The (new) Official PC building thread!

Remember that Sony VAIO I bought for traveling(I'm home now BTW, got here last night at 2!). Well it has a Core 2 Duo... AND I am considering selling it lol.

Only because I might be doing that Quad build. So it would be a upgrade.

 

sam, for me its a toss up between the HX620 and the BQ! DPP 650W

i guess we shall see what happens when i get my budget. i might push it to a BQ! DPP 750W.

ill see.

 

shaf,

I bought my HIS HD3850 ICEQ TURBO, anticipating adding another one later and running them in xfire. I doubt that will ever happen tho since I'm not much of a gammer.

I almost went with a nvidia 8800 GTS but in the event I want to run two vidio cards, I had to stay with ATI since my mobo doesnt suport SLI.

 

yeah, i had an X1800GTO that had the ICEQ and was brilliant. its, i guess once again itll be for price, i know they can destory the 1920 res in xfire, but i was thinking of adding antoher x2 later down the line, but then it'd be more worth getting the new cards. im sure gownign from a £350 (id assume) 4870x2 to a £250 4850 in xfire woudl allow me to get a 750W BQ!DPP and i could just about get an x38 or x48 chipset mobo instead of P45.

 

To what end? Unless you're using two 4870s, there's no reason to have the 750W version - indeed there's no reason to go with the DarkPower 650 above the HX620. I don't disagree with choosing a different brand if they're the same price, but paying £20 extra for no reason is madness. How many HX units do you see go wrong? The bequiet units aren't any quieter than the HX either. Going with an 8400GS would save you enough to buy a 1500W Toughpower - same situation, you've sacrificed money better spent elsewhere on a pointless PSU upgrade... I never expect gaming PCs to require that sort of juice in the future, if a certain configuration does i'm not buying it, it'd be ludicrously expensive to run not to mention harmful for the environment, hot running, and noisy as hell.

Mort: The support for 3850s in crossfire is pretty good nowadays, but it comes down to the games you play. If none of them need or support crossfire, there's very little point in spending the extra. With the advent of the 4850 the 3850s have dropped in price significantly making it more realistic, but then I suppose if you were to do that, then why not buy a 4850 solo? This was the objection I had with people that said 'I might add a second card later' - other than in the slowdown we had in the past year or so that was a totally unrealistic statement. Within a month something new would be out that rendered the objective pretty cost ineffective.

 

im sure there was a time, IICR 2004? where 450W PSUs were considered top end, whereas now they are considered basic.

if you dont see that GPUs are consuming mroe and more power to get faster and faster then im sorry, but then your not gonna be upgrading much will you?

when did we think that CPU coolers would have to be so elaborate? etc etc

we as gamers are needing more and more juice. with its very high efficency at half load to full load (85-87) (650W) its another reason.

the PSU and case are items that can reach from 3-5 years w.o upgrading, so why would i want a 750w? for future upgradablility.

what a poor example for the 1500W 8400GS thing. thats bull and you know it. your going to extremes that would never happen. my choice to choose 2 4850s over a 4870x2 at the 1920 res is perfectably reasonable. esp with a saving of around £100. they will BOTH get me a 60FPS average with 4xAA in the games THAT I PLAY, not that pathetic excuse of a game crysis. i dont bother with RPGs either.

if the eye cant tell the differense between 60 and 120 FPS, then IMO id rather choose the 4850s, save me £100 and put it to something i wont upgreade in 1 year. Id rather spend the extra £20 or £50, if i am going to keep it for over 2 years. peace of mind has no price. id rather not upgrade my PSU in 2 years for the next octocore to OC that plus SLI GTX580s or whatever.

 

Indeed, in 2004, a 500W PSU was about as high as they got...
Trouble is, back then I was a cheap PSU noob, so I don't know what sort of high quality units existed.

As it happens though, the trend has reversed a bit. The Athlon X2s of old use 90W, most people run Core 2 Duos which use 65W, even when they're overclocked, stick below 1.45V and they'll still use less than 85. My old X1900XT from 2006 used 130W, my HD3870 uses 110 - so to say that power consumption is ever on the up is untrue. Power consumption rose sharply from 2004 to 2007, but has now plateau'ed for all but the ridiculous SLI builds.

Of course the 1500W with an 8400GS was an exaggeration, it was meant to be a silly example that would never happen. However, the fact that you recognise it's foolish means you recognise the folly of upgrading your PSU unnecessarily. I agree with your decision to use two 4850s rather than 4870s, it's more cost effective above anything else, and at 1920x1200, even two 4850s are practically unstoppable.
I intend to run a crossfire setup in the future with a quad core CPU. I have no intention of changing my HX 520W. Even that doesn't use that much power, but you can easily have a system that draws 900W, triple SLI and the likes. By 2011 say, you'll probably still be able to run systems that draw that much, but I suspect they'll have a similar position in the market to now, incredibly pricey, elitist and ridiculous. You would be surprised how much my old Athlon XP system draws... it's actually very close to my current system.

 

OK thanks for all the input! So far it looks like no one is recommending AMD, so im gonna have to go with that and switch over to Intel. A lot of you are recommending the Q9450, but at the moment thats a bit more than what i want to spend and for what i plan on using this PC for i dont think ill need. I think ill opt for a cheaper CPU.

Taking everything into consideration...

$200 CPU- Intel Core 2 Quad 6600

$120 Mobo- Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R

$136 RAM- Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) 1066

~$200 GPU- undecided... see below

$80 HDD- Western Digital 500GB (same)

$70 Case- Cooler Master 590

$120 PSU- Corsair 520W HX

$31 ODD- Pioneer 215DBK (BK=black i think and everything else is black so....)

$20 ODD- Asus DVD-E616A3T (because i dont think im going to be burning multiple things at the same time)

~200$ Monitor- Sam mentioned Acer wasnt a top-notch brand, but to tell you the truth that was more of an example of something i wanted. Ill probably go to a store near here and buy one so i can see what the screen actually looks like and mess round with the settings before purchasing.

~1177 for whole build, but i saw i think about 60$ in mail in rebates but i figure that will about cover shipping and such on all the parts.

A few questions...

@Sammorris
You recommended the Radeon HD4850, any specific cards in mind? I searched that on new egg and it came up with about 6 models all from different brands and all priced about $200.

@ anyone...
whats the difference between 800 and 1066 RAM?

will I need any extra cooling devices and will the stock heatsink/fan with the processor be good enough? Im thinking i might do a little OCing but i would definitely not push it very hard at all just because Im relatively inexperienced in that field.

thanks for all the suggestions
looking forward to hearing back, im about to leave for work (on 4th of July too gdi...) but i will check back again tonight.

PS. sorry about not linking anything... im actually typing this on my PS3 at the moment because the current PC here is really just sooo bad >.< and i cant figure out how to copy/paste URLs and i didnt want to sit here and type them all out...

 

I wouldn't hold your breath on the rebates, as a general rule they seem to be down to luck. As for the monitor, I recommend Samsung for 22" models, they're pretty good. For the GPU, I'd say Gigabyte, Asus or Sapphire. Avoid Powercolor.

I'm sure someone else will do a better job than me of explaining the difference between RAM speeds.

 

mail in rebates have been very good to me. I'm yet to have one denied and I've sent in a bunch. make sure you read the fine print and do exactly like they say (circle the price on the invoice on some MIR's for example).

unless you are a hardcore gammer you could get by with less vidio card. the one sam mentioned is one of the top of the line cards. the average user can do fine with a lot less powerful video card.

DDR2 1066 memory is faster than DDR2 800. it used to cost quit a bit more than 800 but now there is not much difference and the little bit more it will cost is well worth the investment. it will also allow for higher cpu overclocks in most cases.

if you intend to OC at all, it is highly recommended that you get an after market performance cpu hsf. some good hsf's range from an arctic freezer 7 pro all the way up to a TR U120 or TR U120E.

 

Indeed. It hadn't even occurred to me, you don't need anything anywhere near the HD4850 unless you game.

 

Ok, now wonder how much the 4870/4850's spew out. there is no way the 3870 was a high end card. look at the consumption of the GTX 280/260. dual cores are now as normal as single cores. esp now with Qcores, (a minimum of 95W) and increacing when OCing, and with octo cores coming out next year, and that will increace, powerconsumption will also increace.

and look at it this way 55nm v 90nm proccess, much smaller, SHOULD dissapate less heat, but due to the power of the actual card increacing, even though the process neally halved, the power didnt. and then untill 45nm proccesses (2009) we'll get another big jump in power consumption, a little drop, and then it will increase.

honeslty, i dont think it is rediculous spending an extra £50 on a componant that will last a good 3 years minimum, and make it through many a build.

 

That's Ok because neither are the 4850/4870 although they put in a good performance against cards that are high end such as the GTX 280. The reality is that most people don't purchase High end cards. They would rather spend about $200 and be done with.

I'm betting that 80% or higher of all people who've purchased SLI and Xfire boards never inserted more than one card in them.

You meant more heat didn't you? Heat is actually a problem with the 4800 series, the 3800 series ran much cooler.

You're absolutely right, one can spend their money anyway that they choose to without reproach from others.

 

shaf,

you didn't know Soph? he's a big time computer geek (I don't mean that bad Soph) and was one of the very 1st members here. he started his own forum so doesn't hang out here that much anymore.

I consider his word golden. he has helped me and given me good advice many times in the past. when it comes to pc's (and many other things as well), he know's his shite.

 

Mort81,

I second that! One of the very best!

Russ

 

and thats the bottom line!!!!!!!!

 

Ok, the rebates i wasnt really expeting to get back anyway and even if i did i would have forgotten about them by the time i received them anyway so all it would be is a nice surprise lol...

The RAM sounds nice and i did add the 1066 to the build cos it had the 20$ rebate on it, which if i do get back, will make it 10$ more than the 800 which is fine.

Regarding the video card, is there maybe an average gaming card? x.x i mean, ill certainly be using it for bit of gaming, probably not anything too intense as i have a 360, PS3, and Wii so my time is kinda spread out as is, but i would still like the option for at least a decent gaming environment running on my machine., i dont think ill need a top of the line and $200 did seem a bit much, so maybe a step or 2 down for me?

As for the hsf, i think ill hold off on OCing and all that for a bit, i can always buy one later and add it in if i ever decide i want a little more power from my machine right?

 

guys i have a medion MD8383XL. when i put it on i get a blank screen, can anyone help. i've tried a new graphics cards but that doesn't work either.