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"Critique my new spec..."

Right, finally decided to do the Half Life 2 PC thing, mainly because my old machine is limping ever more heavily. Stupid progess. Anyhow, I've not been paying much attention to hardware of late so if people have comments on this initial spec that would be helpful. In particular I chose the graphics card pretty much at random, having heard good things about PowerColor and a budget of around the £250 mark.

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £105.69
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-096-AM) £111.57
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) £93.94
Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614C 160GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-012-SA) £67.56
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC) £229.07
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU (CA-003-AT) £82.19

Total £690.02

Oh, just realised I've not added a heatsink/fan. Comes with the stock one but I presume they're rubbish and noisy still?

Right, finally decided to do the Half Life 2 PC thing, mainly because my old machine is limping ever more heavily. Stupid progess. Anyhow, I've not been paying much attention to hardware of late so if people have comments on this initial spec that would be helpful. In particular I chose the graphics card pretty much at random, having heard good things about PowerColor and a budget of around the £250 mark.

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £105.69
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-096-AM) £111.57
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) £93.94
Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614C 160GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-012-SA) £67.56
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC) £229.07
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU (CA-003-AT) £82.19

Total £690.02

Oh, just realised I've not added a heatsink/fan. Comes with the stock one but I presume they're rubbish and noisy still?

Looks fine to me, but I'm a dribbling monkey when it comes to 64bit PC hardware. Nice to have you back Jack.

Wow.

That sounds an awesome machine UK.

Good choice on the HDD as well.

Can't really critique anything to be honest, other then be jealous.

Go to a certain website *ahem*www.overclockers.co.uk*ahem, which you may have already used, and the 3200 Winchester is only about another 20-ish and is meant to overclock very well.
That site is quite good for other stuff too, and apparently the Winchester Retail HSF is quite good. Some people are overclocking thier 3200s to 2.6-7Ghz on retail air, which considering how effiecient these things are is one considerable speed boost in real life.

Also, you may need to change PSU to get a ATX2.0 one which supports PCI-E. I'd recommend Tagan or Enermax.
The RAM is good but if you wanna overclock, get tighter timings etc I'd recommend Geil Ultra-X.

For that price bracket, that card is pretty much the best performer you'll get, and I believe its also VIVO which is cool.

Looking at the format of the pasted text it looks like that's where he's been.

Yeah, I agree, it does, I just thought I'd make sure, and also point him at the 3200 and some other stuff that may be better.

Thanks people. I'll have to look into this power supply thing - wasn't aware that PCI-E had any special requirements.

cookie monster wrote:
> Looking at the format of the pasted text it looks like that's where
> he's been.

Yep. I've heard some bad things about their customer service so I might buy at technologically-minded-body-part.co.uk, but I like the overclockers website for browsing through stuff.

My experience with the company has been flawless, its like any company; some people have a good experience, the others have a crap one.

Hey nice case ;-)

I have one and it is very quiet, are you adding the optional 2nd 120mm fan?

I would think so. Does it come separately?