Fancy a butchers.... at my new build!

[dragon2309]

G'day folks....

Dont go getting excited, im not buying anything yet, but with my new job comes more money, so as i was bored just now, nothing else better to do.... I started quoting up my next buils (3 months away, early christmas present to myself)

this is what i got so far

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£195 - 1 x Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz - Skt775 Fsb1066 4mb Cache - RETAIL
£52 -- 1 x Asus P5ND2-SLI skt775 NFORCE4 SLI
£99 -- 2 x OCZ 1Gb DDR2-667 (2Gb)
£151 - 1 x BFG 7900GT OC 256mb GDDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI
£53 -- 1 x Western Digital 300GB SATAII 7200RPM 8MB Cache - OEM
£72 -- 1 x Antec P180 Black SPCR Advanced Super Mid Tower
£38 -- 2 x LG GSA-H10NBAL 16 x1 6 DVD±RW 12x RAM Dual Layer Writer Black - OEM
£15 -- 1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 CPU Cooler
£39 -- 1 x Antec NEO HE 430W Modular PSU w/80mm Low Speed Fan @ 18db

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Sub-Total = £725

VAT = £127

Toal Basket Cost = £853 (including shipping - roughly $1620 USD)

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In my opinion this is a very good price for what im getting.

Let me explain a couple of my choices to you. I was looking at GPU's like the 7600GT and thought, i would get 2 of them right now and sli them, but then i though, if i stretch to a 7900GT OC then at a later date i can get another one, SLi them and still have a kick ass system.... Yes?

the CPU, i went for intel Core 2 Duo E6600, i wanted to get the E6700, but at nearly £300 for just the CPu, it was a bit too much, so i bought it down a notch and settled at the E6600. Still a VERY respectable CPU.

The PSU has 3 x +12v rails, its modular and its antec @430w, i thought this would be more than enough, the 7900Gt says it needs a minimum of 350w, but seeing as i can give the card a dedicated 12v rail all to itself, im not too worried about the wattage of the PSU not being crazily high.

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Thats about it, now i just need suggestions and edits.... im open to all suggestions, but really this price im on now is FINAL, it cannot go above that under no circumstances, so please dont post if all your gonna say is "oh for an extra £20 you can get twice as much RAM" its not happening, the price is final, it can go under that price, but DEFINATELY NOT OVER IT


thanks a lot, dragon

 

[jimmymac]

i like it, in fact at that price your tempting me too, i have the case (silver version). 430w Antec PSU, also got me HDD's and a DVD writer so feasibly i could do the memory,board and cpu.

Where did you price from, ebuyer?

 

[bigsaucybob]

1. Definitely get one 7900GT now instead of two 7600GT then get another later down the road when needed.

2. I think the E6600 is the best Core 2 Duo processor when you don't have an insane amount of money to spend. It still performed better than an FX-62 in all benchmarks, but isn't to heavily priced. Nice choice.

3. With 3x +12V rails, I think the PSU should be sufficent.

4. Also I would keep in mind that since you aren't buying soon, when you do have the money. Take another look at the selection of motherboards. As Core 2 Duo is becoming more and more popular, more boards will be coming out. So when you have the money, a better motherboard might be better for you.

 

[SirKenin]

I'll be more interested when you actually have some money to spend, so we can work within a real budget, using real numbers and not just grabbing the most expensive components you can get your hands on and throwing it together. Give us something tangible to work with. Maybe let us know when there is some sort of sense of reality to your project. By then it is hard to say what will be out there for the same or less money.

 

[bigsaucybob]

I'll be more interested when you actually have some money to spend, so we can work within a real budget, using real numbers and not just grabbing the most expensive components you can get your hands on and throwing it together. Give us something tangible to work with. Maybe let us know when there is some sort of sense of reality to your project. By then it is hard to say what will be out there for the same or less money.

I also think that might be a better idea. But the system he configured is very far away from the most expensive components. It is a very nice well rounded system. But it could be much more expensive.

 

[dragon2309]

i like it, in fact at that price your tempting me too, i have the case (silver version). 430w Antec PSU, also got me HDD's and a DVD writer so feasibly i could do the memory,board and cpu.

Where did you price from, ebuyer?

yeh, i was surprised at the price, pretty good, and yeh, i always price from ebuyer... they always seem to have what i need, www.ebuyer.co.uk

1. Definitely get one 7900GT now instead of two 7600GT then get another later down the road when needed.

Yeh, good, my logic paid off then, thanks for reasuring it, im never 100% sure

2. I think the E6600 is the best Core 2 Duo processor when you don't have an insane amount of money to spend. It still performed better than an FX-62 in all benchmarks, but isn't to heavily priced. Nice choice.

Yeh, i was looking at intels data sheet thingy, with all models and prices, and the 6700 is an insane amount of money, and from what i can see its not that much better, uits just the next model up... so the E6600 it was

3. With 3x +12V rails, I think the PSU should be sufficent.

Thankyou for confirming

4. Also I would keep in mind that since you aren't buying soon, when you do have the money. Take another look at the selection of motherboards. As Core 2 Duo is becoming more and more popular, more boards will be coming out. So when you have the money, a better motherboard might be better for you.

Yeh, i was talking to jan on MSN earlier while i was building it online and said that this wouldnt be my final build, im pretty sure it will change a bit in time. The only thign i skimped (SP?) on was the mobo, mainly cos i couldnt be bothered to look fo a better one. This was mid-range, fairly cheap... so maybe at a later date i will change that for a few models up, even though the mobo does have SATAII, it does have RAID its on the nForce4 chipset. Seems brilliant, with all the ASUS features on it too...

I'll be more interested when you actually have some money to spend, so we can work within a real budget, using real numbers and not just grabbing the most expensive components you can get your hands on and throwing it together. Give us something tangible to work with. Maybe let us know when there is some sort of sense of reality to your project. By then it is hard to say what will be out there for the same or less money.

you what.... i will be getting the money for it in a few months... ive got the job, just gotta get paid for a few months first, and those certainly are not the most expensive parts i could get, thats a specially selected system to fit into the price ive set in my head, £850 is a perfectly feesable price for me to pay for a PC

I also think that might be a better idea. But the system he configured is very far away from the most expensive components. It is a very nice well rounded system. But it could be much more expensive.

exactly

Keep the comments coming please

dragon

 

[SirKenin]

In case you haven't noticed, technology changes every 3 to 6 months. Like I said, when you have the money then we'll talk. Jeez, there could very well be some uber amazing products that we could throw into that build and not increase your cost.

 

[dragon2309]

In case you haven't noticed, technology changes every 3 to 6 months. Like I said, when you have the money then we'll talk. Jeez, there could very well be some uber amazing products that we could throw into that build and not increase your cost.

I didnt say you couldnt, but as your so keen to not help and simply state that theres no point, fine, ill change it, lets just pretend im ordering this tomorrow. now can i please have a constructive post from you??

dragon

 

[SirKenin]

Ok. Say you are ordering it tomorrow. Fair enough. In that event I like everything but the harddrive (surprise, surprise). Swap out the HDD with something that isn't prone to failure and that will offer you good performance and yeah, that's a good system. Personally I would go with a pair of Raptors. Mwahaha.

 

[dragon2309]

Ok. Say you are ordering it tomorrow. Fair enough. In that event I like everything but the harddrive (surprise, surprise). Swap out the HDD with something that isn't prone to failure and that will offer you good performance and yeah, that's a good system. Personally I would go with a pair of Raptors. Mwahaha.

Any suggestions, hard drive speed isnt really an issue, more reliability, so perhaps a seagate.... its gotta be at least 300Gb and SATAII

by my serarches seagate dont have any 300Gb SATAII drives listed on ebuyer.co.uk, and their 400Gb drives are ridiculously epensive.... I could get 2 x 250Gb's and shove them into RAID 0

Lets see, that comes out at... about £90 for 2 drives which is an extra £40, which i dont really want....

Any suggestions?

dragon

*EDIT* - just to help out, im gonna add prices to each product in my original post

 

[SirKenin]

Well, I definitely wouldn't go RAID 0... But 2 Seagate 250's make sense. They're a good drive. Them or the Samsung Spinpoints, but I'm not sure if they are available in SATAII yet...

 

[dragon2309]

Well, I definitely wouldn't go RAID 0... But 2 Seagate 250's make sense. They're a good drive. Them or the Samsung Spinpoints, but I'm not sure if they are available in SATAII yet...

I might have got confused, RAId always gets me, which one is where you have 2 drives acting as one drive, so it would be like one 500Gb drive?? is that RAID 0?

And as you say im not buying for a while so stock could change, the Seagate 300Gb SATAII may well become available

dragon

 

[Bobo]

There is nothing wrong with that WD drive.

And I would not suggest RAID0. One drives coughs, all your data goes byebye.

I might have got confused, RAId always gets me, which one is where you have 2 drives acting as one drive, so it would be like one 500Gb drive?? is that RAID 0?

Yes you are right. Read RAID 101

 

[bigsaucybob]

I might have got confused, RAId always gets me, which one is where you have 2 drives acting as one drive, so it would be like one 500Gb drive?? is that RAID 0?

And as you say im not buying for a while so stock could change, the Seagate 300Gb SATAII may well become available

dragon

RAID 101

 

[dragon2309]

i think thats the first time ive been directed to a 101 document, thanks guys

 

[SirKenin]

lol. WD is crap. Like I've told many others, and I will tell you too, I was a WD authorized dealer for some time. I've seen hundreds of WD drives, and still do. I scrapped the lineup because they are garbage. I have never seen as many RMAs with any other manufacturer as I have with WD (over 30% loss). The only good WDs are Raptors and REs.

Don't listen to these people that have had a couple of them and say "there's nothing wrong with them" or "mine work fine". Of course you are going to get good ones. You have to look at the bigger picture, and to do that you have to use a large sample size. What it all boils down to? WD Caviar and Caviar SEs SUCK. LARGE. Not only are they unreliable, they can't handle heavy loads. They are for very light home use only.

 

[dragon2309]

lol. WD is crap. Like I've told many others, and I will tell you too, I was a WD authorized dealer for some time. I've seen hundreds of WD drives, and still do. I scrapped the lineup because they are garbage. I have never seen as many RMAs with any other manufacturer as I have with WD (over 30% loss). The only good WDs are Raptors and REs.

Don't listen to these people that have had a couple of them and say "there's nothing wrong with them" or "mine work fine". Of course you are going to get good ones. You have to look at the bigger picture, and to do that you have to use a large sample size. What it all boils down to? WD Caviar and Caviar SEs SUCK. LARGE. Not only are they unreliable, they can't handle heavy loads. They are for very light home use only.

Ok, well, you seem to know what your talking about, even though i di currently have a WD Caviar 80gb and apart from a problem that turned out to be a power cable (not the drive), its all been fine, i would carry on searching for drives but for some reason my saved quote on ebuyer wont re-open, si i dont have any basket items.... I think its a problem with the CPU, it went out of stock whilst i had it saved, now its back in stock though... not sure, might have to contact them.

dragon

 

[jancz3rt]

Heya

Heya Dave,

in my view that's a very nice and balanced setup. As for HDDs, I would recommend you to not use RAID but simply hook them up as two seperate HDDs. That will mean greater safety for your data and therefore in my view, a better choice. By the time you will buy your babe, the prices should not drop that much because it will be some time before new things come up. Now one more thing, I would also suggest getting a 7900GT over a 7600GT.

JAN

 

[dragon2309]

Heya Dave,

in my view that's a very nice and balanced setup. As for HDDs, I would recommend you to not use RAID but simply hook them up as two seperate HDDs. That will mean greater safety for your data and therefore in my view, a better choice. By the time you will buy your babe, the prices should not drop that much because it will be some time before new things come up. Now one more thing, I would also suggest getting a 7900GT over a 7600GT.

JAN

Heya jan, thansk for the post, yeh, i think it'll definately be 1 x 7900 GT OC then upgrade to SLi 7900 GT at a later date when the single card starts to lag on new games

as for hard drive setup, im still undecided, i want at least 300Gb on SATAII and more reliability over speed, so no raptors please...

suggestions?

dragon.

 

[Jet]

I would go with a better motherboard, that is, knowing you, you will want to overclock it as far as it will go.

I also think that your power supply isn't sufficient. Yea, it has three 12V rails, but that just means that you can be fine with two of the rails and have the third maxxed. I had an Antec 400w SM2.0 and I was overloading it with my meager system, so I had to go for a more powerful PSU. If you're looking for something that will last, (I know wattage doesn't matter as much, but..) get something over 500watts, preferably 550. Sli will be a big drain, as well as if you are going to overclock the E6600.