Hi, I am planning a new system for a freind of mine who is even more noobish on building PCs than I am. Anyways, here is what I've come up so far: 1. Price range max 2500£ (listed prices in Euros, I live in Finland he in England...) 2. Gaming PC 3. Silence is not required as long as it is not like sitting next to Niagara falls. 4. NO OVERCLOCKING needed I'd probably go for the Conroes, but I really doubt they will be available by the time the computer is needed, so I chose AMD instead. Here are the parts so far: (I left the drives out, cause I don't know crap about them, please be free to suggest something) MoBo: Abit AN9 32X Fatal1ty AM2 nF590-SLI, 210,9 EUR Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 295,9 EUR Graphics: Gainward 7920-BLISS GF7950 GX2 PCI-E, 618,9 EUR RAM: KINGSTON KVR800D2E5K2 ValueRAM DDR2 2048MB (2X1GB) PC800 CL5 DIMM ECC KIT, 398,9 EUR Case: Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA 132,9 EUR PSU: Antec True Power II 550W EPS, 131,9 EUR Things I am slightly worried about is cooling (does it require Liquid cooling) and PSU (that Graphics card guzzles Watts like computer techs do red bull). At the moment he has 19 inch tft, should he get a bigger one to be able to get everything out of his graphics? He is planning on using his old screen. This computer actually leaves plenty of room on the budget, but the budget was only the total max. Give me your thoughts.
As long as the case has plenty of fans for ventilation you should be fine. You wont need water cooling unless he wants to overclock. As for the power supply you may want to go with something a little higher.
Value ram? hmmm, i'd get some corsair XMS2 beautiful case, but incredibley flimsy. Also it has 1 120mm intake blowing directly onto the HDD's, 1 120mm exhaust fan on the back and 1 92mm intake fan on the side. depends on the resolution, though i doubt it as all 19" TFT's i've seen are 1280x1024 max res. and with that graphics card, all games bar oblivion are playable at a higher res with all eye-candy turned up EDIT: for a monitor i'd recomend a Viewsonic VP2030b which has a max res of 1600x1200.
AE27: Any suggestions for the PSU? tailschao: RAM: Thanks for the suggestion, I'll tell him to buy that Monitor: If my friend won't get a new monitor, will that kick-ass graphics card actually help him much? The resolution (1280*1024) is pretty low on his old one and I think some cheaper card could handle that big resolution well enough.
Thermaltake make good cases, but the airflow on them is not the best, that case has a few flimsy bits and the case fans are noisy. As for power supply, I would recommend a higher powered unit or think about having a dedicated PSU just for the graphics, something like the FSP booster x3. P.S The 5000 AM2 only has 2x512KB cache, for some reason AMD have only put the 2x1MB cache on the FX62. If it was me abuilding a new system I would look at Conroe CPUs full stop.
Thanks BigDK, I'll look into those PSUs you mentioned. Have you got any suggestion for the case to replace the Thermaltake one? And yeah, I'd suggest him to have the Conroe too, but I don't hink they will be out in time for him, so I'll just tell him to stick with the AMDs. Thinking about that FX-62 too, but I think it is a bit too expensive for the advantages it gives (especially when you compare it with the Conroes...).
hang on a sec... your friend lives in england right? if so http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Intel_Pentium_Core_Duo2.html has most of the conroes in stock. If he's only playing at 1280x1024, then a less powerful card would be ample. Something like a 7600GT perhaps as for drives, i've had my BenQ DW 1655 for a couple of months, and i can't find anything to complain about, excelent burner. Hard drives depend on how much data he has. Does he download much? mostly 250GB would be enough
Case wise, I like coolermaster as the build quality is second to none, and the cooling qualities are excellent, maybe look at the Coolermaster Praetorian 732. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=22&id=1677 I use the Coolermaster 830 stacker, which is probably overkill for your friend. http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=2528 CPU's can be found here: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-E6600 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Intel_Pentium_Core_Duo2.html http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=430633 Best price currently out of stock again: http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...&NavigationKey=11147,44250000,50520&InMerch=1
If I was building ganing rig from scratch today with 2500 Euros, I would look at the following setup. Prices are typical examples, so there are probably savings to be had if you shopped about. This lot comes in at 2500 Euros approx. Asus P5W DH 975X Core 2 Ready Motherboard £162.09 http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=277 Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) £230 http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/914/1/page_1_benchmarking_intel_conroe_core_2/index.html Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) £187 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/07/18/core_2_duo_memory_timings/1.html ATI Radeon X1900 ***Crossfire Edition*** 512MB £250 http://www.vadim.co.uk/articles/Intel+are+back+and+they+are+bad/1 Creative S Blstr X-Fi Xtreme Music + Inspire T6060 5.1 Spkrs – £96 DabsXtreme Tagan 800W PSU - Dual Engine £109 CoolerMaster Praetorian 732 Aluminum Case £95 http://www.coolermaster-europe.com/...erial=RC-732&other_title=RC-732Praetorian 732 Plextor PX-760A/T3UK 18x18 DVD±RW Retail £56 LiteOn SHD-16P1S-05C £13 2x W Digital Caviar RE 160GB 1600YD SATA-II 16MB Cache in raid 0 2x£48 1x W Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache £54 Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Comfort ver3.0 – OEM £35 DELL Ultrasharp 2005FPV 20" WIDESCREEN HIGH RES TFT MONITOR £300 http://www.pcbuyit.co.uk/product.asp?dept_id=6&sku=132 http://www.sterlingxs.co.uk/scpages/monitors.html?gclid=CJvF_v6v0IYCFRRYEAod3CjZyg P.S. I wouldn't recommend the 2007 as there are too many reports on faults on the DVI. I am currently waiting for the new Nforce chipset boards to come out that support the Conroe, the G80 graphics card will also be out by then. P.S. It is worth spending a fair bit on a monitor if you plan to use the system as a gaming rig, as cheaper models can suffer from varying colour/black reproduction problems.
@bigDK- that dell monitor has a response time of 16ms, which isn't good for gaming. for the uk, check out the BenQ 20" TFT LCD monitor. it has an 800:1 contrast ratio, 350 cd/m2 brightness and an 8ms response time + dvi-d for 260 pounds (exluding VAT). Link:http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/20_Inch_LCD_Monitors.html P.S. the dell monitor is 20 pounds cheaper there too.
The Dell 20" on Overclockers is the 2007 model, these have problems on the DVI as I noted before. I did debate putting any info on a monitor on the list, but thought that something was better than nothing. I'm sure that there are plenty of good displays far better than what I listed for gaming. There are some from ViewSonic http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...m9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=92167&_LOC=UK which have 4ms response time and are supposed to be very good for gaming, but I have found most people are only interested in widescreen displays at the moment I used an Apple 23" Widescreen before, and that only had 16ms response time, and I can't say I ever saw any issues when gaming, however the monitor did set me back £800 and that was with a big discount. That was sold to make way for a new Dell 24" 2407 which turned up a week ago, I was using a ViewSonic monitor inbetween and that was also top quality IMO. So far that is the dog nuts for size and quality.
