Ant

Go intel shane then go for a hackintosh system

dunx

iTrader: (3)

1. Apart from the case it's scrap/project fodder...
2. You don't need two graphics cards, I use a GTX 460 on my 1080P TV.
3. Look for bundles from the main players, CCL, Aria, OCUK, Scan, Novatech.
4. Ask them for a suggested package, they're sat doing nothing all day...

Bit-tech do a monthly best buy section, off for a link... http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buy...e-march-2011/1

dunx

P.S. My current project is a Asus P6T6WS (ebay) + i7-960 (ebay) + 6 Gb of DDR3 ( Scan ) £400 !

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Some prices for you to show you what your getting for your money

i5 2500k unlocked 159.78
ASUS P8p67 Rev3 120.80
Corsair Vengence ddr3 1600mhz 82.94
Gainward 460gtx GS GLH 167.35
750w psu w/feed for gpu card 65 quid

That comes to about 585 quid give or take a few quid.

Tony

bigsinky

you would need to add a SATA drive in there tony. 2TB are down to about £60. a cheap 60GB SSD would be nice plus he needs a copy of Win7. it all adds ups.

Saint AAI

I've gone for another option that is cheaper short term. I've bought a secondhand PC. It's fairly low spec I think, but it's still way above what I already have and I can upgrade this one better then my old. It's got a case I like and a 750W psu, not sure if the psu has a gpu lead on or not though. Full spec:

Asus M2-CROSSHAIR Socket AM2 nForce 590 SLI Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400 Black Edition 3.2ghz
Corsair Dominator 2x2gb 800mhz ddr2
GeForce 8800GTX
Soundblaster X-Fi
2x Seagate 7200.9 320gb hard drives
Fan controller.

Now I know what I'm doing on a computer, but I don't keep up with the tech or the prices of things, so I may have got a good deal on this or I may have payed over the odds. I bought this for £170 and my plan is to upgrade it gradually. Maybe in a few months time I'll get a new mobo, processor and ram. Then I can upgrade the graphics later on and then maybe move to an SSD and larger normal drive.

Also it comes with Vista installed so need to get windows 7. Can get a legit copy of that for under £10 off a friend though who's a teacher.

bigsinky

the 8800GTX, soundblaster X-Fi and the hard drives you can keep. the rest is scrap for your next system.

Saint AAI

That's what I was thinking, but didn't know if the 8800GTX was any good either. Do you think it's worth £170? Taking into account the case and 750w psu as well? And will the difference be quite noticable over my P4 3ghz, Radeon 9600 and 1.5gb ram?

Saint AAI

Probably will do eventually.

Tidgy

i switched over to radeon a while back, the 8800 is pretty old now, these two are cheaper and seem to have a better spec

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-x...i-dp-plus-game

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-s...2x-dvi-hdmi-dp

Saint AAI

I meant is the whole system worth £170, not the graphics card.

Tidgy

ah right, wont last you long and i suspect it wont run some games now already, should play most things on low settings at least though

Saint AAI

As long as it plays Battlefield p4f, battlefield heroes and LOTR online better than my current system it will do for now.

Tidgy

no idea tbh, only way will be to try it

Ian

iTrader: (10)

i have the 8800gtx card and on bc2, it is on low ish settings

4bg ram
E8400 @ 3.00ghz
win7 64bit

would like mine to go faster to, and i think the card is letting it down really

Tidgy

judging by the chip im guessing its a few years old?

CREWJ

To be honest £170 is pretty good for the whole thing. At least you can now upgrade bit by bit whilst not breaking the bank.

Tidgy

all dependant on the spec of the motherboard, if the current components max it out then no expandability

Saint AAI

The mobo will be swapped along with the processor. Was thinking that for £170 it will do me for a month or so, but I have a case, psu, sound card, graphics card and 2 hdd's that can be kept. Pick up a bundle like what bigsinky has just bought and it instantly makes my whole system better without breaking the bank in one go. Then I can add more RAM, then maybe add SSD and larger normal drive, then eventually upgrade graphics card.

Also bearing in mind my old system has these specs, it's a big upgrade for me as it is anyway:

P4 3.0ghz
ATi Radeon 9600XT 256mb agp
1.5gb ddr 400mhz RAM
160gb IDE Hdd

Saint AAI

Update on this.

PC arrived and I was initially worried. Looks like the nice delivery people have dropped it. It was very well packaged which took most of the impact, but the metal pc tower has been slightly dented.

The main thing was the heatsink is a very heavy lump of copper with a fan inside it:



The momentum of it when it has hit the ground has bent the main copper pipe bits and the fan was fouling on the cooling fins. Also it had pulled the processor out of the socket, the clip holding it in is very flimsy and didn't work to well. Took it to bits and bent the heat sink back into shape, couldn't do this without bending some of the cooling fins, but oh well. Re-inserted the processor and cleaned/re-applied some thermal paste, put the heatsink back on and fired it up. Had to go into bios as it said processor had been changed, but all ok and up and running.

Hard drives are in a Raid configuration and it boots up really quick despite having Vista ulitimate installed. Loads of options for overclocking on the bios, but I haven't touched that. Can't get my Netgear WG311T to work with it, but apparently thats a common problem with this card and 64bit Vista. The card wont even appear in the device manager as being plugged in??

Loaded Battlefield Play4Free onto it last night and straight away it chooses highest detail level and runs smooth, so I'm happy with it. Resolution it picks is not that high, but as I'm using it on an LCD TV it doesn't matter. Need to try some other games to see how it copes, but loads better than my old system.

CREWJ

Glad to hear it

LEUVEN

They shipped it with the Heatsink installed?