecc Pc2-4200
083934 43 £51.63 £103.26

Antec NEO HE430GB 430W Modular PSU With 80mm Low Speed/noise Fan 18db 099136 19 £53.81 £53.81

Cart Total: £647.51

(I admit that isnt including VAT so it will be about £760 but it has the ATI X1800XL /DROOL )

 

[Dommers]

I think Nvidias card beat the x1800xl it has 16 pipeline thingy and the Nvidias have 24.

 

[pcg79]

Call me old but ive never had probs with them so why change?


I can change but need to be convinced..... 700 squid...........

youre so old

 

[Lazarus]

this handy tool

Nice find Teedles

 

[Deebs]

Hmmm

I like Abit and Gigabyte motherboards. Argh, so many decisions to make. Do i want a board with 2 PCI-E 16x slots?

HELP!!! Pls.

Ta

 

[TdC]

Nice find Teedles

the handy tool that Laz told me about!!!

 

[inactionman]

Yes, if you have and SLI mobo, and an SLI capable Nvidia graphics card, you can upgrade to SLI later (just put another card in), which will nearly give you the power of both graphics cards. Basically a relatively cheap and easy upgrade later to get a serious performance boost.

I don't recommend ATI (although you can do this with ATI), as it's a lot more complicated (you need a special 'master' card to do this, and a crossfire motherboard, which aren't that available yet).

How open are you to overclocking Deebs?

 

[Deebs]

I have no objections to overclocking but I am sorta against the idea of having a case with any seethru shit on it

 

[inactionman]

Ok, in that case I'll recommend an opteron based solution (AMD's server chip, they cost about £100, but you can easily overclock them to 2.5GHz without changing the voltage, and can reach 3GHz if you overvolt them).

From Scan:

2Gb (2x1Gb) Corsair DDR400/PC3200,2x128Mx64, non-ECC, 2x184 DIMM, Unbuffered, CL3, Lifetime Warranty £129.99 £152.74 (Todayonly)
LN11796 256MB ScanFX PCI-E *Extreme Edition* GF7800GT *450 Core 1.05Ghz Mem* (256bit) ViVo 2xDVI £216.00 £253.80
LN9130 Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe, ATX, DDDR400, PCI-E, 2 x Gbit Lan, USB 2.0, 1394, 8ch Audio, 4 x SATA, Raid 5 £90.63 £106.49

From OCUK:

AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-142-AM) £99.95 £99.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) £14.95 £14.95A

And the same case from Komplett.

It's still about £20-30 over budget, but it will be a monster of a computer.

The better cooler is to combat any heat the overclocking may generate, thread about the overclocking from ocuk forums here:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17481663

The overclocked opteron will run as fast as any processor intel sells (barring the silly EE editions), is consistently rated as faster, cooler, and more efficient than intel (barring video processing stuff, but definitely for games), and, as a certain tv personality may say, 'it's as cheap as chips'. You can see how popular it is as they are a bit difficult to get hold of and they sell well on ebay!

Other bonuses of the socket 939 motherboard are that you can simply upgrade your processor to dual core later by swapping the opteron for a dual core 939 processor (Athlon X2 or a dual core Opteron).

Oh, I've been using AMD processors since the original Athlon (5 years), and have had no problems at all.

 

[Athan]

On why 'Intel only' ...

Call me old but ive never had probs with them so why change?

Well, you know how back in the Athlon XP days the AMD CPUs were derided for running stupidly hot and thus also sucking stupid amounts of power?

Well, AMD64 CPUs are the exact opposite of that and current Intel offerings are now the "run stupidly hot whilst sucking stupid amounts of power" CPUs.

Intel seems to still be mostly brute-forcing performance by ratcheting up clock speeds, with all the attendant power problems that entails, whilst AMD seem to have actually engaged their brain and made the way their CPUs work better, so they get more performance for a lot less MHz. And the whole "Cool 'n' Quiet" thing really does "Just Work[tm]".

Athlon XP 1600+ at 1.4GHz, AMD64 3000+ at a mere 1.8GHz .

-Ath

 

[Chilly]

no one has suggested a heat sink!

Get one of those huge zalman jobbies (all Cu is better than the Cu/Al mix), and be sure that your mobo can take the size and weight. It's a great hsf and quiet as fuck compared to your average piece of stock crap that comes with an intel chip.

 

[inactionman]

no one has suggested a heat sink!

That because these days you don't really need one, unless you want to:

* Have a really quiet computer
* Overclock

All CPU's these days come with one (almost impossible to buy OEM CPU's these days), and stock heatsinks are normally enough, plus there's next to no room in this budget for one (with the exception of the one I put in overclocked Opteron solution).

 

[Chilly]

yes, but stock heatsinks are loud as hell, personally I wouldnt buy a computer that had stock fans and coolers, but I do a lot of audio production so I'm a bit of a sound fiend!

 

[Deebs]

I prefer Abit or Gigabyte motherboards so:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=213550
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=273376
or the gigabyte GA-8N-SLI

If I go for one of the above boards, will the powersupply inactionman quoted above still suffice?

 

[inactionman]

The fatality one is a bit expensive, you may not need it. The second abit one is fine. Nothing wrong with the gigabyte. Just recommending ASUS as that's what I have (although a more expensive version), and it's generally recommended as a good board for stability.

The PSU in the antec case is a pretty good one, you'll be able to run SLI 7800GT's on it, providing you don't add too many hard-drives (3 or more). Isn't Teeds is doing SLI on a 450W PSU?

 

[Deebs]

Guys

That case is like rocking horse shit. Can you provide another recommendation that Scan stock so I can order the bloody thing right now.....

 

[inactionman]

Only problem with scan is they don't stock many quality cases with PSU's. I'll have a look.

 

[inactionman]

This case:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=156451

With this psu on today only:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?WebProductID=301783

Odd, just checked Komplett and the Sonata II are shown as in stock, else Dabs have them, a mate got his today.

 

[Lazarus]

inaction - that PSU doesnt have PCI connectors

 

[Deebs]

Fucksake, they were not in stock just a moment ago.....