Please, have patience

regular readers must have read hundreds if not thousands of this types of threads, but I'm panicking because my son's birthday crept behind my back and took me by surprise...
I want to buy him components for a new budget - mid range gamer's base unit. No overclocking but I won't afford any upgrades for at least 3-4 years; thankfully, he doesn't expect to be able to play the latest games but soething a bit better than titles from the bargain bin... Unfortunately I'm out of touch what's going on in hardware arena. I'm thinking of HD 4870 1GB graphics card might be nice but can you recommend a nice motherboard with a good variety of ports. I'm hoping to use the IDE HDD (can you get an adaptor to fit it to SATA port if necessary?) and CD-writer from the old machine. Maybe, I can afford a small SATA drive and install a fresh copy of windows into that; then with your help migrate his programs into the new drive...

Also, anyone can point to a UK link for purchasing a reasonably priced copy of XP? Someone did a favour (sort of) and installed illegal copy of XP in my son's machine, which works fine but no installation disk...

Thanks in advance

 

I forgot to ask which would be better, XP media centre 2005 or XP Home?

 

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]Ok, I had to look at some components and came up with this list:
Memory: OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual ChannelQuickFind C
OS: Windows XP/media – which one would be better, there is about £13 difference? (in $$ this would be roughly twice as much, right?)
PSU: SilverPower 850W Quad SLI Ready PSU - 14cm Blue LED Fan
Fans: Akasa AK-975 Intel LGA 775, 2U shape Heatpipe Cooler with Lo-noise Side Blow Fan;: Extra Value 120mm Internal Case Fan In Black - 4 pin connector
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache
(2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor
HDD: Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM
Graphics card: PowerColor HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E
Sound card: ASUS Xonar DX PCIE
Case: EV Silver Mid Tower Gaming Case with 14cm Front Fan
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134797 OR
Casecom Black Mid Tower Case - Front Blue LED 120mm Fan

[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]Any thoughts can you come up with cheaper, comparable rig (or even better): [/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]the price without PP came to £680.24! If must be, I would go for ready made, equally good one if much cheaper... (though not knowing exactly what you've got)

About the sound card: seems ASUS XONAR DX PCI EXPRESS 1.0 is a pretty good entry level gamer's card and for music for around £60 including postage - but there is also "LOW PROFILE" and "D2/PM" versions and I don't know the difference between them?[/FONT]

 

What motherboard you going to put in it? Unless you are getting a 64bit operating system, 2gigs of RAM is all you need. If you get a motherboard with decent onboard sound (which most of them have, at least good enough for me) you can skip the sound card and save a little there.

As far as the OS, I would get XP Home or XP Pro. Shop around, you can sometimes find good deals on the OEM version. With the OEM, the OS is tied to the one computer. If you build a new computer, you would have to buy another OS, but that should not be a problem for you if you are not updating for 3-4 years...

E

 

Thanks for answering Fred_G.

I suppose having dedicated graphics card takes the pressure off from system memory and onboard sound will be fine at first but soon he'll want better sound to get an edge in multi-play gaming (faster reacton) and generally clearer sounds, especially as the computer is also his only means of playing music.

As for motherboard: I'm not techie enough to know the difference between models and I don't know what is a good chipset (is P35 any good?) and what about a layout and features. What board will give be a good value for money, while not being too basic or slow the system too much?

 

Any SLI or Crossfire plans for the computer?

E

 

No, I don't think so. I understand you'd have to buy the graphics gards at the same time, otherwise it doesn't work - or was it possible with crossfire? I just cannot afford two cards.

 

Well, how 'bout something like this... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128337

I have a couple of the same or simular boards. They do pretty well. And for sound, now I am not an audiophile, but better speakers or headphones might help more than a sound card.

E

 

How does it compare to Abit's IP35 Pro XE Socket 775? I've read IP35 Pro, iP35 Express is supposed to be a nice mobo, the only difference I can see that the Express doesn't have E-Sata port... I did have Abit board long time ago, which was very stable and I liked the layout. Two of my friends who like to poke inside were impressed with it... but like I said, that was a long time ago when the original Athlon was around.

 

I havn't got time tonight to post anything long so i'll keep it short for now =P

I know of a really good computer shop called Computer Orbit, very cheap I built my entire PC there save the OS and It cost me much less than £600. No Moniter or anything and It an AMD base which I have had no problems with, their website is a little... incompleate but it can give you a good idea of prices.

http://www.computerorbit.co.uk/

Thats the site, you can either (shop online) or (PC systems) I prefer to buy parts and build it myself (It's fun :-D) but you can also look at the pre built systems which are... ok =P

The shop is in the Uk though... problem?

If you wanna give me a rough budget I could put together a spec for you?
Although i'm only really well versed in AMD, which I prefer and there prices are great atm :-D, AMD Athlon 64 X2 600+ 3000MHz £88.83 maybe more than you want... need but I have one and it's brilliant lol

Hope this helps

:major 2-Bit-Geek :major

 

Yes, I am un UK - sorry it has taken so long to get back, life got in the way. My last chips were AMD but the speed the company changes the socket is not encouraging: I believe Intel processors will provide longer-term upgrade path on the same motherboard...

I have given the specs a second thought:

[FONT=&quot]Motherboard:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 iX48 Socket 775 8 channel DDR2 ATX Motherboard[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Memory:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] OCZ 2GB Kit (2X1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory CL4 Unbuffered 2.1V Reaper HPC Edition[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Processor:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Graphics card:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] PowerColor HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]PSU:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] PC Power & Cooling SILENCER 750 Quad[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]HDD:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache – OEM... my son has already IDE drive so I could wait till later, but the price is a drop in the ocean as far as the rest of the hardware is conserned.
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[FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Total:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] 440.75[/FONT]


Ok, it's not the most exciting rig but I hope especially the motherboard is worth the investment, for the next 3-4 years at least. I was chatting with my son about computers and he expressed the desire to learn about overclocking - I understand this motherboard will give adequate facility for that (including graphics card).



My main reason for change of specs is that I changed my mind about single graphics card: the opportunity to to add another (second hand or by then cheap) card in crossfire configuration should boost an aging pc, when the single card starts struggling. Now, my question is, does the card have to be a special crossfire edition and if so, whre can I buy one? None of the vendors I have found selling it mention if it their card is crossfire card or not, only that I will need a cable for each card in crossfire configuration.

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[FONT=&quot]The PSU is expensive, but I ended up with this for the reason that it is a single-track PSU:
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[FONT=&quot](http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inqui...ngle-rail-psu-solves-rd480-crossfire-problems) [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and it is obviously aimed for ATI fans, even though it is not officially recommended by the red company. Ram does not reflect the rest of the rig, but it should be easy to upgrade to faster sticks, while prices drop as DDR3 starts getting more popular and my cash flow improves (hopefully my son has his own money by then. ;-) ).
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looks good. I use a pc power and cooling psu myself for the same reason. That should get him by for some time

 

Thanks for the encouragement.
I have now ordered the kit, with minor modifications:

Motherboard: MSI X48 Platinum iX48 Socket 775 DDR3 8 channel audio ATX - I could not find any reviews of this board, so I just hope it's ok and overclockable.

Memory: OCZ 2GB KIT (2 x 1GB) DDR3 1333Mhz PC3 10666 SPECIAL OPS SERIES DUAL CHANNEL KIT (9-9-9-27) - again, not very inspiring but easy to change when prices drop: already not much difference in price compared to my DDR2 choice
Graphics card:

Gecube HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E - a little cheaper than the other model, claims to have PIP though I don't know how useful that would be.

HDD: 750 Seagate Barracuda SATA II (though I am tempted to swap it with my 500GB HDD I bought for myself)
Hopefully, this will be as "futureproof" as can be with this money.

Now I am just waiting in anticipation to see what cables etc are included with the hardware and what needs to be bought - and with much less excitement the credit card bill. :-(

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