LostBoy5

Processor (CPU)
INTEL® Core 2 Duo E6700 (2 X 2.66GHz) 1066MHz FSB/4MB L2 Cache

Memory (RAM)
2048 MB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard
ASUS® STRIKER EXTREME: The ultimate gaming motherboard

Operating System
WINDOWS® VISTA Ultimate (inc. Genuine CD & License) (£119)

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)

Graphics Card
768MB GEFORCE 8800GTX PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer 7.1: £47

Power Supply & Case Cooling
850W Quiet Five Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£149)

Processor Cooling
ZALMAN CNPS9700 NT TRITIUM SUPER AERO COOLER (£44)

The above will cost around 1500 quid but want to buy a decent setup tp play lord of the rings online.

Have tried all sites on the google search and it seems the pcspecialist boys are the cheapest and also do 9 months interest free.

Anyone care to comment on the above rig...please be positive or negative.

Or can anyone find a better tower for the price with finance option?

Thanks for the advice on my last thread.

staffs Mike

i would get the thermalright 120 /extreme or the tuniq tower rather than that zalman cooler.

Are you running just one hard drive? you may want to get a couple of 160gb drives for you're programs and run them in raid 0 and then use the 500gb for storage.

Other than that its an awesome spec.

What monitor are you planning to run on?

R5_GTT_Steve

iTrader: (7)

Tis a good setup BUT i would save yourself some moneys and swap the E6700 for the E6600 you would not notice a difference in speed and the E6600 is a better cpu anyway.Personally i would wait for the Radeon R600 but thats just me also the 8800 Ultra is due out on the market soon will be...
A. A faster card
B. make the 8800 GTX cheaper.

staffs Mike

the e6600 is better bang for bucks but it's not a better cpu.

LostBoy5

unfortunately pcspecialist boys dont give the option to change to those particular coolers

will running 2 harddrives in raid configuration make any difference to gaming performance?

running on my old sony TFT LCD 19inch monitor...this be good enough for decent resolution

i could wait for the ultra but then once that comes out something else looms on the horizon...bit like buying mobiles or TVs.....technology becomes obsolete very quickly nowadays

cheers

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Just ordered a PC from pcspecialist, although not as good as yours. Read some good stuff about them, ordering process was pretty painless.

Allan

andys

vista may not be the best choice for gaming

Iain Young

Depends what games you want to play. Everything I've tried so far works just fine...

lightning101

All my games work fine and i'm pretty sure i've one of the biggest collections around. Even my dos games work with an emulator

staffs Mike

raid would give you better loading times etc..but not a noticable amount of gain in game..

If you're not overclocking that cooler will be fine.

A few considerations are the motherboard...It's total overkill if you don't need SLi (rediculous money for 2 x GTX's) and if you're not overclocking.

A cheaper board like the asus p5b or abit ab9 would be as good if not better.

on a 19" monitor there will be no noticiable difference between a GTX or GTS (320mb or 640mb) you will only see a real difference on a 24" screen or higher where only the 640mb GTS and GTX will be good enough to play smoothly.

andys

Yes but the 8800 driver support has not been good for vista

Iain Young

The latest 8800 drivers seem ok (at least, the 64bit drivers seem to be working ok).

LostBoy5

here are other builds that are actually cheaper from the same site

Build 1: £1266

Processor (CPU)
INTEL® Core 2 Duo E6600 (2 X 2.40GHz) 1066MHz FSB/4MB L2 Cache

Memory (RAM)
2048 MB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard
ECS® P965T-A: DUAL DDR2, S-ATA, x16 VGA, 3 PCI/3 PCI-EX

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)

Graphics Card
768MB GEFORCE 8800GTX PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT


Build 2: £1276

Processor (CPU)
INTEL® Core 2 Duo E6600 (2 X 2.40GHz) 1066MHz FSB/4MB L2 Cache

Memory (RAM)
2048 MB CORSAIR DDR2 800MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard
ASUS® P5W DH DELUXE: DDR2, x16 slot, 975X chipset, 3 PCI

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
160GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7200rpm)

2nd Hard Disk
160GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7200rpm)

RAID (HDD 1 & 2)
RAID 0 (STRIPE)

Graphics Card
768MB GEFORCE 8800GTX PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

The only difference of these builds being the memory (XMS2 and DDR2), motherboard and the harddrive configuration.

Which is better?

Cheers

lightning101

the first one, as the XMS memory is a tested overclocker along with the E6600, so will be a simple overlclock on the standard fan and heatsink to 3.1GHZ. Have a look at RAID reviews and look at the actual bang-per-buck increase and speed to see that it's people with bragging rights and too much money that buy these as the increase in speed is minimal to say the least over a 16mb cache modern 500gb drive.


I'd have the first one, but not at that price

lightning101

StorageReview.com - Tiki : SingleDriveVsRaid0

EddScott

But if you run RAID 0, if you lose one HD you lose the lot - is that right?

I've got mine set up for RAID 1 but thats purely so I don't lose my **** collection

Is this a DIY job? Who are PCspecialists? I use overclockers for everything. I went cheap and bought a 6300 but thats been happy at 3ghz+ (Freezer Pro) since day one and my GTS at 600/2000. Gets a 3dmark 06 of 10.5K

LostBoy5

PCSPECIALIST.CO.UK - Custom PCs, Custom Computers, Custom PC, Custom Built Computers, Gaming PC

probably a bunch of hackers who build pcs in their spare time and charge for it

i could build my own i guess and source cheaper bits but finance is the key here and i hated meccano when i was younger

i have to add the price is for the whole tower including other components such as

Operating System
WINDOWS® VISTA Ultimate (inc. Genuine CD & License) (£119)

Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer 7.1: £47

Power Supply & Case Cooling
850W Quiet Five Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£149)

Processor Cooling
ZALMAN CNPS9700 NT TRITIUM SUPER AERO COOLER (£44)

I just put in the most important components to see if they are a decent spec.

In my day the upgrade was from a spectrum 48k with rubber keypad to a commdore 64k.....and the spectrum still had better games....grrrrrr

cheers

staffs Mike

yeah if you lose one drive you lose everything on both in raid 0.

My pc is..

E6600 (overclocked to 3.4Ghz)
2GB pc6400 ram (geil not corsair)
EVGA 680i (a lot like the asus striker)
8800 GTS (640mb)

I run it on a 20" screen and on that it runs every game on max settings.

It's just about perfect for games now and the next generation of games in my opinion. If you are sticking with a 19" screen you certainly don't need any more than that.

LostBoy5

so perhaps the 8800gtx 768mb is an overkill and i should just go for the 8800GTS 640mb if it isnt going to make a noticeable difference

is the ECS® P965T-A: DUAL DDR2, S-ATA, x16 VGA, 3 PCI/3 PCI-EX a better motherboard than the ASUS® P5W DH DELUXE: DDR2, x16 slot, 975X chipset, 3 PCI?

cheers

Daz34

Or the 320mb version with that size screen

R5_GTT_Steve

iTrader: (7)

Tis a better overclocker than the E6700 tho

staffs Mike

that depends on the specific chip (week code) you get.

The ecs board is based on the 965 (intel) chipset and is probably best for your system if it provides a substantial saving. It wont make much difference to a system that isn't being overclocked..cheapest is best along as its reliable.

LostBoy5

The Asus P5N-E nForce 650i SLI Chipset is 60 pound cheaper than both these:

AsuS P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI Chipset

EVGA NFORCE 680i SLI CHIPSET

Would the 680 chipset be better to get?

Cheers

staffs Mike

I think the 650i only has 8x pci-e so will slow your graphics card down. It's deffinatly only 8x when running SLi

Go for the 680i you can't really go wrong with that.