Blairc

Hi there,

I'm looking for a bit of feedback on a gaming desktop that I'm planning on building myself.
Any opinions,improvements,hardware clashes or advise would be greatly appreciated.

Intel Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9x Multiplier, Retail
£138.64
Asus P5Q-VM, iG45, S 775, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR2 1066(OC)/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, Micro ATX, VGA
£86.00
750 GB Samsung HD753LJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ
£58.74
512MB HiS HD 4850, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 1986MHz GDDR3, GPU 625MHz, 800 Cores, 2xDL DVI-I/HDTV, 2 Slot
£123.25
(2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18
£38.35
MSI PC60G-F 108M Wireless PCI Adapter with eXtended RangeTM and Super G, Atheros,2.4GHz, 802.11g/b
£11.62
THREE-HUNDRED EU - Antec Three Hundred Black Midi Tower Case w/o PSU
£42.17
CMPSU-550VXUK - 550w Corsair VX Series PSU, ATX, PS/2, 5 year Warranty - see specs
£64.26
LG GH22NS30 AUAA50B - LG GH22NS30 22x DVD±R, 16xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA, Black, OEM
£15.26

A couple of points,
1. I'm a complete newbie at building PC's
2. It will be used for 50% gaming, 40% surfing and 10% home office type stuff
3. Trying to stick to a budget of under £600 (not including OS & monitor)

Cheers,

Chris.

john_s

iTrader: (1)

I'd be tempted to use one of the larger P5Q motherboards to give yourself options for expansion - it looks like that only has one slot, so the wireless PCI card will take it up.

If you're going to put a 64 bit OS on there, you might consider upping the RAM to 8GB as it doesn't cost that much right now.

druddle

I recently bought an Asus P5Q-E with a core 2 quad q6600 and 8gb of GeILPC2-6500C5 800mhz RAM and its awesome. Used Seagate Barracuda 500Gb SATAII disks and an Antec Sonata III case with the 500w earthwatts PSU (all from Ebuyer except the memory from Overclockers).

Dave

Blairc

Cheers John & mark will look into that.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

personally I would get a bundle from overclockers.co.uk
(specifically the quad core Q6600), if that doesnt take your pick then maybe get a motherboard that has wireless built in

ChefDude

I'd get at least a 600W tagan PSU - especially for the new gfx cards.

I had a duff samsung drive and won't buy another - Barracuda 1TB is the business. Not the 1.5TB, as they are rubbish until there is a firmware update.

Get a decent cooler. I had no problem fitting a Zalman 9700 cooler and it comes with CPU thermal paste - just paint a thin layer all over the area where the cooler will connect. Others will recommend other coolers.

If this is your first build, take things real slow.

Know exactly what you are going to do with each component before touching anything! down to each screw.

Earth yourself at every opportunity. touch sinks, radiators as you walk past. No Crocs When you have put in the PSU - plugged in it, but with the PSU switched off, it will be earthed, so you can touch that or the tower case.

when you put sata leads into the mobo, label each end with the port number - when you look at the back of your drives you will know which port it's in then.

distrubute your drives over the 12V rails. with a Tagan PSU, the graphics card will have a separate PCIe power cable anyway - but balanced power load is essential.

and, as you're only getting 4gb, look in your mobo manual as to which RAM slots to put the ram into. mine goes in slot 1 and 3 if i only have 2 sticks - not 1 and 2 as you might think.

P1Fanatic

Im not being funny as I know you should really earth yourself when dealing with electrical components but tbh I very rarely do other than touch a radiator or psu case thats plugged in and Ive built a fair few pc's over the years. So whilst its recommended I dont think its quite as bad as you make out. Poor guy will be too worried to go anywhere near his components

Simon

Blairc

It's ok Simon i have already prepared a static free environment where I will be completely naked, continuously touching a radiator and only move very very slowly!

Thanks for the input guys, it's been great so far.

ChefDude

sorry, just trying to help

you're spending £600 and it's not lego.

Blairc

Chefdude, I know what you mean and we're just having a laugh. Thanks for the help it is appreciated.

P1Fanatic

Remember to tape your pecker down as dont want that dangling onto your pc parts

Simon

c-o-l-e

If you get Samsung F1's make sure they have a manufacturing date stamp of 2008.07 onwards, the reason is that the firmware has been updated to 1AA01113, the previous version 1AA01112 has a massive number of problems including: reporting zero space, write errors and random disconnect errors.

I've had a total of 32 Samgung 1TB HD103UJ's, 1 went back with a write error, 19 are going back due to the poor firmware.

CCL Computers have the newer firmware version drives, Dabs are still knocking out the old ones.

staffs Mike

Just a thought but you don't actually get any particular improvement over about 2.4Ghz (core 2 or AMD X2) in games as the graphics card becomes the most important thing.

I'd get the E5200 pentium dual core. It's still 45nm but it's £60 (often less on scan) clocked at 2.5GHz and overclocks with no issues up to 3.0GHz and beyond anyway.

The only disadvantage is cache but that doesn't affect high res gaming at all really. Saves you almost £80 so I'd do that and get a better graphics card if you are playing at over 1680 x 1050. At that res or lower stick with what you have and save the £80.

I'd also not get the power supply, as much as I like corsair the 550W VX is not based on a seasonic like most of their others. I'd actually get the Enermax Modu82+ 425W. More than enough power, £10 cheaper and it's modular which makes cabling that Antec 300 much easier. The Antec 300 I would change for a Coolermaster CM690 which are around £50 but far superior.

Biostar are making some nice full size P45 boards for around the same price. Doesn't seem much point going for the uATX with integrated graphics.

swiss scooby

You should get at least one DP (Display Port) connector with your graphic card. DVI-I will pretty much go EOL during the next year and Display Port will take over. Yes, there are adapters from DP to DVI.
But to tell you the truth, I would get a premade computer from a known vendor. Since I work for HP, I can tell you that we certify our components and test them for a long time (desktops = 230'000 and notebooks = 95'000 hours) before the units are actually released for the consumer mass market or commercial customers. Of course, it's up to you and if you feel comfortable with building one yourself, go ahead.

messi

Hi..i've built my computers from cherry picked parts for a while now and put some budget puters together for people to so would like to offer any info i can to you...i buy most of mt gear from Overclockers UK there as good as any to buy from and they deliver quick sharp to..

THE RIG

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q6850 @ 3.00GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz

Memory: OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Gold

Hard Drive: 2 X 150 Gig Wd Raptors 10000 Spin

Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5

Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 245T(Digital) 24in LCD 1,920 x 1,200 / (1080p) 'Full HD'

Sound Card: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)

Speakers/Headphones: Logitech Z-2300 THX / Sennheiser
PC350 Pro-Gaming Headset

Keyboard: Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard

Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 Optical Mouse

Mouse Surface: Func Industries MBA or Razer Destructor Gaming Surface

Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)

Motherboard: Asus Maximus Extreme Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

Computer Case: Coolermaster Stacker 830 Evolution - Nvidia Special Edition

staffs Mike

scan are cheaper than OcUK and have far better customers service and business ethics imo.

Heaven forbid you need to send something back to OcUK..

I hope that wasn't your £600 suggestion as well lol Bit overkill for 1920 x 1200 as well

messi

£600 would of got the cpu that would of been your lot..no i was just showing off..this rig runs games absolute flat sticks max but next year it will be out of date thats the trouble with pc's they move on way to fast..

I agree with you bout OcUK i've sent stuff back in the past it's stressful...apart from that though there spot on...used to use scan but found Ocuk more handy site to use..some things are cheaper but it's tit for tat..

ChefDude

agreed, OcUK are not nice to send back to. Scan are far better and cheaper, and actually pick up RMAs

And messi, your machine is already out of date i7 anyone?

messi

yeah thanks for pointing that out but it does the trick for now at least...