Hi there! I am new to the pc side of gaming so bear with me. I have decided to obtain a pc as it will satisfy my gaming needs more the the current crop of consoles (even though i have a xbox 360 on order - what a hypocrite!). I have been looking at all in one base units, and the one i have fallen in love with is off the alienware website and it is around the £1500 mark! Which to me is ludicrous. Anyway, i have decided to build one myself and hop you guys can help me. I want it mainly for gaming and as such was looking at the Athlon 64 3700+ as from what i have read so far, a single threading chip is the way to go! Is this the ideal chip for my budget? If so what components would you reccomend to build around this as i am totally confused (please insert sarcastic comments here!). I would like reccomendations on mobo, graphics card ram, case, basically the whole unit. I would like a graphics card with a dvi output as when i want to game i can input it to my plasma screen. Otherwise, have seen this base unit on ebay, is it good value for money or a scam edit admin: link does not work! Cheers guys! P.s can you reccomend any good off the shelf base units?
Okay the link doesn't work, also off-the-shelf base units for gaming aren't always the best as places skimp on things like the PSU and RAM For £750 I take it you need everything, cables...extra fans etc...What about an operating system? For 'off-the-shelf' systems www.overclockers.co.uk has quite a good system for about £760 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/full_systems.html It's got some branded RAM (although it's value and not performance) and a Seasonic PSU, although it may be good something a little beefier would be nice. For you own self build system here's a nice system for around £750 There's a Motherboard, CPU and RAM bundle on overclockers which looks good for the price... AMD Athlon 64 3500 Retail / Asus A8N-E / 1GB Corsair PC3200 XLPT Dual Channel Kit - Bundle http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Athlon_64_Bundles.html HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X800 GTO ICEQII TURBO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X800PCI_Series.html Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 NCQ 200GB ST3200826AS SATA 8MB Cache - OEM http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Seagate2.html LG GSA-4167BAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/DVD_RW_Drives.html Antec Performance TX1088AMG Metallic Grey Tower Case - 480w Truepower PSU (this isn't bad for a case and a decent 480W PSU...) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Antec_Cases.html This is without extra cooling, no monitor or other peripherals, no OS. That brings it to £735.78 You'll need cables, IDE for the DVD+/-RW drive, SATA for the SATA OEM HDD. There are many other options and if you want the monitor and OS included in that price then the specs of the system will drop quite a bit...
What do you guys reckon to this system (strongpoints/weakpoints etc), would like to build my own but nervous as to uploading os, drivers etc. http://http://www.pcoption.co.uk/pcbaseunits/index5d_7800amd.htm
Link doesn't work, you've got http://http:// at the beginning...honestly don't worry about updating drivers etc...it's really easy... Here are a few sites about building your own computer, they are step by step guides as to how to put it all together... http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/ http://www.buildyourowncomputer.net/learntobuild.html http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/ Hope they help, and we're always here if you need us...:good:
Have you installed any programs on your computer before? Can you use a screwdriver? Can you read and follow directions? If you're saying yes to those three questions, then, yeah, you can build your own box. I'd probably go with Matt555's suggestion. The motherboard should come with the cables you need to hook up your drives. As another option, you could see about dropping the CPU down to an A64 3200+ or 3000+ instead. Everything else looks good to go.
Yeah that is another good option, could then use the money for extra cooling or a bit more money towards a sightly better Graphics Card or something...
I'd do what Big B suggested on second thoughts, get a 3000+ or 3200+ and some good cooling, we are then here to help you if you want to overclock it to get better performance without buying a faster CPU... :good:
would i be better going for a 3500+ chip and having a bigger budget on the graphics card or going for a 3700+ and getting a slighlty cheaper graphics card?! BTW is this mobo any good for the above processors? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-GIGABYTE-K8N-SLI-nForce4-939-AMD64-Motherboard_W0QQitemZ6811856680QQcategoryZ99245QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
from what i have been told the extra L2 wont make that much difference, go with 3500+ and a better GPU. the main reason for buying the 3700+ is for overclocking. As for the MoBo I dont know that much about Gigabyte, but Ive heard great things from my friend who helped me build my first computer.
I have decided on most of my specs, and i was going to order the 3700+ athlon today, but i went on loads of sites and it was out of stock, so i will either wait until this one comes into stock or i might up my budget and go for the 4000+! Plus how do you guys rate the 19" samsung lcd monitors?!
I have decided on most of my specs, and i was going to order the 3700+ athlon today, but i went on loads of sites and it was out of stock, so i will either wait until this one comes into stock or i might up my budget and go for the 4000+! Plus how do you guys rate the 19" samsung lcd monitors?!
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000870025629/ That website should give you some re-assurance about Samsungs LCD Monitors, no-other company has done that so I'd say Samsung are pretty confident about their monitors being of the highest standard when it comes to dead pixels and damage, although I've had no experience with the monitors themselves, they sound like they should be quite good.
I have ordered all the components for the base unit, the specs are as follows; Antec P180 case Antec True power 2.0 430w psu AMD athlon 64 4400+ x2 cpu Gigabyte K8N Pro SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) Samsung SpinPoint P SP2004C 200GB SATA-II 8MB Cache NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value 7.1 PCI Sound Card Benq 17" TFT monitorLogitech wireless keyboard and mouse# Additional 120mm fan Fan controller So far it has come to around £1300! What do you reckon to the setup? Some compnents arrived today, rest will arrive tomorrow and will be setting upn on sunday!
Here is a piccy of the compnents that arrived today. I have installed the asake 120mm fan into the optional hiusing at the front of the case, and also installed the antec psu! Just a quick query, what tools am i going to need? Also the optical drive, hard disk drive, sound card and 7 in 1 floppy drive do not come with cables, have not opened the motherboard case yet but will all the cables i require be in there, if not what will i need and where do i order them from?
pen the motherboard box and see if they are in there, some motherboards come with lots of extra cables, some dont, you'll have to check, tools? Screwdriver, maybe some long nosed pliers (come in handy if you drop a screw or something) erm http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/pc_information/what_do_I_need/pc_toolkit/ There's a list someone put together of tools you'll need, some people may have other advice though. Hope the build goes well, keep us updated with what's happenin!
Just tried to install windows and it keeps going round in circles. I dont know if its the windows cd (which is not mine), or the hdd is faulty or improperly setup. Basically it keeps getting to the windows setup screen and this detects the hdd, bowever, we (i have a mate who has helped with installing) selected the hdd as the primary boot drive, cd/dvd as secondary and fdd as the third boot drive. However after it gets to the second black screen (after it is restarted), it says at the bottom nvidia boot agent, and then it tries to boot from the cd dvd. A couple of things concerning me are; The hdd is only connected with an SATA cable not IDE On the startup screen it says HDD S.M.A.R.T capability disabled Should the raid setup be set to mirrored or striped Should the jumper be inserted in the hdd The system specs are as follows CPU - AMD athlon 64 4400 x 2 MOBO - Gigabyte K8N Pro SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-038-GI) HDD - RAM - GeIL 1 GB DDR ram CD/DVD - NEC DVD 4550 any other specs needed? SO what can you guys suggest, as my mate seems to think it is a dud windows xp cd?!
