Build your own pc

[Damian Henderson]

You guys make me blush, :desire::fwd: just like helping people hehe.

So if anyone could find a CPU + mobo that supports SLI if possible, I think that would rock. I still have about £100 left I think. I can't remember what it was, but I think the 6850C2D was good for OCing..?

All the Intel chips are very good at overclocking but you won't get a good SLi mobo that overclocks well and a good chip for £100 together unless you buy second hand or there's some mega deal going around somewhere.

6850 is old now but still a great chip, the E7400 has taken it's place though, runs cooler and uses less power + overclocks very well. The E5200 can reach 6850 speeds without much trouble though and is a very good clocker, or though it's got lower FSB and wont run as fast, but is the best cheap for it's price range ,it runs about the same speed as a C2D E4700, but runs cooler, user less power, but overclocks very well still, but better then that you have to spend a bit more really.

This is one of the cheapest SLi mobo's you can buy:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142585

And cpu:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152177

Now that's hitting £200 nearly.


Your either going to have to spend a little more over £300 or not go SLi I think unless you pick up a good deal on a E6*** chip somewhere, but I would advise to get a newer gen chip as the E7*** and E8**** are faster, run cooler, use less power.

It's a tough one to call but if you can hold out for a couple of months save some money or just spend a bit more now if you can it will be worth it.

 

[Jamie R]

Thanks for the advice. I think for now, performance is more important than practicallity, so I will not get SLI, and just get a better card when I want to upgrade.

So I will look into a regular C2D mobo which shouldn't be much more than £30-50 right? Which leaves about £50 for CPU. Intel use the same model number scheme as Nvidia right? 7400 maybe a little too expensive.

 

[Dan Coldrick]

Something like that but maybe try sub the 9600GT for the 9600GSO.

 

[Jamie R]

I actually think Damian's non-SLI option looks very good. But just wondering why get a £70 mobo over a £30 one? Just wondering what the difference would be

 

[Dan Coldrick]

You will get alot more features with a more expensive mobo and they are alot better at overclocking.

In my rig above the 4830 is £75-http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159719

So add that in instead.

 

[Damian Henderson]

I like dan's selection, I would give the hdd a miss though and go for something a , Samsung / WD, with 16mb cache would be good.

The 4830 would be a nice chose to.

But would go with the P45 mobo I shown, they are known to oc very well.

 

[Kyle Evers]

Like everyone else said, a good PSU is necessary. I suggest a Corsair 500W-550W.

Hell, look at what I'm running on a Corsair 400W:
ECS Iris 1.0 motherboard
4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 667Mhz RAM
AMD 64 X2 6400+ 3.2Ghz Black Edition dual-core (Thanks again to Matt Alpeter)
ASUS EAH4850HD 512MB GFX Card(Which they recommend you use a 450W PSU for this)
1 Seagate 120GB HDD
1 LightScribe DVD/CD-ROM Drive

 

[Dan Coldrick]

I like dan's selection, I would give the hdd a miss though and go for something a , Samsung / WD, with 16mb cache would be good.

The 4830 would be a nice chose to.

But would go with the P45 mobo I shown, they are known to oc very well.

Yeah have to admit that HD isn't greatest but its cheap

Jamie do you intend to overclock? If so go with the P45 as Damian suggested (although you will have to sacrafice somewhere else).

 

[Rob Simms]

If you were in the states, I would recommend www.zipzoomfly.com. I would look into a minimum of a 2.4 quad core AMD and ASUS board, 4-8 gigs of ram, 600W power supply and make sure you have all of the proper connections needed and for the video card and all you will ever need is one. The next video card release is always weeks away.

I have built water systems(can be great in lowering cpu temps) and dual video card setups(are mainly a waste of money.)

 

[Damian Henderson]

I I would look into a minimum of a 2.4 quad core AMD and ASUS board, 4-8 gigs of ram,

AMA X4 2.4? well it would have to be phenom2 which still are not that cheap and the older gen AMD quads are simply slower then Intel chips, even the dual cores from Intel. 4-8gb is needed if your going to run vista 64bit, which am not sure the op is or not, 2-3gb with xp 32b is plenty.

 

[Kyle Evers]

AMA X4 2.4? well it would have to be phenom2 which still are not that cheap and the older gen AMD quads are simply slower then Intel chips, even the dual cores from Intel. 4-8gb is needed if your going to run vista 64bit, which am not sure the op is or not, 2-3gb with xp 32b is plenty.

Well I'm running 4GB with Vista 32-bit, seems to be just right.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Well I'm running 4GB with Vista 32-bit, seems to be just right.

Will be ok yes but the 32bit os can only address 3.2 or so gb even though with vista sp1 you can see the 4gb fine, You need 64bit to take advantage of 4gb +

 

[Jamie R]

Ok guys, took a week break to clear my mind of what I had in idea. Come back and taking your notes into suggestion, I think I'm going with this:

Mobo: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...(x16)-DDR2-1066-667-800-SATA-II-SATA-RAID-ATX. Took your suggestion on good OC mobo, but didn't want to spend £70 on the one Damian posted.

CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...t-775-Wolfdale-Core-2x25-GHz-2MB-Cache-Retail. Also decided to go for 5200 as best value for performance is really what I'm looking for.

GPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...z-DDR3-GPU650MHz-64-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-S-Video. 9600GT still seems the best option for me, found this one for £70.

Case: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coolermaster-RC-331-Elite-Black-Silver-Midi-Tower-Case-w-o-PSU. Heard it's good for the price .

PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-Corsair-VX-Series-PSU-ATX-PS-2-UK-Version-80-PLUS-certified.

RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-...800)-240-Pins-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-5-5-5-18. I'm using 32-bit, but it's cheaper to get this than a 2gb and 1gb one and I plan on playing GTA4 on this.

HDD: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/250-...-T7K250-SATA-300-7200-rpm-8MB-Cache-85-ms-NCQ. All I need, never use much more than 100gb, the other 150gb to be safe .

Comes to about £330 including postage and VAT. Does that look ok? Everything work well together there? Could I get something better for the price? Just a matter of saving money now and putting it together - the fun bit . It'll be my first build.

 

[Russell Dent]

Hey guys i ave own custom built pc at the moment and my specs are

Cpu-intelcore to duo E6600@2.40ghz clocked to 3.35ghz on air cooling
Ram-6 gig of Ocz ddr2 dnt know wat speed
Motherboard-Asus P5Q socket 775
Hard Drive-Maxtor sata 1Tb
Grphics Card-Pny Geforce 9800GT 512 ram (I personally wudn't touch the 9600gt its a low end version on the 9800gt which is fine for what i need)
Psu-Gigabyte 880wats Sli.

My cpu i ave isn't a bad cpu and u can get it cheap and the motherboard i ave is excellent, I allways use asus motherboards never had any problems with them.

But my Question is Im looking to buy a new cpu next week Wat do i go for with a buget of £160 Quadcore or twoCores bear in mind i will be clocking it quite high on Air.

Also the websites i Use for buying my parts are:-
Www.overclockers.co.uk
www.scan.co.uk
Www.yoyotech.co.uk
Www.aria.co.uk(cheap site very decent prices on there)

I hope I have helped you

 

[Damian Henderson]

Ok guys, took a week break to clear my mind of what I had in idea. Come back and taking your notes into suggestion, I think I'm going with this:

Mobo: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigabyte-GA-P31-ES3G-iP31-Express-S-775-PCI-E-(x16)-DDR2-1066-667-800-SATA-II-SATA-RAID-ATX. Took your suggestion on good OC mobo, but didn't want to spend £70 on the one Damian posted.

CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...t-775-Wolfdale-Core-2x25-GHz-2MB-Cache-Retail. Also decided to go for 5200 as best value for performance is really what I'm looking for.

GPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...z-DDR3-GPU650MHz-64-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-S-Video. 9600GT still seems the best option for me, found this one for £70.

Case: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coolermaster-RC-331-Elite-Black-Silver-Midi-Tower-Case-w-o-PSU. Heard it's good for the price .

PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-Corsair-VX-Series-PSU-ATX-PS-2-UK-Version-80-PLUS-certified.

RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(2x2GB)-Corsair-TwinX-XMS2-DDR2-PC2-6400-(800)-240-Pins-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-5-5-5-18. I'm using 32-bit, but it's cheaper to get this than a 2gb and 1gb one and I plan on playing GTA4 on this.

HDD: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/250-...-T7K250-SATA-300-7200-rpm-8MB-Cache-85-ms-NCQ. All I need, never use much more than 100gb, the other 150gb to be safe .

Comes to about £330 including postage and VAT. Does that look ok? Everything work well together there? Could I get something better for the price? Just a matter of saving money now and putting it together - the fun bit . It'll be my first build.

It's good build yes, maybe will cost you a bit more at scan though after postage ( because you get free delivery option at ebuyer ) You got better HDD / and allot better Mobo for OC with better features with my first build without case and it worked out cheaper then what you build above at ebuyer for example, the main advantage of my second build on page 2 is the better mobo will make OC'ing allot better. P45 vs P31 for example, the P45 just OC's allot better.

The major downside of the build is the HDD and the Mobo, Hitachi are ok but not the best. It would be best to go with a Samsung / WD or Seagate drive.

 

[Jamie R]

Ok, so you recommend Ebuyer? I'll go try it on there. If I have enough money I'll use your mobo and I'll try get one of those HDDs aswell . I'll post what I find in a minute

 

[Damian Henderson]

But my Question is Im looking to buy a new cpu next week Wat do i go for with a buget of £160 Quadcore or twoCores bear in mind i will be clocking it quite high on Air.

Because you have a E6600 @ 3.3ghz might not be worth jumping to another dual but going quad instead, E6600 @ 3.3ghz is still fast.

But for £160 best you can really get is E8400 and you could hit 4Ghz with it.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...30-GHz-1333MHz-6MB-Cache-9x-Multiplier-Retail

Best quad with good OC'ing would be any of these but will cost you bit more:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...e-S775-266-GHz-1333MHz-6MB-L2-Cache-8x-Retail

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...-Socket-775-283-GHz-1333MHz-12MB-L2-Cache-OEM

The 9550 is a very popular chip, allot of guys been hitting 4ghz + with those.

What cooler you using?

Review of Q9400:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/939/13/

For money you want to spend 9400 would be good pick, but if you can push to the 9550...

 

[Damian Henderson]

Ok, so you recommend Ebuyer?

Sorry mate, I missed that price was including postage, the price is good, maybe stick with Scan..Just need to get a better mobo and hdd. From what I been reading the iP31's are not to clever at OC'ing, they can do it but nothing like P35 / P45.

 

[Jamie R]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144657
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150285
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148715
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/115479
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130429
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131301
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131052

£355 inc. VAT. £20 more than the other one, but this has the better mobo and what seems to be a better + cheaper case + better HDD too.

All this will come with the wires needed right? I know I spares lying around somewhere, but will be much easier if they are already there.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Yup looks good, will come with all wires you need!

Try seeing how much all that is at Scan, never know might be able to save a tenner or more, but it's all looking good now, apart from case hehe.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160805