Advice on new comp .

I saved up a grand and am ready to buy a new PC ... i want it to play all the lastes games with no problem at all, i dont wanna be complaing a few months down the line that is out of date, so i want looking for some advice, here what i got so far...

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 1066FSB 4MB Cache 64 Bit Processor
2048MB DDR2 667MHz Dual Channel RAM
640GB (2 x 320GB) Serial ATA II Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
nVidia 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E Graphics
16x Dual Layer +R/-R/RW DVD burner
DVD Rom Drive
Intel P35 1333FSB Chipset ATX Motherboard Motherboard
7.1 8-Channel Capable Sound
1 x Gigabit LAN
+ Windows Vista

this will cost me £950

or i can have
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad-Core QX6600 Processor (2.4GHz,1066MHz,8MB cache)
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
320GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst™ cache
SINGLE 768MB nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card
16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives
+ Windows Vista

this will cost me £1,140


Any Advice on the 2, or even tell me a decent computer to buy

ps, these are ready made, will it be chaper/ can i get more 4 my money if i make it?

Thanks for your help.

Ok, before I get started putting one together for you online, are you going to reuse any equipment, or is it going to be a totally new system, including items besides the stuff in the "box"? I'm pretty sure I can get what you have, if not better, for less.

EDIT: If you feel you have enough confidence to build your own, do so. It's FAR less expensive even with shipping and tax. I don't know how technically inclined you are, but it's really not that tough to do.

Man...this sucks. I didn't know Newegg didn't ship internationally. Oh well. What I've created on there beats your #2 comp in performance, but it costs less than your #1 computer, and it includes everything you need and not just what you have listed there.

Right now, it's at £1,022.57 ($2,071.86) and that's with everything except a mouse (I'm attached to my old one like many gamers who don't want to give theirs up) and speakers.
Without a monitor and keyboard, it's £862.01 ($1746.88) before shipping.

I'd go #1

Why?

9xxx series will be along soon, no point spending money on a 8800gtx when it won't be able to run DX10.1 games.

Yes, exactly. The cards will be out in either Q1 or Q2 of '08. So just get some cheap 8800 or even just a 7950 till then. Heck, you can just wait on the whole purchase till then and save up more cash in the meantime.

I'm so excited, because then I'll make myself that uber computer I've always been wanting.

Its ganna be a totally new system, i already have a monitor, keybourd and mouse though.

Well, if i bought it all seperatly my mums friend says he'd put it together for me.


Do u have a link for this site, where i can make my own?


Well, i get enough money to upgrade it, so that wont be so bad.


Also, i get about 150 quid a week to put away all to myself, so theres NP if it goes over.

Newegg.com

Thats what must our friends across the pond use.

Ah cool, seeing thats american .. could anyone check this site www.ebuyer.com

prices ok on there? .. ive bought of there a few times .. only casual bits ..

Also, www.novatech.co.uk

Thanks for the help so far =]

Is Quadcore worth it now?

If you want, and if it's less expensive, I'd be willing to have the parts shipped to me and I'll assemble it, install everything for you (aside from the software you have at your house), then ship the assembled PC to you, all for free. You're probably thinking, OMG is this guy serious? He's just going to keep all the parts for himself then disappear from the face of the earth. And in response, I say God NO! That's stealing and it's ILLEGAL. I've built PCs for friends, go to their houses fix their computer problems, and my friend and I (before he got married) were working on starting up a computer business similar to Geek Squad which would go to peoples houses and fix stuff rather than having them bring it in. I pretty much live day-to-day in a geeky community where I have a really good friend that runs his own computer-repair/networking business, have computer enthusiast/gamer friends, etc. I'm willing to do this to save you some money. Scout's honor! PM me and we can discuss more.

Also, I'd recommend you wait on Vista until the kinks are worked out. It's hard, if not impossible to find some drivers that will work with it and it seems that even with everything streamlined and tweaked, it still runs slow on 2 gigs of RAM.

Riplox, Thanks .. but i cant even trust my friend with £1000, let alone a guy ive been speaking to over the interwebz =P

But i think im going to build one, heres what i got so far .. can anyone check it out for me? ..
EVGA 8800 GTS SuperClocked 640MB GDDR3 PCI-E Graphics Card - £259.99 inc VAT

Sapphire Pure Crossfire 3200 Socket AM2 8 channel Dolby Digital Audio ATX - £124.90 inc VAT

Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W PSU - ATX 12V V2.01 120mm Fan 20+4pin - £76.70 inc VAT

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer - Fatal1ty Professional Series - £87.45 inc VAT

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ (2.8GHz) Socket AM2 1MBL2 Cache (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor - £160.06 inc VAT

Kingston 1024MB Module Id 282436-b21 (X2) £140.22

XION II Black(Green LED) Steel Mid Tower Gaming Case - No PSU £36.12 inc VAT

Zalman CNPS7000B-CU Super Flower Socket 478, 754, 940, 462 & 939 CPU Cooler- £20.92 inc VAT

Plextor CDRW 52x32x52x 8MB Buffer Underrun - £68.11 inc VAT


Will it all "Fit" together? lol .. do i need anything else? .. also need some help on fans and maybe water cooling =P

oh and i have a band new harddrive .. 320 gig, cost me 80 quid, so theres no point in getting a new one =]

Again, thanks for the amazing help.

Water cooling is a waste unless you plan on some serious OC.

This is required - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=AC-000-AC

Why AMD? I'd have thought this was better http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CP-161-IN
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MB-000-EA

I'm no tech wizard though..could be wrong.

Malice's right about the processor. At those prices the Q6600 is easily superior to the AMD one.

wow wtf .. thats well cheap! thanks for the site =P

i agree .. thats cpu looks alot better =P

i dont really know anything about motherboards .., read the reviews, few said it was over heating, so they changed a few things, but there running @ 3gig+


i only thought of water cooling becuase it looked cool =P

i got money to waste, so i thought why not =D


Also, how about this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-039-BG

My brother uses that card, it's good for that price.

Yeah OC is ok, make sure you're looking at the right price though...the price in red is before VAT is added...

What kind or resolution is your monitor. The difference in game performance between the 8800GTS 320MB and 640MB is very insignificant unless it's on a very high resolution or multi-monitors.

Hmm, how do i find out? .. its pretty crappy, its more of a LCD Tv/freeview with build in monitor =p

im ganna upgrade anyway, but what kinda res will i be looking for?

Widescreen

1680x1050
1900x1200

Not for most people. While some games are beginning to take advantage of multiple CPUs, quad-core CPUs aren't really all that worthwhile for gamers unless you do extreme multitasking, lots of video editing, or work with other apps that can take advantage of 4-way SMP (mostly server and heavy-duty workstation apps).

If I were the OP I'd go with the E6850 (most places have it for the same price as the Q6600). It will run all current and near-future games faster than a Q6600. However, you could get a 1333MHz FSB mainboard with some DDR3 memory and put a nice overclock on a Q6600 (G0 stepping) that's supposed to be pretty darn stable with air cooling. The beauty of that setup is that you don't have to overclock the FSB (and therefore your RAM and northbridge) in order to get the nice overclock on the CPU.

What CD Drive do u recomend?

Also, what about Ram, im guessing DDR3 is best?

PS: links to site helps alot =D Thanks all.

Drive - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=10&subcat=185

DDR3 is expensive..£250+ for 2GB

Right ... Re-cap, here what i got so far =p

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CP-161-IN
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-039-BG
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MB-000-EA
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-082-OC
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CD-046-PL
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CA-049-AN
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CA-023-OC
-
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=AC-000-AC

Current price is £871

Fans? .. any old fans do? .. like 5.99 ones i suppose?

what else am i missing? =p

Well, I'm pretty sure that the P180 comes with some fans already installed. Unfortunately, the site you're buying from doesn't give much info, but if I'm not mistaken I thought the P180 came with at least 3 case fans pre-installed. With your configuration that should be fine.

SLI-certified memory is pointless. It's just another of nVidia's ridiculous marketing tactics (their marketing dept. = bunch of clowns). It's just regular RAM with an "SLI" logo on it. If you're paying more for it than any other good brand name (Corsair, Crucial/Micron, Mushkin, OCZ, etc.) RAM with the same specs then get rid of it in favor of something that doesn't include an extra cost for an "SLI" sticker.

Other than that it looks pretty good. I personally wouldn't bother with an SLI motherboard, but it seems like just about every nForce board nowadays is SLI, so whatev.

The only other suggestion I would make is to drop the Q6600 in favor of a much faster E6850. Unless you have some specific interest in 4-way SMP it's not going to do much of anything for you when it comes to gaming. The E6850 is going to run games faster without a doubt and should be about the same price as the Q6600. I know that it sounds "leet" to say that you have a quad-core (actually just two dual-cores slapped on one die), but unless you're an extreme multi-tasker it's not going to help your gaming. Threading an app to take advantage of 2 cores is one thing, but I really don't think we'll be seeing any games that take advantage of 4 cores effectively anytime soon. Like I said in a previous post, if you're planning to get a G0-stepping Q6600 and overclock it then the Q6600 is great. Otherwise you'd be better off with the E6850.

Just my opinion, but I know that when I write multi-threaded services for Windows the OS never really splits up task between more than 2 processors at a time on its own. I'm guessing that the same will be true for games unless the game is specifically written to take advantage of 4-way SMP.

Cheers Dex .. i found this little package, would save a few quid on my comp if i get this lot .. any good?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=BU-045-OK

Yes, actually. That looks quite good.

Sry .. i changed my mind and looked on ebuyer, there prices are abitcheaper, but im confused.

i found this Grx card
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...g=&of fset=10

But, its DDR3, so that means i need a DDR3 Motherboard? .. yet, i really dont get mother boards..

also i will need DDR3 RAM?

so any help on this would be great.

The memory on your video card and your system memory are two different things. Video cards are always one step ahead when it comes to memory.

Short answer, no your motherboard doesnt need to support DDR3 to use that video card, aslong as it has a PCI-Express 16x graphic slot and your Power Supply supports it.

When it comes to video cards, its always important to see what type of connector it needs for power as there are so many and alot of them require different numbers of pins for the pci-express power connector.

Make sure the number of cables and pins for the video card match what the power supply has.

Yup, most newer GPUs (including all of the nVidia 8X00 series) use DDR3 memory. As Zodiak said, the video card has its own internal memory controller, so the video memory doesn't directly interact with the memory controller you CPU uses.

As far as the power connectors, just make sure your power supply can supply the proper amperage on the 12v rail. Most video cards that have a power connector aside from the standard 6-pin PCIe connector come with an adaptor.

Yeh, it is 6pin, but the card doesnt come with an addapter... so will i need to buy that sepratly?

what kinda mother board am i looking for then? something like this..
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...uct_uid=129126

I think the motherboard you had picked out is fine.

The video card you linked to above just has a single 6-pin power plug. Any new-ish PSU will have one of these. I think you're fine.

Awsome, thanks Dex and everyone else =]

ganna buy most of it tonight =D

The bits came this morning =D

But theres a problem Lol..

i bought the wrong ram, i dont really understand what one to buy, so im looking for help.

my motherboard supports *Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 ..

what that is i dont know

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=91121

that has 667 written on it Lol.. will that fit? =D

Thanks.

Erm .. it says £23.00 o.0