I didn't find any stats on the E2160 for gaming at the time, so didn't list it. Having done some more research, it appears that the 2160 is quite a good cpu for gaming and handles OCing nicely, so getting 3ghz shouldn't be a problem if extra grunt is required for some games. Going that route would bring the system to the right price just about, and at least it would be be pretty future proof and made with some quality components. Only thing I struggled to really decide on was the graphics card, maybe someone with more experience hands on with a card at around £40-£50 could advise how they handle the latest games. I at least wanted to give something to buy rather than leave the GPU sggestion blank. All in all it will be a far better system, and the pleasure of building it and running it will be worth the effort.
so is this what i should go for? Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU £42.99 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101 MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35 £67.99 PowerColor HD 3650 512MB £43.94 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140261 OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 £73.02 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132904 OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 £29.99 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/116755 Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII £45.21 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131301... i really dont know guys,lol,im trusting you's so al buy what u thinks best
rite...i think i'll start ordering it later,got free delivery at ebuyer the now Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU - MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35 - Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 - OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 - Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII - Optiarc AD-7200S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA - ..i dont think i'll ever use a floppy drive,not sure about the graphics card either..should i go for the HD2600XT or HD3650..is there a big difference between the two? Thanks
If you ar laoding Vista then the floppy won't be required. If you are running XP then you'll either need a floppy or a usb stick to load the raiddrivers for the sata drive. When you load and get the f6 prompt, you'll need to add the drivers to support the sata drive as they won't be on the XP disk unless you've built yourself a doctored copy rebuilt with the drivers in it 'unlikley'. You can use a usb stick formatted to fat16, or use the floppy from your present pc just to get the drivers loaded, once its up and running you can just power down and remove from system. Heres a comparison between the cards 'bear in mind the versions they are using' but it will give a good idea of how they perform in various areas, the power consumption and noise. http://www.hothardware.com/articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_Refresh_3650_and_3450_Arrive/?page=1
Surely you only need to add third party drivers if you're using RAID? The original XP disc without any service packs can read S-ATA hard drives fine, but will limit their capacity, Service pack 1 or later, and there's no problem at all. I've never had to do anything at that part of the install for S-ATA. From those benchmarks the HD2600XT seems slightly better, at least for now, but the HD3650 is significantly cheaper, so you may as well go with it, there's not a big difference in performance.
cool,think al go for the PowerColor HD2600XT, i'll also most likely be loading vista into it..so what do u reckon DK... Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU - MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35 - Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 - OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 - Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII - Optiarc AD-7200S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA - PowerColor HD2600XT 512mb DDR3 128bit DVI PCI-E ..should that about do it?
It's never worked for me and I've loaded about 200 machines with XP 98% have been SATA drives, and of those about 10% have been RAID. We'll have to wait and see what happens!
this is the stuff i have in my basket at ebuyer - Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU - Intel E2160 Socket 775 Pentium Dual Core 2x1.8Ghz 800FSB Retail Boxed Processor - OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Platinum Performance CL5 (5-4-4-18) - MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard - PowerColor HD2600XT 512mb DDR3 128bit DVI PCI-E Graphics Card that ok so far? I think im gonna stick with the HD2600XT for the HDTV Support
THink that just leaves me with the hard drive and DVD Drive..i have a fairly recent drive anyways,only bought it about a year ago (dont know why i bothered really as my pc cant do jack),so maybe i could just use that drive?
You'll be able to use your old drive without any issue, so if it does what you want then don't bother changing it. Size of HDD is up to you, just make sure you take note of access times, cache size as well as storage capacity.
1 x Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU *SPECIAL OFFER* 1 x OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Platinum Performance CL5 (5-4-4-18) 1 x MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard 1 x PowerColor HD2600XT 512mb DDR3 128bit DVI PCI-E Graphics Card 1 x Intel E2160 Socket 775 Pentium Dual Core 2x1.8Ghz 800FSB Retail Boxed Processor 1 x Western Digital WD3200AAJS 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200RPM 8MB Cache - OEM so..thats what i've just ordered,lol,should be here on tuesday so expect to see me back on here in tears when i cant put it all togther,lol. Thanks alot for all the help!!
BigDK: Hmm, how odd. So far so good on 5/5 for me! RAID, obviously not, but with integrated motherboard controllers I've never had any issues, and in fact, I've never had a floppy to do it with! Inkleach: Good stuff. The WD AAJS series hard drives are a favourite of mine for ultra low noise seek operation. The graphics card is fine, although the HD3650 should support HDTVs too, all of the HD series do, hence the name.