Help with New Build Specs

Hey guys! I am looking to building a new gaming PC using the following components and was hoping you guys could help me answer a few questions! I am a little rusty as far as building comps are concerned, so I will admit I've probably got a few things wrong!

1) Are all the components compatible? I just wanted to double check as I think I've got it about right (CPU and memory I'm not entirely sure about)

2) Will that PSU have enough power, and do Sata drives still tend to come with IDE to SATA power converter cables?

3)Though price obviously is an object, I'm not going to put down a budget top, and if you think you can find me an item that is significantly better for only a little more, I will definately do so. By the same measure, if I'm paying alot of money for something only marginally better than a much cheaper item, please feel free to tell me!

4) I would prefer to get all the items from a single site, which is why I've used ebuyer.com for all them. It saves on hassle and waiting on deliveries.

5) Will the CPU fan cool enough?

6) Is this motherboard one of the NVidia IGP boards I hear mentioned? Only the Graphics card apparently operates best on those kind of boards.

7) As far as DVD drives go, if I want two, is it worth getting two of the same one? Or would you be able to get a SATA standard DVD drive?

So! here's the system spec with prices and links:

Processor:Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket 775 (3.0GHz) 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor Price: £114.27
Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-Q35M-S2 iQ35 Socket 775 onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard Price: £60.95
Graphics Card:Sapphire HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI Dual slot cooler HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card Price: £119.95
Memory:OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz/PC2-6400 Memory GOLD DUAL CHANNEL Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-18) Price: £49.99
CPU Cooling Fan:ZALMAN CNPS 9500 AT Socket 775 CPU Cooler Price: £24.49
PSU:Corsair 650W TX Series PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail Price: 60.25
Hard Drive:Seagate ST3250310AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 8MB Cache - OEM Price: £30.58
DVD-RW:Optiarc AD-7200S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA Bare Black Drive - OEM Price: £15.70

So? What you guys think? Thanks for any help you might be able to give me!

 

I would also be interested in the answer to this thread as have a similar budget (£600) and want a new system for x-mass. Not technical in the slightest so a small independent shop will do the build for me.

Only thought from my research so far is, would a HD 4850 and crossfire motherboard (?msi p35) be a little better, and more future proof, than the 9800GT, for not that much more cash.

 

Hello,

- The answer to your first question is YES, they are all compatible.

- Your PSU power is enough to power the system.

- Ebuyer is a good website and it's also a good idea to stick to one site but i would also recommend you look at OCUK and Scan they are also cheap good quality service sites.

- The CPU fan cooler is very good and will cool very well

- As for you mobo well i don't think it's very good (my opinion), if your going to stick to one card and not go Sli then i recommend you get a P35 mobo such as this: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L

BTW i honestly think that you should ditch the 9800GT and get a ATi 4870 instead or if that's to pricey then get a 4850.

 

Okies, assume I'm almost completely ignorant here (cos I pretty much am )

Are two cards a possible solution without jumping massively up? If I'm running a two monitor system I can understand it would make a massive difference, but what if I'm running a single monitor system? Does that make a diff? Does SLi make that much of a different? And I presume it wouldn't take much to simply buy the same card a little later on down the road to upgrade my system to using SLi? Or do most MBs not use it?

Would it be worth increasing the amount I'm spending on my Mobo a little? Or have you already recommended that with the new board? The only thing will be that I am almost at the uppermost limit of my budget now, with a few spare pounds to increase one, maybe two items before we hit the uppermost boundary.


Ever so sorry for all the questions! A couple of years of catching up being done all at once :S Thanks again for your help so far!

Rich A


P.S. I've editted the original post with your reccomended upgrades; what you think? I couldn't find the equivalent MoBo, so I had to use the one there as an alternative. That one alright?

 

Is it worth the extra £5 or so to get the crossfire MSI P35 or similar so that later on a second card can be added, like another 4850, to improve things qiute a lot, would the 650watts handle this upgrade later.

Or is the cheap crossfire card really not as good a performer with one card when compared to the P35.

 

Got any examples of crossfire cards for that cheap?! I can't seem to find any... Maybe I'm just no looking right

 

This is what I found;

Scan Computers UK: MSI P35 NEO2-FR, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

I don't know enough about the other properties of the mobo to say if its a good one but its £65....I think its almost identical to the one listed by cyberpower on thier list of crossfire mobo's when you get and modify a system from them.

 

What case are you thinking of I am thinking NZXT hush....fairly good review about £60 which from my megre experiance is average priced.

 

I already have a couple of cases to choose from, my current system and my bro's old system cases are available to me, i'm probs guna use one of them!

 

I've been having a look around I've spotted this:

Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX Motherboard Price: £55.95

What you guys reckon? It's also got SLi so forward compatibility isn't an issue, so why is it alot cheaper? Am I missing something pretty major with it? It's also not a mATX format board, which i've never been fond of. Any ideas?

 

Going SLi or Crossfire can be expensive and power hungry, you do get a difference in performance but how much i couldn't really say because it depends on the card.

You can later put another card if you wish, but what i can see your on a tight budget so i recommend you go for ATi 4850 which is cheap but it's powerful as well, then later you can add another. But you need to get a crossfire compatible mobo for it.

Definitely you need to increase the budget for mobo, so i then recommend you go for a P45 chipset mobo like this: Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35

No problem my friend we are all here to learn and hopefully you can teach me something later.

I have decided to draw up a list on what i think you should get and i'm going to give you two choices is that ok???

 

4850 is the cheapest good card atm

 

That's an ok mobo you could consider it.

 

The reason why this Asus mobo is cheaper because it's a 650i chipset which is old, i recommend you do not get this, too old and feeble lol.

 

The PSU will power an extra card, i have a 580 watt PSU powering a lot of stuff, check my PC.

 

There seems to be a lot of questions that need answering so i'm going to try and answer them all by posting what i recommend you should get.

Firstly we will go for a P45 chipset.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.66GHz I recommend you get this instead of the E8400 because the E8200 is cheaper and then just overclock it to 3GHz or higher, thus saving your self some money.

Mobo: Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 a lot more expensive but it's a very good mobo for what you get and it's more future proof.

Memory: G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-6400C5 again more expensive then the one you chose but this has better latency.

Graphics Card: Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 very good card for the price.

Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache this has 16mb cache.

Optical Drive: LG GH20NS

CPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler this is a very good cooler and will do just fine on your system and it's cheap. btw look at the reviews people have put on the website, that says a lot about it.

Sound Card: On board sound will be fine

PSU: OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply this is a very good power supply it has a blue light :chk:

BTW i have a question for you what operating system you going to use??? or shall i add one to the rig???

Anyways the whole rig comes around to a total of £526.25 which is more then the rig that you chose.

 

OK! I've done my order, so I'd like to know what you think/If I've made some horrendus mistake

Motherboard: MSI P45 Neo-F Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket 775 (3.0GHz) 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
RAM: Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 HyperX Memory Non-ECC CL5
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI Dual slot cooler HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Hard Drive: Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper TX 2 Processor Cooler
PSU: Corsair 650W TX Series PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail
Optical Drive: Optiarc AD-7200S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA Bare Black Drive - OEM
Cabling: Belkin Serial ATA 2.0 7-pin Cable (Red) 0.6m x3 [For the OEM Drives]

So what you think?

As far as Operating Systems go, I have the Student Version of XP atm, so I'll keep using that until Vista becomes much more viable (Essentially more DX10 Games!)

Thanks for all your help guys! And best of luck to you Edgar!

Rich A

 

Thats a good rig how much was the total????

 

499.04 quid in all I'm more than happy, was the limit I set myself (as you probably guessed )

I went with the More powerful Processor as I've never OCed before, and I'm not entirely confident at it, and don't wanna break that much kit Plus I've never had any trouble running games (My current system runs Spore OKish and it's running on a Radeon 9800Pro )

Only thing I've gotta consider now is whether or not I need any cooling for the system, I always build and then get the amount of fans/coolig i think neccesary. My current build is =very= noisy, so I'm hesitant to just get loadsa fans

Thanks again for all your help!

Rich A

 

The 9800 pro was the first proper graphics card i ever bought and was the best card ATi ever made lol the memories, it ran CSS very well and hl2, those were the days.

I honestly don't think you need a lot of cooling, just a case with about two decent fans, one intake other exhaust should do the trick.