I have been out of the game for a while

Hello fellow gamers.......

Heres the thing.... i have been traveling the world for the past 3 years and when i left my pc was 2 years old..... so now she is 5 years old..... I have been saving up while here in Australia and im going to order a new PC for christmas.....so i will be placing my order for about the middle of November... from Ebuyer.com. As i am from England and will be now settling down... I have built many PC and will have no problem building my new one... but i have been without the internet for 3 years... and havent been keeping upto date with whats new....... Crossfire and SLI wasnt out when was last in england.... lol and everything is quad-core cpu... etc etc

My last build was a

3200XP
Lan Party B+ Motherboard
ATI 9800XT (256mb)
2 Gig ram (3200)
80gb Sata HDD

so very old.....

So i have a few favours... i have £1200 to spend on my new PC..... i want it to be a pure games machine..... no microsoft office... no nero.... i will rebuild my old pc for all that....

Could some of you guys who are upto date with al this stuff spec me up a PC..... As i dont wonna buy parts that arent compable.... I dont need a Monitor (i have a 22inch widescreen),DVD burner,Keyboard,mouse.....

I just need the best Video game box speed.... I mean would i be best to go ATI 4870's Crossfired.... or get one Nvidia and buy another one like a year later.... i just want the top graphics and game speed....

Can a run a 74gb 10000 on a standard mother board...... i dont need space as i dont download... i only play games...

Can intel cpu's have Crossfire or is it only AMD..... are AMD better for games?????

Will XP run fine on it.... or will it be better to run Vista???

Please Help me.... Kindest Regards

Adi

 

Man 1200 pounds is way too much to spend on one computer. This is my advice, don't build the BEST OF THE BEST, but build a very powerful computer. That way you can save a LOT of money and use that money you saved on another build a few years down the road. This way you will be upto date longer then building one super computer.

I would give you advice on parts, but this is not the time for that. The computer market changes constantly, and you are better off getting a parts list come November.

 

To be fair Abuzar, £1200 is not $2300 like the exchange rates suggests. That's a pretty normal amount to spend on a high end machine in this country. Certainly my last gaming PC was £1250 without a monitor, keyboard, mouse and what have you. Components are cheaper on the whole now, but you can still easily spend as much and see the gains from doing so.

Just bear in mind vigeto, 'I don't need space as I don't download, I only play games' - is a bit of a false statement, you need somewhere to install the games, and they take up a large amount of space. Age of Conan for example is 25GB, the average PC game these days is at least 4GB, usually 6 to 8. In any case, Raptors are not especially great for big transfer times which is what helps you load typical games faster, they're only fast for access time, which is why they're good for running windows. The more you fill them, the slower that access time gets, defeating the purpose.
I would recommend:

CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=743028
Mobo: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=828774
RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=782925
HDD1: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=806694 (not necessarily for the space, but the speed)
HDD2: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=708681
GPUs: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146415 x2
Case: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144802
ODD: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=816050
PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=684732

about £1200 on the nose with delivery from both suppliers.

 

How about this setup....

My girlfriend said i can have £1450 including Mouse,Keyboard and monitor

I have to have a 22inch samsung... she wants it to match the other one we have... wierd hey..

 

Fair enough on the monitor, you could do a lot worse.

Motherboard: overpriced and unnecessary, you'd be better off with a solid Gigabyte board for barely more than half the cost.
DVD drive: Why IDE in this day and age?
GPUs: Excellent choice on a pair of 4870s, but I know they're cheap, but you should really go for a brand that isn't powercolor - they don't have a manufacturer's warranty beyond the 12 months provided at retail. Go for Sapphire or Gigabyte instead.#
RAM: Not necessary with a DDR2 board, DDR2 is just as good as DDR3 in almost all systems, and you can save some money here.
CPU: For £1450, you should really be aiming for a quad core.
Sound: Not necessary. The standard X-Fi will be fine.
Headset: Excellent choice
Keyboard/Mouse: Excellent choices.
Monitor: The SM226BW would be a better option - more pricey, but better, in terms of reliability, picture quality, and so on.
Case: For a high performance PC, you need a decent case, or you'll suffer cooling problems.
PSU: No - that's an awful PSU and could well destroy your entire system. Use a Corsair TX instead.
HDDs: Also no, the 150GB Raptors are nowhere near as reliable as the older ones, or the newer Velociraptor. Buy a single one of those and get better performance, the same storage space, less noise & heat and save money!

Which store are you using for this? I'll write you out a new list of better parts.

 

www.ebuyer.com

so a quad core 2.66ghz is better then a 3.00ghz duo...?

plz plz plz write me a list...... wont it be faster to run 2 x hdd and raid them??? i dont care for noise.....

plus this case is for my old parts.... listed at the top... i have a full tower thermal take case with water cooling... i just need a new water block i have a aquarius 3

 

also i would love to get a mother board so its easy to over clock

 

Intel Q9450
Asus Rampage Formula(hey you're spending a lot, might as well go all out)
get 4GB of PC2-8500. get 2x2Gb sticks
one ATI HD4870(two if you plan on getting a bigger monitor)
Get a Velociraptor drive for your OS
Put two drives in RAID for the rest(I actually not that good with hard drives. Sam can probably clarify)
Corsair 620HX

 

Also would you guys run Vista or XP??

if Vista what version whould you run? When i left to go traveling Vista was not even out... lol

 

Avoid using RAID, it's only really useful for large arrays. Apart from that go with Abuzar's list. However I would recommend using two HD4850s - it'll be plenty sufficient. If you were to use two 4870s, you would need to use a different power supply, but having that much graphics power is unnecessary anyway.

 

i would like it to be futre proof....

 

The way I see it, by the time two 4850s aren't enough, two 4870s won't be either. Realistically, the only purpose I would say two 4870s are worth having for is if you want to max games at a resolution of at least 1920x1200 with AA for considerable time to come. Otherwise, by the time the cards aren't powerful enough, they'll be so old they'll be lacking in features outside of lacking in performance. Two 4850s will do you fine for much less cost, much less heat & noise, and much less power consumption, which means long and short term power savings, and saving the world... Ok, over dramatic, but seriously, two 4850s will be fine.

 

Yeah I suppose two 4850s is a good choice. I was just going for the all out thing

 

At the end of it all having a good 80W extra power consumption when playing games, when he's not going to notice the difference for ages seems a little silly, and even when he does finally notice the difference, it'll be about 25% probably at the most, by then it'll hardly have been worth bothering. I would only recommend pairs of 4870s to people using 24" monitors with AA, or those using 30s, nowadays, otherwise there's just no need for that much power.

 

sam gonna kill me but this is my choice.

no monitor as you can get that from ebuyer. my parts are from overclockers.co.uk

 

Looks pretty damn solid to me. Asus does ship out a decent sound card with that Mobo, but whatever. Other than that, it's great.

 

Why do you think I'm going to dispute every PC build you put up?
The only things I don't 100% agree with in that build are the RAM (how much proof do we have that the G-Skill stuff does what it says it does time after time?) and the mouse/keyboard. £110 for those is all very well, but you can get a decent set for so much less - the G15 is also the revision 1, which will have practically invisible keycap writing after a year or so of use, it rubs off!

 

i dunno, you used to always do

i only put them in as k/b and mice are personal choices, so i used exactly what he used.

 

That's because there always used to be something worth criticising! lol
Of late your builds have been pretty solid...

You didn't put in the exact keyboard and mouse he used, he went with the revision 2 keyboard which is better. Minor detail perhaps, but it shows.

 

but i'd rather pay the extra bit of money and get the 4870's

But the rest of the setup looks great...

I have been told to run windows XP coz its quicker for games is this true?? or should i run Vista??? if so which version?