New PC Build

[Bluepixie]

Now before you start getting all excited this is not for me.

NOT FOR ME! :p

A friend of mine needs a hand with putting a machine together and I don't really have the time to do my usual full research job. Other research to do unfortunately. :(

So, this is the criteria:

- Main unit + keyboard + mouse only
- £5-600,
- It doesn't need all the components straight away, he's happy to upgrade later.

So I'm thinking decent MB and CPU and memory for now along with PSU and case. The other parts could be speced down a bit. Maybe the 2600 XT for graphics and a 500GB WD, he was wanting a 6GB raptor for the OS but I don't really see the point. This is the list he posted me, it's just under £700 so not ideal:

- Aspire X-Cruiser Black Midi Tower with Window w/o PSU

- Asus Commando i965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

- 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC4300 (533), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12

- Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, S775, 2.33 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail

- 500 Gb Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache,
8.5 ms, NCQ

- 6 Gb Western Digital WD360ADFD Raptor, SATA150, 10000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 5.2
ms, NCQ

- 256MB Asus 8500GT, Silent, PCI-E (x16), Mem 800 MHz, GPU 459 MHz, 16 Pipes, D-Sub/DVI-I/HDTV

- 400W AKASA PAXPower ATX 2.2 Ultra Quiet PSU with hi-effiency of a minium of 80% even at full

- Cherry M82-24710GB CONTROL MM Desktop Cordless Keyboard, USB 1.1/2.0, 800dpi Optical Mouse, Black

- Asus WL-138g V2 54G Wireless PCI Adaptor.

- Samsung SH-S203/BEBN 20x DVD±R, 16x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM inc. Nero

- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD).

Most things are ok, but I think these would be better:

http://www.pausegaming.com/niall/PeteBrown.JPG

I would maybe choose a different case but I've not been reading about them recently, and the ones Tibero has been looking at are a bit expensive I think! I'll obviously let him choose his own keyboard and mouse!

Cheers!

edit: He's dying to play the new C&C and I can only imagine will enjoy World in Conflict so the better it runs them, well the better. :D

[YegaDoyai]

Go for the Sonata range of cases instead, the PSU is made by enermax now and much better, should easily cope with anything he throws at it right now and save cost. Considering the saving you can either go for the X2900Pro or go for the X1950Pro, I can't really recommend the mid spec DX10 cards they are across-the-board poo. Not sure about the MOBO, the gigabytes have been getting such excellent reviews of late and are fantasic value for money. Agreed that sacking the Raptor is a good idea, if he wants to spunk money and retain performance and useability the terebyte drives are just about as quick for normal use as the raptor and obv have better storage. Otherwise stick to samsung and WD for HDDs. Any old DVD drive would be good.

[Bluepixie]

Good points, loving the look of that case! I quick skim through Tomshardware does indicate that the 1950X Pro is still a beast, good to hear. This leaves a nice flexy £100 even at Overclockers.co.uk.

Only other thing is a cooler, not that keen on using the stock cooler, but neither do I feel a beast is needed.

http://www.pausegaming.com/niall/PeteBrown2.JPG

[YegaDoyai]

The stock is good and quiet, no reason to change.

Why not swapping the Hitachi out for a WD?

[Hex]

Aye, the WD drives are excellent quality, very quiet, and likely more reliable. Try this one (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-120-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940) or this one (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-146-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940). The price difference is negligible, in fact I think the first of those WD drives is actually cheaper than the Hitachi you have listed.

[Sid]

Also bear in mind that the Seagate drives and some of the WD drives come with a 5-year warranty.

[smoothy_boy]

Alright folks! Thanks for all the advice on my new machine, it all looks good, I was actually looking at the Sonata case already but will be finallising (sp) the build in the coming weeks. I like the savng on the processor you have pointed out an the RAM option. the only other requirement I have is for an HDMI out cos this system is going straight into the TV :) and will probably go for 2 lower capacity drives in a RAID 1 set up.

I guess the Raptor drive was a banana skin then huh?

[YegaDoyai]

Ok, I think I'll get a sticky made up, WHY USE RAID???

Do what you want but it is far more hassle than it is worth. HDMI is going to be replaced before long so unless you already have an HDMI compatible tv don't bother, if you DO have an HDMI tv then a converter might be more appropriate than spunking money on a useless graphics card. Alternately you could get this rather nifty MOBO (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-125-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=326)instead, sideshow has it and it seems rather pleasant.

If you do want to overclock (and with your setup you really should) then you should look at investing in one of these (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-039-TR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821)too, don't get anything other than this it is the best.

Also, if you really want to waste money you could get an SDD (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-043-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=910)

[Hex]

Ok, I think I'll get a sticky made up, WHY USE RAID???

Seconded, RAID is a huge waste of time in home machines.

[Sid]

Wait 'til one of your drives storing irreplaceable data dies, then you'll be kicking yourself for not using RAID.

[Hex]

It's called a backup. You don't need RAID to make one.

[Sid]

It's cheaper to backup on hard disks though. Tape drives are too expensive.

[Hex]

I do back up to hard disks, I use external drives and I make a standard backup once a month or so. That way the backup is kept out of the way, the drive it resides on is not put under any undue stress or overusage. If your backup resides inside your case, you lose it in the event of fire or theft, whereas my method is (IMO) safer and less trouble.

[Sid]

But then you lose 30 days of work in the worst case scenario. With 2 drives in RAID1, data is constantly backed up.

There's generally always somebody in my house so I'm not worried about theft and I'll take my chances against a fire starting.

[Tiberio]

I have an used E6600 if you want a little more cpu power:).

[smoothy_boy]

I do back up to hard disks, I use external drives and I make a standard backup once a month or so. That way the backup is kept out of the way, the drive it resides on is not put under any undue stress or overusage. If your backup resides inside your case, you lose it in the event of fire or theft, whereas my method is (IMO) safer and less trouble.

Good points but am a lazy git and I'm still trying to recover my music collection after the last re-insatll I had to do (why I wanted a seperatedrive for the OS) amd I don't want to risk losing what I have recovered as well as what I'll get in the future. Good shout on the cooler, I'll add that to the shopping list.

Now newbie question time, what cables will I need to get or does each unit have everything it needs to be installed?

[Sid]

If you're just looking to have a fixed volume of space for file storage that remains even after a windows re-install, just make a seperate partition on one disk. The RAID1 that you mentioned is really meant to protect against hard disk failure.

[LastChanceHotel]

Put one 750GB drive in your machine, put another in an external USB case. Copy the stuff you absolutely positively cannot lose onto the USB drive, and hide it somewhere. No, don't use it to hide your pr0n as you'll never unplug the damn thing - hide it in a cupboard.

Take it back out every month or so to back up useful things: this way if your PC catches fire or gets stolen etc, you're not completely screwed.

I'm a RAID user (raid 0... shoot me), and all RAID cards under £500 suck big hairy donkey balls - I speak from experience with dealing with servers. I never want to trust a motherboard onboard or cheap PCI raid card with my data ever again, they're fickle, buggy, and generally shitty. We lost 2TB of data to an onboard raid driver screwup (fortunately it was only cached youtube videos on a proxy server) - never again!

My £0.02.

[Strings]

£0.01 if you think about it.

[Bluepixie]

Now newbie question time, what cables will I need to get or does each unit have everything it needs to be installed?

New motherboards have pretty much all of the cables you could need, i.e. SATA, IDE, maybe floppy depending on the board etc. The PSU or case in this instance will have all the power leads and stuff too. No worries there!

I actually meant to choose the 500GB Western Digital 8MB cache OEM but, I ended up with the Hitachi instead for some reason and didn't notice. Oops. Definitely take the WD instead! :D

How you feeling about the list just now? Spied any other cases you like the look of? Anything else in particular that you want more information for?

[smoothy_boy]

nah, I was actually looking at the sonate case cos I thought it looked pretty sweet, never thought of using GB mobos though. Cheers for the answer to the cable question, I wasnt too sure about it.
My final(ish) list is;

QTY Price (ea) Ex VAT Total Inc VAT Remove
LN19074
Antec Sonata 3 Super Black Mini Tower Case with 500W aPFC PSU £66.49 £78.13
LN18797
Gigabyte GA P35C-DS3R, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-Ex16, DDR2/3 1066/1333/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £61.49 £72.25
LN19277
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, S775, 2.2 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £68.99 £81.06
LN15415
Asus WL-138g V2 54G Wireless PCI Adaptor £9.99 £11.74
LN18482
400 Gb Seagate ST3400633AS-RS Barracuda 7200.9, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 9 ms, NCQ £49.99 £58.74
LN17550
256MB Sapphire Radeon X1950GT, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1200MHz GDDR3, GPU 500MHz, 36 Pipes, RoHS £64.33 £75.59
LN16509
Cherry M82-24710GB CONTROL MM Desktop Cordless Keyboard, USB 1.1/2.0, 800dpi Optical Mouse, Black £21.69 £25.49
LN17166
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £54.26 £63.76
If you change any quantities, please re-calculate your basket
Scan Finance - Buy Now Pay Jul 2008
Pay £47.96 deposit and then NO payments for 9 months, then settle the balance and pay NO interest.

Scan Finance - More Sense Than Money


Net Total £397.23

Carriage £10.92

V.A.T. £71.43

TOTAL £479.58

gonna get the RAm you suggested from ocr's, prob get a belkin wireless but its a pre-order. Am sure a few things will raise some eyebrows and am using scan cos they are cheaper than ocrs on this.

You got a suntan yet?

[Hex]

Wireless keyboard @ waste of batteries

Windows Vista @ waste of money (buy XP if you must buy a copy)

[smoothy_boy]

yup, it has to be wireless so I can sit on the couch. I was hoping for something i could recharge a la ps3 controllers but so far I've come up blank. apparently xp can only run 32 bits, soo if i get a dual core im working on the assumption its 64bit... also xp doesnt use the dual core properly and is pretty much the same price as vista.

[Fyndir]

Just get two sets of rechargeable batteries, one in the keyboard one on the charger, swap as necessary.

[Hex]

yup, it has to be wireless so I can sit on the couch. I was hoping for something i could recharge a la ps3 controllers but so far I've come up blank. apparently xp can only run 32 bits, soo if i get a dual core im working on the assumption its 64bit... also xp doesnt use the dual core properly and is pretty much the same price as vista.

XP runs fine on dual core systems, many of us run it on AMD X2 and C2D chips without trouble. Anyway...you really don't need to buy either of them if you're on a tight budget. There are free alternatives to paying for Vista.

[smoothy_boy]

ok folks, ordered the above system last night and it should be here tomorrow :D can't wait!!

soo does anyone have any tips on how to put this thing together, where do I get all the drivers or are they already installed on the mobo?

Didnt bother with vista, didnt see the point after some research

[Hex]

You'll get the drivers on CD with the different components. Tips for putting it together - be careful, give yourself plenty of time and plenty of space, if in doubt, read the instructions! If you feel like you don't know what you're doing I'd recommend convincing someone who does to come round and help you with it :-)

[smoothy_boy]

Cheers, I'm fairly confident about putting it together since I've been into the guts of the Dell trying to keep it alive.

What anti static measures do you use? I was planning on plugging the PSU (not switching it on) and keeping a hold of the case whilst standing on a rubber mat

[Hex]

With regard to static it's sufficient just to earth yourself on the metal chassis of the case. Touch that before you touch any of the components and you should be fine. The rubber mat and shit is kinda overkill ;-)

[neogramps]

I keep my case plugged in and earth myself whenever I'm touching something vunerable. If you hit any snags I'll be kicking about the forums all weekend.

[Thanatos]

Unless of course your chassis is a cardboard box a-la Euans new build last year. Just hope your case comes with the rest of your order ehy;-)

[smoothy_boy]

Cheers for all the help!! Neogramps, you may live to regret that lol.

Aye hopefully it'll all arrive safe then am gonna get my ass c&c 3 and face the very real possibility of being dumped :twisted:

[Hex]

Unless of course your chassis is a cardboard box a-la Euans new build last year. Just hope your case comes with the rest of your order ehy;-)

Euan's box was awesome :lol:

http://www.pausegaming.com/photoalbums/2006-2007/LAN1_Freshers_14_-_10_-_06/PICT0047.JPG

[neogramps]

smoothy - i'm sure I won't - i wouldn't be in tech support if i didn't like a puzzle. - oh and http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/forums/ are a good bunch for build problems too.

and as for euans box - how do you turn on a pc without the case power switch - jumper the on switch?

[smoothy_boy]

Its Here!!! got it at 8.30am, luckily i was to excited to have my usual saturday lie in.

I was reading that forum last night now am gonna get started. If I dont post in the next few days I've prob fried myself8)

[smoothy_boy]

so far so good folks 8-) but does the dvd also use SATA?

[neogramps]

well if you bought the one niall said then yeah - the connection is pretty disctinct (small and with a thin L in the middle), as opposed to a 40pin 2" wide ide connection

[smoothy_boy]

yup, bought a diff one tho. 1st switch on after lunch :???:

[neogramps]

and?

[Hex]

The suspence is killing me ;-)

[smoothy_boy]

it worked!!!:D:D:D nothing went bang and the whole procedure went much easier than I expected.

Sorry for the delay folks but I couldn't get on the net with it last night, but omg is this thing quick (compared to the dell).

As soon as I finish updating and installing its play time:twisted::twisted:

thanks again for all the help!!

and cheers for pointing me in this direction Niall!

[Bluepixie]

Hey man, I'm sorry I've not been about. What with work then being in Barcelona for 5 days (got back yesterday) I've not been online at all. I'm glad you got everything sorted out in the end! Remember to go and download this puppy as well, Live For Speed (http://www.lfs.net/). I think you'll like it...... :)

It's pretty much Scottish weather here now, and my tan is waning....bah. :) Didn't want in anyway. :p

[Hex]

It's pretty much Scottish weather here now, and my tan is waning....bah. :) Didn't want in anyway. :p

Your pale complexion is an important part of your character Niall ;-)

[smoothy_boy]

Howdy folks! am guessing thats you bak then Niall? Just thot Id drop by an say happy new year all an let you know the new machine is pretty sweet :P going to be adding some cooling shortly and have a crack at oc'ing this puppy.

only issue so far is a 3d error on c&c 3 whenever things get busy, this is a major pain in the ass when it happens as you just finish a mission >:(

[Bluepixie]

I am indeed. It's been swell but writing this bloody report has been doing my head in, mainly because of Word. Damn it's soul, if it has one.

3D error? Like a blue screen crash? what sort of error message do you get? Information, gimme! :D

[smoothy_boy]

I kinda miss being a student now, much more scope for imagination and creativeness :|

And word has about the darkest soul I have come across, after word perfect.

Its not a blue screen crash its something that forces the game to quit but not the whole system, it just flashes up a big window that basically says run outta memory 3d system error. Or something to that effect, I doubt my gpu is set up right cos PES 6 is well jerky onit too even tho according to the specs it should be no trouble.

I'll gice it a play an as soon as i get the error I'll post it here for ya!

Peace out lego master!

[neogramps]

smoothy you running vista?

[Hex]

I am indeed. It's been swell but writing this bloody report has been doing my head in, mainly because of Word. Damn it's soul, if it has one.

You familiar with LaTeX pixie? It's great for writing reports, beats the shit out of word!

LaTeX wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX).

[smoothy_boy]

smoothy you running vista?

nah mate I put xp pro on, I heard too many bad things about vista and decided to stick with what I know :razz:

[DAve]

You familiar with LaTeX pixie? It's great for writing reports, beats the shit out of word!

LaTeX wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX).

LaTeX does beat the shit out of Word in just about every respect imaginable. For anything longer than a 20 page report, it's well worth learning.

It allows you to compile your documents to make sure that everything is exactly how you want it to be, not how MS wants it to look.

And you get geek points for using it, much the same way as modding hardware or overclocking. :D

[GigaFuzz]

It's a wee bit overkill for a simple 2 page PSI essay, though. Hex should know what I mean. :)

[Hex]

It's a wee bit overkill for a simple 2 page PSI essay, though. Hex should know what I mean. :)

Hehe yeah my PSI was done in Word, LaTeX is unnecessary for a 2 page essay. Also WTF is up with people putting Section headings into an essay?!??! Section headings = report IMO, essays have title at the top and paragraphs following that.

/me shakes fist at CompSci students failure with the English language