Dream Weaver

I built my current PC a few years back, and so far it has been great, but in need of more power now.

Assuming I can use my existing mouse, keyboard, CD Rom, CDRW, printer, scanner etc i am thinking about buying some new kit.

So, is it worth it these days, and if so what do I need?

Here is a list from CCL (www.cclcomputers.co.uk) that I knocked up as an example:

120Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 7200rpm - £84.32

128Mb XFX Geforce 4 TI4200 8X VIVO - £109.18

2.4Ghz Intel P4 Retail (Skt 478 533Mhz FSB) - £134.75

350W Enermax Multispeed PSU (EG365P) - £34.65

17" Iiyama Vision Master 1403 (LS704U) - £84.00

Asus P4B533 (Skt478) - £60.58

Subtotal £507.48
VAT £88.81
Total £596.29

Just looks quite a lot, when you can buy a full system for about £800 now at a similar spec.

So, any good, or do I need more? How do I know which mobo to get, and can I use my existing 320mb RAM? I think its SDRAm 100mhz

super_si

kompletts the cheapest for CPU's.

The rams not even worth bining. If you used it , it would be a massive bottleneck to the system.

Si

simon_prickett

Try Novatech who do a very good value build to order, or you can get the components. We run our company on these machines no problems, and we're heavy users of PCs.

Simon.

David_Wallis

get a 550w psu. ??

ChrisB

The P4B533 is a DDR board Si, so you'll need PC2100 DDR RAM (not SDRAM).

It is the last generation chipset though (845D). The P4PE should only be another £15/£20, uses the faster PC2700 DDR memory and will have a longer life span as it will handle the 3.06Ghz P4 with HyperThreading.

super_si

i know

Just explain what'd happen if he wanted to run that 100mhz in conjuction with a P4.

DRR is still a bottle neck with P4 systems. Only rd can supply on a non-overclocked machine

Si

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

I have a 350w unused PSU (P4 compatible) that you can have for £10+delivery!

I replaced the PSU with a 360w twin fan item.

ChrisB

Super, there's more than one Si in this thread you muppet

Foot_Tapper

IMHO, you can obviously get fast systems quite cheap; but in my
experiences; with those bundles you never seem to get all the
bits of hardware you want in one package. Go for it.
Personally i'd ditch the monitor and get a 15 or 17 TFT.
Even with a 15 TFT the actual visible screen will be quite close to
the 17 Ilyama.
Get a scsi pci card and scsi Hard drive, (and a smaller IDE if u want) and scimp a bit on the processor.
You'll see the difference a scsi drive will make running your OS.

[Edited by Foot_Tapper - 2/13/2003 5:50:38 PM]

P1 Enthusiast

Disagree Foot Tapper, he is clearly not running massive data chunks about between his HDisks. SCSI is not that much greater than the current WD SE examples he can easily afford. He is looking cheap mate! Not Tekram 4 controller card etc expensive :P

Gonna quickly price this system from overclockers.co.uk for you (komplett and them are often cheapest)

AMD XP CPU 2100+ = 76 quid
WD Special Edition 8 meg cache 120 gig HD = 122 quid
Epox +8RDA Nforce 2 MB = 94 quid
Radeon 9500 pro = 138 quid
PSU = similar price
Crucial 2100 DDR 512megs = 78 quid

Now all that lot is very nice system for not alot, much better than a pre build system, will certainly perform much better.

Where i you i would wait another 4 weeks, due to the XP Athlon CPU's coming down all the time currently due to new Barton core out. Also the Western Digital HD is due a big price cut due to the new 10,000 rpm one just out. So even more savings in say 4 weeks, you might even afford a 9700 pro Radeon by then if the 9900 is out and knocks its price down, hang on a few more weeks

ripmaze

I've just bought a couple of new hard disks and while looking into which ones to get I looked on the 'net about whether it was worth getting ones with the larger cache. Pretty much everywhere said there was nothing or, at most, very little performance increase from getting the larger cache.

If the mobo can handle it, go IDE RAID for the best price/performance IMO.

P1 Enthusiast

Not true Ripmaze, most benchmarks showed the 8 meg cache offering upto 1/3 more transfer rate.

Also, bear in mind with a budget machine that he probably has no intention of running Raid, for one it would need two identical HDs, which he doesnt want nor does he need. Raid is not the be all and end all for the average home PC a good HD with two partitions = just as good.

Dream Weaver

Went for it on Saturday guys and bought the following:

ASUS P4PE MOBO with SATA, RAID etc etc
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Videologic ZXR500 5.1 Speakers (very nice)
19" Iiyama VM1451 Monitor
80GB Western Digital HDD
128mb XFX GF4 Ti4200 graphics
2.4ghz P4 Retail
512mb PC2700 DDR RAM
Wind XP HE

Total cost was £933 from CCL. I know there was cheaper systems out there, but i wanted those specific parts, and generally enjoy the build as well.

Just setting it all up at the mo.

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Why d'ya only buy 1 HDD when you've got a RAID mobo?

Get another, whack it in & secure your data (mirror)

Dream Weaver

Puff, I had another HDD here which was gonna be added as backup, but it is now stuffed.

To be honest, i am thinking of getting a Maxtor 5000LE external HDD - bit dear at £140, but has 80gb, and you can backup your whole PC by just pressing a button.

Really paranoid about power spikes now, and the only thing that survived last weeks was my USB modem, so thinking USB external HDD is great for backups

PS - also no idea how the RAID thing works