Let's Make A Rig!

[Calneon]

Sigh, if you want to get all technical about it =/

I'm just correcting you .

[Colonel Mitch]

Sigh, if you want to get all technical about it =/

If you want to get all technical about it you need to understand what windows does with memory.

Windows has something called a pagefile, which is hard disk space that it uses as extra ram. The problem with this is a hard drive accesses hundreds of times slower than a ram module (also if your wasting HDD resources on page filing it becomes inefficient). A system usually has several Gigs by default, and windows only writes things there that it doesn't expect to have to access regularly, that way it keeps your fast ram either free to use, or caches things in it for quick use without loading from hard drive.

When a game stutters due to lack of ram (i had this on crysis when i had 2gb ddr3 and my 2 2900xt 1gbs) its basically that widnows has ended up having to move the game onto the pagefile as there is not enough free space left in ram, and when the game tries to copy data from "system memory" to graphics memory, its hundreds (literally) of times slower, not to mention if the game is trying to load and draw new models a the same time, at which point the hard disk is literally at its knees.

The problem I had was jsut the game worked fine in the first few levels, liek playable easily at max settings, but then getting to levels where theirs alot going on, it got bed every time something new was introduced, and at parts less than 5fps. On the final level on the boat it was LITERALLY 1 frame every few seconds, and due to the hdd being hammered the whole system took minutes (literally) to respond to any input.

The moral of the story is, so long as you have enough ram free to get your game running, everything will be perfect. If you go over WITH THE GAME, it will die miserably. If you go over with general applications but not the game, you might give your hard disk a hard time and loose a few fps to extra calculations rand ram operations, but youll still be borderline okay.

[Deri]

i am the law

[Isphera]

My advice Deri - do not ask ATK for build advise. Threads like these (e.g my Erebus Mk. 2 one) will often result in arguments such as these, and then when you make a pick, everyone will go "OMG WTF you buy that BBQ of a PSU for" or "OMG wat a nab, yao went for the red wires?!>". Just go somewhere else

OK, back on-topic, I'm the worst person to ask, owing to the fact I often operate on a 'money no object' policy then scale it down to the budget at hand on a prioritisation and optimal point list. I'll give it a shot tomorrow though - just to get clear though, do you have a preference on any maker of parts for any part of this (e.g ASUS motherboards, Intel Processors, ATi and XFX GFX etc.)

[Vicious Horizon]

You'll want XFX if you're gonna overclock.

[Isphera]

At a £600 budget - I doubt overclocking is a possibility. Then again - I'm not an expert, so you'll have to ask VoX.

[Vicious Horizon]

My PC cost less than £600 when it was brand new, he could get something similar to mine, and have some moneys to buy a v. nice screen on the side, or another GPU if he wants.

And mine overclocks quite nicely.

[Kiliv]

At a £600 budget - I doubt overclocking is a possibility. Then again - I'm not an expert, so you'll have to ask VoX.

Overclocking is possible on a budget, for example intels new cheepest chip the pentium G9650is bassed entirely on 32nm design so is ideal for overclocking, ive seen reviews of this chip hitting 4.65Ghz on air cooling

[Isphera]

Fair enough. Like I say, I'm not an expert of overclocking, so I should be the last person you ask.

[VoX]

As Ki said, budget CPUs are generally the ones that clock like a bitch. Pay reasonable money for a mobo and just get RAM based on speeds for OCing (E.g it's unlikely you'll hit 4Ghz on a non EE chip with 1333Mhz RAM as the RAM will be running way to far OCed (Talking about intel here though)).

In terms of PSU, I normally go for expensive ones, but providing you're not going stupid with OCing and using high wattage hardware,a cheaper one would be fine, I would personally stick to CIT if you're going real budget end, but stretch to OCZ if possible.

GCard board partners; yes XFX give you this warranty that allows OCing etc etc, but from what gets posted on forums, it's a complete PITA to get them to RMA a card as they reject it for very simple reasons, and tbh using software tools it's impossible to tell if a cards been OCed, it's things like flashing the BIOS of the card they can tell.

Mitch's spec looks good, maybe add like 1 or 2 fans for the case if it doesn't have any, other than that, looks nice and solid.

[Colonel Mitch]

At the end of the day if your building a #600 pc chances are you dont need blistering speed so overclocking is pretty unnecessary :P

If your gaming on it you really dont need a flamboyant cpu if buying a current modal, as theyre all way better than neccesary.

As for gfx overclocking, youve got more chance of doing this than cpu if u want more useful power, youll only really be using software to overclock (ati overdrive is built into ati catalyst control centre, rivatuner for nvidia cards). Chances of you damaging an ATi card using catalyst are practically zero, and if you do they cant tell, so i wouldnt bother paying extra for a warranty requiring RMAing to a manufacturer.

As for Vox's comment about the fans, if you intend on jamming the pc into a small corner then yes, otherwise it will be fine on its own tbh. add the fans if you want but at most youll see a couple of degrees lower on your cpu temp, when its gunna be in the green by about 20*C anyway.