New Build - thanks for sharing your experiences with me

Medicated

Distinguished
Sep 13, 2006
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18,510
This is my first post but I've been reading these forums for about 2 months trying to piece a good rig together to last me for the next 4-5 years (with only mild upgrading :lol: ).

I've done 2 previous builds - 1st PC was a 486 Sx25 from Compaq.

This build is mainly for gaming with some light media encoding and occasional CAD work for when I feel guilty about spending so much money on a toy 😳

My last system build (2003 ish):

Athlon XP (Barton) 3200+
1.5GB Corsair XMS DDR Ram C3
2 x 40GB Sata HDD (may use these in new rig)
Geforce 6600GT Winfast AGP
Asus A7N8X-E nForce 2 mobo

Plays Prey well but Oblivion killed it though...

To:

Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Black)
£79.99

Looks great - I really didn't want a case that looked like it was about to take off

OCZ GameXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
£89.99

Steady supply - have had problems in the past so don't mind spending the money, especially as I can use it whenever I build again (and I will refuse to buy a DX10 card if it requires 1KW!)

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)
£5.99

Viewsonic VX2025wm 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black
£249.99

Looks like the best for the money, and certainly will be better than my 17" nokia CRT

Cherry G83-6105 PS2 Keyboard - Black
£11.99

Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 - Retail (KB-056-MS)
£21.99

Corsair Flash Voyager 128MB USB2.0 Flash Drives
£8.49

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
&
Asus P5W DH Deluxe WiFi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
&
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB)
£514.97

Hoping to take the e6600 to at least 3GHz and hopefully the mobo will stay viable for a little while...

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache £59.95

Originally had a 150Gb raptor + 1 320 GB 7200.10 but I heard that these were nearly as fast without the price premium

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
£19.95

Don't know much about this one, but its not the cheapest or the most expensive

ArctiClean Thermal Material Remover and Surface Purifier - 60ml Kit
£4.95

Scythe Infinity Heatpipe CPU Cooler
£29.95

Not looking forward to installing this - it looks huge

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£189.99

In the end it was a toss up between this & the 256MB version... Only £40 between them so i thought i'd get this as it will probably be at least 18 months before Vista becomes good for games / has anything worth upgrading for

Artic Cooling Accelero X2 Cooler (X1800/X1900 Series)
£13.95

The 1900XT seems to run hot so I figured that one of these is good for stock, with the possability of some OC when i feel the need

Subtotal £1,362.09
VAT £238.37
Total £1,600.46

All prices from overclockers.co.uk

Comments, suggestions & Chinese noodle recipes greatully recieved.
 
If I had had more money this is what I woud have got. Nice! Just a few things, if you are gaming why don't you get a razer copperhead or g5 mouse, with the monitor you could go for the LG L204WT at Komplett for £215 and the DVD drive could be better IMO, check out CDfreaks, their favs are BenQ 1640, Pioneer DVR-111, and liteon 16H5S. Btw I tried ordering something from overclockers and they wanted a fax of two of these things; driving license, bank statement, utilities bill, credit card statement. That was probably because it was for a business but it put me off!
 
If I had had more money this is what I woud have got. Nice! Just a few things, if you are gaming why don't you get a razer copperhead or g5 mouse, with the monitor you could go for the LG L204WT at Komplett for £215 and the DVD drive could be better IMO, check out CDfreaks, their favs are BenQ 1640, Pioneer DVR-111, and liteon 16H5S. Btw I tried ordering something from overclockers and they wanted a fax of two of these things; driving license, bank statement, utilities bill, credit card statement. That was probably because it was for a business but it put me off!
I would have faxed them a picture of my middle finger. :wink:
 
Thanks for your comments everyone.

Re: PSU - I wanted one with plenty of headroom for OC and I don't mind paying extra in this area as I can reuse it later on.

Re: Monitor - I'm trying to find reviews of this unit to compare (other than at Komplet)

Re: DVD - Thanks for the advice - am looking at changing now.

All things considered I think I shall be ready to put the order in early next week 😀

Cheers
 
That mouse is very good for gaming, if it's the wired one. I have the wired version myself, it's a VERY good mouse. Just make sure to change the hz of it to 500hz making it more responsive.
 
ROFL.

There aren't many reviews on the LG but there is this forum which is very informative however very long. In terms of specs this monitor is better than the viewsonic 5ms instead of 16, a higher contrast and I think it is HDCP compatable. Also those prices look a little dear. Sure, the only place where you'll find all of the components together is this site but it is rather expensive, you might want to look at scan, ebuyer and Komplett as well. Also overclockers have no way of reviewing your purchase history or tracking your items.
 
2 TBSP veggie oil
1 box medium thickness noodle
2 carrots
1 cabbage
1lb chicken, or beef if you prefer
Bean Sprouts if you like also
soy sauce, seasame oil, 5 pepper spice if you want

Mix it all together and have fun... actually, you better not, because I don't know how it would taste. If I want chinese food, I'd ask my grandparents to cook

About your computer though, it looks good. I don't know if you can get the NEC ND-3550A, but thats a decent stable DVD-Burner.

I like the 700W GameXStream, but the 600W is probably enough for you, even if you OC... if you go XFire though, than might want the extra headroom with the 700W.

Lastly, can the inifinity fit in your case? Might want to double check that. I'm planning on buying a huge cooler too, and I'm worried it won't fit.
 
I specced up simlar parts as far as possible from other suppliers - ebuyer etc. but there were massive availabilty problems + postage & packing at £20+ per store made up the difference in price anyway.

Having said that, Overclockers were cheaper by £2-3 for most parts than the stores that you mentioned.
 
Mmm... Chinese... 😛

The PSU is for DX10 @ 300W for just the card, when I upgrade in 12-18 months.

X-Fire is unlikely at present as I jst don't think that its worth the extra outlay, unless DX 10 cards prove massivley overcosted & future titles suddenly become much more demanding.

I've seen the Infinity in a P180 on the interweb so it must fit... or maybe thats the beer talking.... :roll:

Thanks for the LG review - I saw one at Widescreen gamng too - they were favourble, but again Komplet are the onl supplier and they wont have stock until the 22nd September.

The Viewsonic VX2025WM is an 8ms panel not 16ms..

:)
 
I specced up simlar parts as far as possible from other suppliers - ebuyer etc. but there were massive availabilty problems + postage & packing at £20+ per store made up the difference in price anyway.

Having said that, Overclockers were cheaper by £2-3 for most parts than the stores that you mentioned.

You can get the lasermouse 6000 from aria for £18 😛
 
Man, what is with everything going out of stock at the moment? I accidently ordered of the LG monitor from Komplett (very long story) so that might go back into stock, so if your quick :wink: however I wouldn't bank on it.

Like usual they lie with the statistics, it's a 8ms response time grey to grey and 16ms for white to black. I'm not sure whether you'll notice the difference though, some people say they can others can't.

If you buy the CPU, memory and MB from scan it costs 508.12 + 6.03 P&P but that's not much of a difference, it just shows that for a bundle, which is generally supposed to be much cheaper, that it isn't really that much of a great deal.
 
Availability does suck at the moment - it must be all these people building new C2D systems.

I'll have the money for the system on Friday 22nd Sept so I'll shop around then and get the best prices for all the parts on that day, try and get it all shipped next day to build over the weekend 😀

Will go for the LG if I can find it anywhere in stock, otherwise I doubt that i'll be dissapointed with the Viewsonic.

If I don't just go for it i'll end up like some of the poor souls on the MB forum waiting for the nVidia 590 boards to be in stock... :cry:
 
Hmm, shipped next day might be problem, just make sure overclockers does it, Komplett did but with scan you have to book a day. At the moment the situation is horrible in the UK for building a PC, the only place with a decent selection is overclockers. So, good luck!