New Comp, Only a Month or 2 Off

[VoX]

Title more or less explains it, I'm looking at beginning of March dependant of the gheyness of my parents.

Budget of £900, £950 is the ABSOLUTE MAX.

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5656/14thjannf9.jpg
You may need to click it to get full size. (The RAM will be OCZ and £10 cheaper, just preferred to stay in 1 place.)

Preferences;


Q6600 Energy Efficient
HD 4850 / 9800 GT(X)
OCable Mobo with clearance for after-market cooler
PSU That can support the spec with room for future upgrades
320GB HDD, no need for more as of yet
Lightscribe (I have a reason)
Case with good cooling and room for large-ish GCards and CPU Coolers
4GB RAM
Must have an OS, and decent peripherals (Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor)

[Colonel Mitch]

okay - why are you spending £100+ on the motherboard - what made you chose such an expensive 1? (not slaggin u off jsut asking)
Why must it have an OS?
and be honest with yourself - are you going to need that cooler.
also that PSU is way expensive.

[VoX]

okay - why are you spending £100+ on the motherboard - what made you chose such an expensive 1? (not slaggin u off jsut asking)
Why must it have an OS?
and be honest with yourself - are you going to need that cooler.
also that PSU is way expensive.

1. Mobo has decent OC features, is CrossfireX and PCI-E 2.0 (Unfortunately not X38 though.)

2. Because I only have an XP Home OS disk and we don't all phone MS to get another key.

3. I like to be safe and go for a little OC.

4. Says the person with a 1.1KW PSU. Got any recommendations for one then?

[Colonel Mitch]

Okay this mobo is better value and has crossfire and pci-e 2.0 (id highley reccommend the gigabyte mobos atm there very good boards too)

Ill send you a copy of vista ultimate that'll install x86 or x64 and you dont have to bother with activation but still get all updates. If your gunna overclock then by all means buy a better cooler but u cud easily get 10% out of the stock tbh (with my old p4 2.8 i had it running at 3.3 on the stock cooler without it being too bad - they came with big coolers tho) And i needed my psu when i had 2 2900xts - they use 580W on their own... my processor uses liek 180 or summit and then the rest of the system, all the fans, lights, drives wtc - it all adds up - i had a 650w and it exploded (literally spark bout 4 inches long flew out the side) when i loaded a 3d app.

http://i513.photobucket.com/albums/t333/piers1989/vox.jpg

BTW thats your exact same build but without an OS and with a slightly bigger hard disk, different mobo and different PSU

[Calneon]

Dear god Mitch, I won't trust you on PC hardware ever again after recommending THAT PSU. It's gonna fucking blow up a week after building the PC and take everything else out with it. It probably makes tons of noise too. Get the Corsair one, room to add another 4850 if you want to, and it's reliable and as quiet as anything. Get Vista with an educational discout if you can (if so, get the retail version). Stick with the P5Q because i've heard good things about it, and I don't trust Mitch anymore.

Mitch, just because you CAN get something cheaper, doesn't mean you SHOULD. You also failed to spec a Lightscribe DVD-RW, unless it doesn't say in the product name.

[Colonel Mitch]

I disagree with you completely there. I always go budget for psu (my 1.1kw psu cost less than £85) and apart from the 1 that did blow up because i suddenly heavily overloaded (which wasnt actually that budget - i dotn remember the brand but it wasnt a really cheap 1, i got it off ocuk n they dont really do budget psus) it I havent ever had a problem with budget psus. All they are is a couple of capacitors and transformers theres not point in paying 4 times more to get some more connections you wont use and 1 that looks slightly nicer. I went for the faster dvd drive i didnt notice hed selected a lightscribe 1.

[Calneon]

The one thing you don't want to go budget on is the PSU. You might have been lucky so far, but I seriously don't recommend buying a budget PSU for anyone who either has half a brain, or doesn't mind taking the massive risk of losing a £1000 PC just like that.

[Colonel Mitch]

theres no more guarantee that becasue you pay more to have a brand name on it that itll be more reliable - the 650 i had that i dont remember the brand of - i only had it a few hours- that exploded had stuff all over the box about 4 layers of overload prevention and was SLI certified - and what happened? IT EXPLODED. Ive overloaded the cheapest psus moeny could buy in the past and they simply turn off wheras my branded 1 exploded....

[Colonel Mitch]

you could say teh same kinda thing about your motherboard - if that breaks it kan take your processor ram and vga card with it.
Also i should add all 19 pcs the nest has had in total have budget psus and are running every day and theyve never had a prblem apart from one when the pc had been dropped and required a connection re soldering. Chris n freddies pcs both have budget ones too. and ive had my 1.01 KW psu now since the day before i31 and my pc has been switched on for probably 99% of the time since and ive never had a problem - and it was the same with my first pc and the 1 after that - all budget psus and no problems.

[Calneon]

Well you'd never catch me buying one. Also, AFAIK, a motherboard failure cannot take out gfx/ram/cpu.

[Colonel Mitch]

ive had a motherboard failiure take out processor and ram, and if something blows a capacitor then it can take out anyhting its directly interfaced with.

[VoX]

Bitch fest!

I'll see what I can do in terms of educational discounts for Vista, and I'll pass on the nudge-nudge approach.

I'll stick more with my spec there but do the change for OCZ ram, I've heard of P5Qs having problems recognising 4GBs of Corsair XMS2.

Anyone else got any suggestions?

[Midge]

save £20, get free delivery from scan, sign up to avforums, its what ive done haha

[Colonel Mitch]

next day delivery id only like £6 if u ring Micro Direct with your order. its only like £2.50 if its not big/heavy.

[VoX]

Signed up to avforums, no notice about free delivery from Scan though...

[Midge]

its definately there coz ive used it before, theres a thread somewhere with all the details on how to activate it