The (new) Official PC building thread!

O RLY?

I really just want the 3870 to pump out on Gears, Crysis.

The newest drivers will help.

P.S - Hoping to get my mum to purchase the case,psu tommorow.

 

YAH RLY.
Crysis you'll still have to settle for a few settings turned down, but I wouldn't be surprised if the HD3870 could max out UT3 at at least 2048x1536, if not 2560x1600.

 

Haha nice, but it's not the original. That was an owl, for reasons unknown to me.

 

I know, but it's overused.

 

Hello everyone! I wonder if I could pick your brains for a bit?

I have been building pcs by cannibalising parts from other machines and building from ground up for just over a decade now.

My current deck is made from the bits I brought over to blighty from my machine in Japan, when Pentium 4 was all the rage, back in January 2003.

I rebuilt it in a Lian Li case (whose build quality I thought was crap) and a cheap and nasty (£50) generic power supply were the bits I sourced in the UK as I was broke at the time.

Well, the case has gone all rattly, the fans are giving out, the PSU gives off a disturbing click sometimes, occasionally resulting in the deck shutting down..

So I splashed out today on this PSU:
Corsair 620W HX Series Modular SLi Powersupply, ATX, EPS 12V, whisper quiet

And a Coolermaster Cosmos case.

Both had good reviews both in online and printed reviews, plus the PSU does come with a 5 year guarantee which is reassuring. I chose the case as there's lots of space in there, liked the idea of it being tidy: http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5851/dsc00486lq2.jpg and the overall design. Plus it looks strong enough that if we move to Japan again I think it will survive the journey in one piece!

My questions are, if someone could be kind enough to help...

My CPU is still a Pentium 4 2.4 gig and I really want to update the cooler on it, could someone please make some suggestions on what is available in the UK and the best one to get?

Also Windows XP pro could not see my 200 gig hard discs and so I bought a Promise ATA 100 controller card, and Windows saw the full size. I would like to get some 500 Gig Seagate drives, but am not sure if either the controller or Windows would be able to see their full size, could anyone offer some advice on this?

I know you can get dual or quad cores for under £200 or so, but all I cannot afford anything else, I thought the PSU and case were most important so bought ones I reckoned would last me a good 5 years or so then upgrade if some spare cash becomes available in the future..

This machine is used for running emule almost all of the time, and I plan to use it for converting some home movies from a NTSC analogue camcorder soon, that's why I want a couple of bigger hard discs, one for p2p and a separate one for the videos cos I know p2p really chews up the platters!

Thanks for reading, and greets to Creaky who helped me out a year or more ago in choosing the right media, I really appreciate that!

I hope my post wasn't too long or boring... -=^..^=-

 

Nice PSU, and case.

I think your P4 is a LGA 775, so an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro will work fine for you.

 

That Cosmos is very nice.... and I would just love to work inside one after working on three smallish midtowers.

 

Hi Abuzar1, thanks for the reply!

According to hardware monitor, the cpu is:

Intel Pentium 4 Northwood and its on an AX4G pro motherboard, does that help any?

I tried to get the best I could on my modest budget ; ]

 

Ok so the freezer 7 wont work. Try this, it seems to have the best rating on newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106606

 

Fasfrank, yeah it really is a beast! I did see some reviewers saying the HDS weren't as cool as they expected, but I plan on putting the extra fans in the case Coolermaster say you can which I reckon should solve that problem.

Abuzar1, cheers for that link, I am in the United Kingdom so hopefully that cooler is on sale here, much appreciated!

 

2003...That would be a little early for a 775...LOL.. It should be a socket 478...
Look at these...The Zalman Flower Design's are what I would look at...It's not worth investing to much in this old of a system...
http://www.svc.com/penivcool.html

 

Hmmm no results from Google, hopefully some kind soul in the UK could make some suggestions?

 

Hmm several UK sites say the Zalman flower doesn't do such a good job of keeping CPU temperature down...

My typical temperatures are: Case 26-8 CPU 29-32 neither of them ever seem to go over 40 unless I`m ripping a full dvd then the max seems to be 39-42 for the CPU....

I want to replace the CPU fan as it's been in use for 4 years now and I can't afford to replace the motherboard/CPU and RAM...

 

Those temps are fine. A clean stock cooler is all you need unless you are overclocking.
I cleaned out a 2002 HP Celeron 1.2 PC yesterday. I made the mistake of blowing out the CPU cooler with some canned air. It made a small mushroom cloud of toxic dirt and dog hair in the middle of my office. I still have a layer over my monitors other PCs and everything else.
It was running a bit hot before, up around 60C or so. Now it's about the same as yours.

 

NOT from the UK but maybe this will help. link....

...gm

 

Good deal on a very nice case at PC Club...
COOLER MASTER CM 690 Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower PC Case Retail RC-690-KKN1-GP
$69 with $40 rebate $29...
http://www.pcclub.com/product_details.cfm?itemno=A1306233

 

Hehe, Emule, I remember that. Still going strong is it?
You did well in getting a decent PSU and case first, not many people are that sensible, they buy all their parts and then run out of money for the PSU, think 'a cheap one will do' and then the whole lot gets toasted, leaving them broke.

Windows should recognise the full size of any hard disk as long as you have the service packs installed.

As for the cooler, I used one of these for a SKT939 dual core AMD, it cooled quite well.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/91815

 

My mum was getting a loan to buy a car and i thought id ask her to scale down on the cars specs and let me get a better PC, unfortunately the bank was not so cooperative,

 

Oh dear lord, Caturday has found its way onto afterdawn! I thought these two things were at pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum!

Since we're in the PC building thread...