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"Building a PC on a budget"

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Fri 26/08/05 at 17:33
Regular
"smile, it's free"
Posts: 6,460
(A fairly big budget)

Now, I'm not going to be doing this till around November, but I will be doing it. I thought I'd get some opinions from you guys.

Here are the constraints:

1) Budget £1000-2000 (give or take a few hundred)
2) Base unit plus graphics and sound only. In other words: Motherboard, processor(s), PSU, cooling, graphics card(s), RAM, case, sound card, and speakers. I *think* that's it...
So no monitor(s), Keyboard/mouse, optical drives etc are needed.
3) Designed for gaming.


So, your thoughts? Enough for a dual pci-express gfx card system? ATI or NVidia? Perhaps a dual core processor? What would you build on that sort of budget?
Tue 06/09/05 at 15:06
Regular
"l33t cs50r"
Posts: 2,956
Memorandum! wrote:
> Game wrote:
> Surely you'd go for the BFG OC 7800 GTX, seeing as it's also
> over-clocked and it has a lifetime guarantee.
>
> but the XFX is overclocked more?
>


You can overclock the Leadtek 7800GTX to match both the XFX and the BFG whilst saving yourself about £50. I was going to go for the BFG but after seeing results of stock overclocking of the Leadtek, I'm sticking with that.

incedentally, I'm ordering my PC in 2 weeks (Finally), witha budget of £1300 for now, but will be adding a second 7800GTX at somepoint:

AMD Athlon 64 3700
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB)
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi
Leadtek PX7800GTX-TD256 GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI
Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB WD360GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - (x2)
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 200GB 2000JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV
Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan (x2)
Creative Sound Blaster XFi Fatal1ty
Akasa Eclipse 62 Case with Side Panel

Around about £1300 inc VAT

The 3700 is only 2.2Ghz with a 1MB L2, but these things will clock on stock cooling to arouns 3.2Ghz, up to 4.6Ghz if water/refrigerated cooled, so nw real need to go any higher processor wise for the sake of 400Mhz.

Always go SD core though, higher L2, cooler temps and great oc'ers

Monitor wise, I'm sticking with my 2xLG's for now untill I order my Dell FPW2005 Widescreed LCD.
Tue 06/09/05 at 13:59
Regular
"NULL"
Posts: 1,384
But surely for a lot of people, it would be beneficial to have 1 core focussing on running Windows, AntiVirus, Firewall, etc etc, and have the other core dedicated to the game? Doesn't that mean the dual-core processor would be faster?
Tue 06/09/05 at 13:29
Regular
"bot"
Posts: 3,491
with a 4400 vs FX57 it's 2.2GHz vs 2.8GHz. It would limit the graphics card more. By the time games go multi-threaded in a big way current dual-core processors will be too slow anyway.
Tue 06/09/05 at 13:04
Regular
"smile, it's free"
Posts: 6,460
Is there any particular reason why everyone's recommending an FX 55/57 over an X2?

Whilst the single core is currently going to be faster in games, I think it's pretty likely that that will come to change as games are deveoped with dual-core processors in mind. Long term I think that will be easily the better option.

I'm tempted to go for the X2. The 4400 looks pretty good, with 1MB cache
Tue 30/08/05 at 23:43
Regular
"bot"
Posts: 3,491
Game wrote:
> Surely you'd go for the BFG OC 7800 GTX, seeing as it's also
> over-clocked and it has a lifetime guarantee.

but the XFX is overclocked more?

????
????
Tue 30/08/05 at 21:48
Regular
Posts: 4,279
Game wrote:
> Surely you'd go for the BFG OC 7800 GTX, seeing as it's also
> over-clocked and it has a lifetime guarantee.

Overclocking graphics cards is not at all difficult.

Even the suppliers of the card now supply software to do this.
Tue 30/08/05 at 19:22
Regular
"Fishing For Reddies"
Posts: 4,986
Memorandum! wrote:
> AMD Athlon FX57
> 2GB CAS2 PC3200 DDR RAM (brand...take your pick)
> XFX Extreme Geforce 7800GTX (490MHz+ core)
> DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard
> 2x 74gb WD Raptors Raid 0
> Another, higher capacity SATA HDD for more storage space (a 7200rpm
> 300GB one or something)
> Creative X-Fi soundcard.
>
> can't get DDR2 with AMD chips until socket M2 is introduced.

Surely you'd go for the BFG OC 7800 GTX, seeing as it's also over-clocked and it has a lifetime guarantee.
Tue 30/08/05 at 13:39
Regular
"bot"
Posts: 3,491
AMD Athlon FX57
2GB CAS2 PC3200 DDR RAM (brand...take your pick)
XFX Extreme Geforce 7800GTX (490MHz+ core)
DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard
2x 74gb WD Raptors Raid 0
Another, higher capacity SATA HDD for more storage space (a 7200rpm 300GB one or something)
Creative X-Fi soundcard.

can't get DDR2 with AMD chips until socket M2 is introduced.
Tue 30/08/05 at 12:40
Regular
"smile, it's free"
Posts: 6,460
Also if I'm spending that much money, I'm bound to want a RAID array of some sort (1,0,01, or 10 - any others would be overkill). Anyone tried using these?

A couple gigs of DDR2 would be nice, too.

What sort of motherboard should I be looking at? It'll need good SATA support and PCI-express, needless to say. Integrated graphics won't matter (nor will sound, most likely). Plenty of USB 2 ports would be handy. And there's no way I'm using an Intel processor :)

What I really need is a list of 'must have' high-end features to basically systematically eliminate every possible bottleneck I might come across.
Mon 29/08/05 at 14:25
Regular
"Pouch Ape"
Posts: 14,499
Like I said, it would buy my services.

That means I'll sit in the corner all day going "Ding, you have new mail", "Chukka chukka chukka neeeeeeeeeeow! *CRASH*", "GODLIKE!", and various other assorted Windows sounds. Yes.

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