Seriously, thank you. When I started using AD, last year, I knew nothing about computers, and didnt even dare to open the side of my PC (let alone know how to). But I randomly started to read the stickies in this section, and started to beginning to have an intrest in the hardware of my PC. Last year, I decided to go to PC world, and buy an £800 PC, and back then I was like, WOW, I have the sh!t right here.... Boy was I wrong. Had I realised before I bought the £800 PC, that core 2 duos would be out year, or that, for £800, I could have built a monster myself, I would never even thought about buying a readymade piece of junk. Now after the suffering of this sh!t PC, that was so loud, I decided to look into what I could do to make it better. And I found this section of AD, after being in the PS2, and PSP section(s) for a long time. I then, by reading, realised my generic PSU was full of sh!t, so, I bought a cheap one. This decided to fizz and bang....so I read more, and relised cheap PSUs are not that way to go. I then got my self a £40 550W PSU, which was still cheap but better, because I couldnt afford more. Still it sucks! My specs when I bought my PC (shudder): Pentium 4 at stock at 3.06 GHZ 160GB generic HDD Cheap generic DVD DL RW + - (that writes so slow) 1GB cheap generic sticks DDR2 Gigabyte GA-8I915PM (specifically made for this PC) 300W generic PSU And a 128MB 6200LE grphics card (which was advertised at 256MB) Now when I first saw this, all I saw was 160GB HDD (better then the 40GB I had before). 3.06GHZ p4 (better than the 1.6GHZ p4 I had before). A DVD RW + - (better then my CD RW). 1GB graphics card (better then the 256MB i had before). And 256MB gfx card (better than the onboard before). OMG was I a n00b. Now, the equivelent of my model had come out for this year, and after my knowlegde I had gained from AD, I saw it and started to laugh. It was the same, but had a 7300 instead, and a E4300 instead of the P4....and people were bying it. :O Infact had it not been for AD, I would have probably gotten another PC world generic crap PC for UNI next year. Now for the last few months, I have been saving up, and have about £400, and hopefully by the end of August I will have the £1k. Then I will start buying what I want, with the experties of AD not PCworld. I actually dreamt up a dream list for me ,IMO, a few months ago, when I started to want a custom built PC, and have now seen the RAM price just plummet, and the gfx card price slowly drop, and hopefully the c2d wil fall, when intel release there new line of proccessors in the future. With their price drops, i can get a better RAM and gfx card, because now I am entering the overlocking phase of knowlege seeking. So hopefully when I get my £1k, AD will help me. Oh, and my current mobo, wont let me OC my p4, so I am pissed off at that aswell... Im am sorry for rambling on, but I really wanted to show my gratitude, and sorry mods for it being of topic, so I shall ask a question thats bugging me aswell.... WTF happened to the pentium V?
I always tell people the same, never buy from PCWorld. You get ripped off and end up with a overpriced piece of junk, made even worse buy all the junk software they fill it up with (that you don't need). Dave
yeah...the damned software.... they bloody gave me some bullsh!t packard bell photo suite that couldnt even crop, and gave norton, which completely decided to make the cpu work at 100% nearly all the time, and with a PSU raoring like a lion, i hated it.
i, and every other ad member im sure, are happy to see that we have been able to help you see the light. people like pc world and dell(hp too) have a place in the market, but for those looking for something with a bit of poke for some gaming or cad or graphic design and video encoding you really should look into building your own. they can make some of the best cheap pc setups you can buy because at that end of the market you can not get things as cheap in retail as they can buy in bulk. the thing is not all of us want a cheap as chips pc that is only any good for basic office apps and surfing the web. that £400 you have now would get you the back bone of a nice c2d setup now, throw another £600 at it and you will be going top end kit, which should keep you on the curve for a few years if you get the right parts now. my advice right now would be to make sure the mobo you pick supports a 1333 fsb then you can get the newwer cpus from intel when they become affordable. side note. your 6200le will use 128mb of system ram to make up the 256mb that is advertised.
mmmm.....but then why do games that suport only 256 and above, not work? and yeah, i am hoping to build a system that can play games for at least two years, so in the second year of UNI, ill need to upgrade. are there mobos that use the new P35 chips that have 1333 fbs? Also, becuase of the reading into overlocking, i overclocked my 6200le... its only modest, but i am happy that i coudl do it w/o the comuter exploding. i tooks it from 350MHz / 500MHz core / memory to 456MHz / 637MHz and this was all on passive cooling. its a shame that my PC world piece oh sh!t mobo wont let me OC, with its crap bios
im not sure where you set it so the card gets the extra ram. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2993 thats quite good on the new intel chipsets, the only thing i can see is that the ddr3 is not that mature yet, and is quite expensive for the performance you get when compared to ddr2. this is mainly because the price has just plumetted in the ddr2 market tho.
but ddr3 woudl be expensive evevn a few years from now.... i dont think ill need s ddr3 mobo yet. PS what happened to the pentium V?
The pentium 4 was so far behind the Athlon64 in terms of performance, that when Intel came back with a vengeance in the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo, they decided to go for a fresh name, as Pentium was starting to be associated with 'slow'. Glad aD users have helped you out so much, and let me say, I am in EXACTLY the same scenario. January 2004, Prebuilt PC for £800, Athlon XP 3000+, 512MB RAM and MSI motherboard were the redeeming features. The Power supply was actually pretty good, but 250W (lol!). Radeon 9200, and a case that would only fit one 80mm case fan. I made numerous mistakes in upgrading it, but eventually my knowledge became such that I have what I use now.
hehe, was reminicing, so bought up an old thread. look at my first post though: Talk about being a noob or what :O
While we're on the reminiscent note... Posted by myself on the 27th of September 2005 - ah, how times change... Or Eloquently put for a barely 16-year old, uh? Man, that post will be four years old on sunday!
hehe, we were both noobs xD but nice post about the DVD and XP. i dont think i have ever come up with a better post (regarding grammer spelling etc) very nice.
hehe, well its normally a plait card (which are very good) or an ecs (dont get me started, but it comes with an accelero S1)
because the design process is poorly thought out - yes, it's not entirely Arctic's fault because it can be done, but the process lends itself to damage.
