please help me choose...

Discussion in 'New Build / Upgrade Advice' started by rob_hellfire, Sep 29, 2005.

  1. rob_hellfire

    rob_hellfire Geek Trainee

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    I haven't bought anything for my computer except a usb 2.0 pci card for over a year, its a gigabyte motherboard, amd athlon 1.2ghz processor and 256mb :eek: of ram. Really not very fast and want to rebuild for mmorpg's and age of mythology which runs kinda slow

    I am way out of place with the abreviations that websites use for new technologies and therefore look gormlessly at them with not a clue what 'm looking for.

    Ideadly i want an AMD 64 system with 1gb ram, sata drive nad a decent nvidia chipset.

    With duel PCIe slots do you need 2 cid. cards or will 1 work???, also worried about compatability issues mentioned between cpu and ram, read somewhere.

    Any simple list of mb, cpu, ram and vid. card(s) that make my choice easier would be much appreciated.

    Oh got about £250 to spend budget tho can go over if necessary

    Thanx

    oh, best mention i live in uk if that makes difference to prices as threads read had us dollars :)
     
  2. sabashuali

    sabashuali Ani Ma'amin

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  3. Matt555

    Matt555 iMod

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    EDIT: Forget everything I said, I priced up parts on newegg and you live in the UK, plus everything was way too expensive.
    For a decent System you'll need a lot more than £250, I would say double that MINIMUM!
     
  4. rob_hellfire

    rob_hellfire Geek Trainee

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    i'm not looking to make a whole new computer, just really want to get it started till i get a job as student loan won't cover much. I want the basic parts together so i can continue afterwards in least necessary areas.

    Looking at something like:

    Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS) £75 +vat

    AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-130-AM) £75 +vat

    Crucial Ballistix PC-4000 BL6464Z503 512MB DDR (MY-016-CR) £58 +vat
    Then i can update later (does it need to been all same ram sticks???)

    Then vid. card

    XFX GeForce PCX6600 256MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT43PUDH7) (GX-022-XF) £75 +vat


    Thats £330 :), but you get what i mean, plz tell me if i can use an ide hdd till upgrade, or old ram or something, cant be arsed waiting till after xmas to get a new pc as mines got a really loud ps fan now and it's damned annoying when watching dvd's :mad:
     
  5. Matt555

    Matt555 iMod

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    That'll start you, you can think about getting Dual Channel RAM, Gives a slight performance increase.
    As for your PSU i had the same problem, mine was dieing and getting louder by the day, i got this Tagan TG480-U01 unit for £55 (inc vat) and its just amazing, cant hear a thing!
     
  6. Exfoliate

    Exfoliate Geek Trainee

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    If you ask me you have very good handle on the abbreviations and lingo of today:god:
    Don't bother with SLI for now, I realize the upgrade potential but the price doesn't justify it if you don't plan to add another card. And yes you can use a single card at a time no problem.
    ASUS does naturally make some of the best motherboards but don't shy away from Gigabyte, ABIT, or DFI as they have some very nice products out currently. The 3000 Venice is a great choice, if you're up to it you can overclock it about 1Ghz with some nice ram, (like what you picked out). However I'd get 1GB in the future no matter what as it just feels so much more fluid in everything you do. To cut the cost just ratchet it down to some OCz performance series, it's great ram, gives you some overclocking potential and doesn't cost a lot.
    Any IDE hard drive should work fine with your motherboard so in that respect you should be alright. And you can pop in the ram you have now if you like but I'd just get the whole hog and build it all at once if I were you so you're not limping along with missing components here and there.
    For gfx I'd say go with either the X800GT or better yet X800GTO 256MB. They both can outdo their nVidia competitors in the respective devisions. The 6600 is a nice choice if you're budgets tight but if you find a 6600GT or one of the above mentioned cards for near the same price don't hesitate as the price is worth it.
    Hope this helps:)
     
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  7. rob_hellfire

    rob_hellfire Geek Trainee

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    Thanx for that very useful, will definitely consider the idea on gfx card. Will have to build over time as otherwise the impact cost will wipe me out :(, oh well it might work okay

    Again thanx, anyone esle with as useful info. very welcome will be looking into getting mobo, cpu, psu and case very soon, then onwards and upwards, WoW here i come :)
     
  8. aji1217

    aji1217 Geek Trainee

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    what is your current psu? just out of curiosity. and do you play around with overclocking? if not then buying gear with overclocking capacity woulndt be an issue i believe. not to play down what Exfoliate said! oh and are you sure that mb can handle that ram? looking at crucials website they suggest pc3200 at highest for that mb.. just something you might want to consider. i havnt looked into it too much so i may be wrong..hope this helps
     
  9. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    Another post about the power supply. The parts you've pieced together are fine, but you're going to want to make sure that the power supply you have is capable of handling the power requirements of your new system. Unless you have 22-25A on the 12V rail on the power supply, you're looking for trouble. I suspect that your current unit probably does not have the grunt to power your new system.

    Hiper and Tagan are probably your best bets --in the UK-- for a reasonably priced power supply of at least 480W (or really darn close) and 25A or better on the 12V rail. The 12V rail I'm harping on is where the CPU and video card will be drawing their juice from. You don't want to skimp on that.
     
  10. rob_hellfire

    rob_hellfire Geek Trainee

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    Hadn't known, or thought about the pc3200 etc rating on the ram, currently on first gen. ddr so can't say i know much about the clocking speeds or whatever.

    Also i know my psu can't handle a new system, it's only 300-350w i think 350 but not entirely sure, not looked in a while, probably get 450 or 500 if i can get a bargain :)

    Should i run through parts list as i organise to get poewr consumption MAX on each voltage supply ie 3.3 5 12??

    Sounds labourious, or should i just get 500 and hope :)

    Probably only cpu, vid and sound that pull much ???

    Anyways i'll look into the ram speed thing and reconsider if necessary, to be quite honest i really have only lightly overclocked my pc and that was just cpu speed, got upto 1.5 out of my 1.2 amd athlon but heat became an issue with age so knocked that off a few months ago ( kept cutting after bios setting temp. exceeded. Silly litttle coolermaster fan must be turning into a geriatric :)
     
  11. Matt555

    Matt555 iMod

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    I dont fully understand about the
    thing but lookm at amps on each rail as well as the overall wattage (wattage doesnt mean an awful lot when considering a power supply
    See this thread for advice about a decent PSU
     
  12. rob_hellfire

    rob_hellfire Geek Trainee

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    Matt555, if you read this you might as well know :-

    P (power in KWatts)= V(voltage) x I (current amps).

    Through this you can work off either amps or watts, it's just that i'd always got info. in watts in the past, however if manufacturers info is in amps then so be it :)

    Just thought that might be useful in the future, or maybe not :)

    anyways yeah gotta check out power consumption and does anybody know if you can get overclocked consumption on cpu, ram gfx card etc???

    Otherwise i'll just be leaving about %20-30 ontop of max uually needed.
     
  13. Matt555

    Matt555 iMod

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    yeah check out a power calculator for a rouch guide but also consider this, what a PSU says it is i.. 50W may only be 500W at say 40*C when it actually runs at a higher temperature, like in the thread Big B made about PSU's quality trusted companies make PSU's that can put out more power at a higher temperature than standard generic ones.
    http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
    thats a power supply wattage calculator
     

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