Took a break from pc's for almost a year & just got stuck into the xbox 360. Big mistake, especially as im looking to build a new pc & have no idea about all the new motherboards, processors or GFX cards out now. Looking to spend around £600 - £800 on a new rig (Not counting HDD's) but dont have a clue where to start I could spend around £600 on a CPU, M/B, GFX & PSU. The tower, sound card etc can come later. Anyone got any ideas of which CPU etc to go with ? Cheers
Video: ATI 4890 is the latest, but not the greatest. The 4870x2 is still faster (but much more expensive, power hungry, and hot)...The 4890 is probably a better bet, at about £170. Nvidia is trailing behind a bit at the moment. PSU: Things have not changed much in the last year...corsair is still king. CPU: The Intel I7 is the leader at the moment, but at £670 for a 3.2GHZ, it will not fit your price range. It is also not much better than a 3.2GHZ core2quad in most games. The next fastest is the core 2 quad...still pricy, but not nearly as bad. The best performance per dollar is still with the 3.2GHZ Phenom II, but you should be able to afford a 3.2GHZ Core2Quad. Mainboard: Gigabyte makes decent boards, as does DFI. DFI is more of an enthusiast board and may be a bit harder to setup vs gigabyte. Asus has let their quality slip, and the designs are not great to begin with. The same is true of Abit. The Best AMD board around is the DFI LP DK 790FXB-M3H5...I'll let Sammoris find a good intel board. Corsair ram is still considered the best ram around, especialy since OCZ has forgotten what quality is.
The HD4890 and GTX275 are the latest cards out there. The GTX275 is probably the best card for £200. The HD4870 is better value though, as it's a lot heaper, and not too much slower. Forget about the GTX260 216 and GTX285. The HD4870X2 is still the best single graphics card out there, but quite pricey. A Core i7 system is certainly doable on that budget, but there isn't much need unless you go dual graphics, which will be difficult on that budget. A Core i7 system backbone, i.e. 920 CPU, decent motherboard and 6GB of good RAM can be had for around £470 nowadays, leaving you £130 for a graphics card. All fine, but the most that'll get you is a 512MB HD4870, which does not justify an i7. A better bet would be to get a Core 2 Quad Q9550, a normal P45 board and some fast DDR2 RAM, for about £390. That then leaves you the £210 you can use to buy a Geforce GTX275. Overall, value-wise, the Phenom II platform is out, especially in the UK as it offers no cost advantage, and no performance advantage either. To sum up: Core 2 Quad Q9550 Gigabyte EP45-UD3R 2x2GB Corsair XMS2 Dominator PC8500 XFX Geforce GTX275 Be advised, you will need a decent PSU to run this. Don't bother hooking this up to your existing power supply unless it's very good.
The 4850X2 is also an amazing value if you're looking for something a little cheaper than the 4870X2 that still hauls.
It is indeed, but 1) make sure you get the 2GB version, the cheaper 1GB is a bit of a waste of time, and 2) make sure you're prepared to live with a pretty awful racket or change the cooler. The cooler on the 4850X2 is dire.
Cheers for the help guys. Ill be playing first person shooters, etc on a 19" monitor, though may eventually hook it up to the 28" tv my room. I noticed the XMS2 Dominator PC8500 ram is priced at around £30 on some sites. Is this correct ? http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/corsair-2...or-pc8500-nonecc-unbuffered-memory-p-976.html Why are ram prices so low now ? Think ill go with said ram & the quad core cpu. http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/1350787/art/intel/core-2-quad-q9550-2-83-gh.html?srcid=867 The gigabyte board looks quite good so i may get that along with the Geforce GTX275. Any idea if this is a good psu or anyone recommend any better ? http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/850W-Corsair-TX-Series-ATX-4x-PCI-E-8x-SATA-PS-2-PSU-5-Year-Warranty Cheers
RAM is cheap for 2GB as most people now buy 4GB. That's just how much it costs, in fact that's relatively expensive for 2GB RAM, usually it's in the 20s. You've picked a very good CPU, but are completely overkill on the Power Supply. On a 19" monitor (1440x900 usually, sometimes 1680x1050 if you're lucky) or 28" TV (1280x720) you won't need a particularly powerful graphics card, a GTX275 will have you set for ages. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896M...z-GDDR3-GPU-633MHz-240-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV You can run that off a much lower power supply, one like this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/520W...-PSU-ATX-EPS12V-whisper-quiet-5-year-warranty
