Hardware advise for new PC?

My friend is thinking of getting a new computer. As the frequency is some 8 years between upgrades and he wants try some games, he wants a "future proof" computer but not the fastest and most expensive available. He asked my help for defining the core components, so he won't be taken for a ride... a blind leading another!

I would apreciate any help with choosing a good DVD-+RW and a ATX case (apart from the number of bays, what should I look for?), and if anyone knows what card reader NOT to buy... So far I have suggested the following:

Motherboard: ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
CPU: INTEL CORE 2 DUO, E6600 1066FSB SOCKET 775 & Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro fan
RAM: GSkill DDR2 PC2-6400 NR
PSU: Minimum Watts? Decent, but not too expensive make?

 

Your motherboard selection will be the critical factor in determining your systems 'future upgrade' abiity as technology advances!

With your choice of case, the Power supply unit would be most crucial. I would recommend your ATX PSU should be around the 500W mark.

As far as video cards go...Viper boy403 is the man to speak too!
Hopefully he will see this thread..

Good Luck!! (your hardware recommendations look fine)

 

Gosh, I was so busy looking for the other components that I forgot about graphics! Thanks. With Crossfire, I believe the cards don't need to be identical, though the performance will drop down to the lesser card - am I right? I haven't read much about graphics cards, as my rig doesn't much benefit from faster cards and at the mo my onboard graphics is fine: I believe more memory might give better overall improvement for my pc (at the moment 768MB)

Viper boy403? How do I get his attention?

 

HEY lol now that u got my attention...video cards can be a VERY expensive part of a system, costing over $1000 for the latest and greatest SLI or CrossFire setup. How much would u wanna spend on video cards?

 

Oh, I don't know... I know the games are always riding near the limits of hardware, but a good enough rig shold be able to play any games, say, 3-4 years down the line, even if not with the highest resolution... Not the greatest and most expensive but a good pretender...

I should have added that the system memory would be 2GB

 

yea 2 igs will be fone for a while. A single GX2 will be fine for now and u can add another later if u want. The thing is, DirectX 10 is coming out with Vista somewhat soon and so are DX10 cards. If you're planning on getting Vista (thats the only way to get DX10, go for something "cheaper" like a 7900GTX or 7900GT (the best bang-for-buck card as of now, but maybe the 7950GT tho) Im definitely an Nvidia guy as u may have noticed but ATI makes similar cards at a similar price.

Prices (may be a little different):

7900GT: $270
7900GTX: $450
7950GT: $290
7950GX2: $490

after researching a little i think the 7950GT has the 7900GT beat for best bang for ur buck card

 

Thanks for the advise, I was a bit worried getting two cards as that would add a lot to the rig's cost. The motherboard, with 975 chipset, supports only ATI graphics.... Won't DirectX 10 work with the graphics cards, can you not flash the drivers? Intel must feel really threatened by AMD and Linux, to hold onto DirectX that tight...

 

As far as i know, and im pretty sure about this, DX10 will work ONLY on DX10 cards. And does it only support ATI video cards or just not SLI, butcrossfire instead. I dont think there are any chipsets that are VGA limited

 

directX 10 will work on DirectX 9 hardware, it wont render directX 10 graphics, but it will allows directX10 games to run on DirectX9 cards. For a video card I'd say go with the 7300GT untill DirectX 10 arrives, its a decent card and should hold you over so you can get the big card later. If your not interested in waiting get the x1950Pro or x1950xt.

 

The MOBO I've chosen seems to only support crossfire. Crossfire is mentioned in specs but not SLI. The chipset is actually i975X but what does the i stand for and how is the i975 different wompared to plain 975?

 

CF or Sli is over priced, go with a single card

 

thats what i meant

BTW, no fanboy stuff. Hes asking for your opnion on different setups, not flaming good video setups. If you have an opinion, recommend then say it, dont down and outright dis other people's opinions. Sorry if i come off as rude, im not trying to be

 

Okay firstly the mobo you have picked P5WDH is indeed a "Crossfire" mobo but will run single nVIDIA cards if you want but will need to have a specific modded driver if you want to run SLI (2 x nVIDIA cards) on it. They are out there and this site has guys doing it;

http://www.vr-zone.com/

Have a look at some of their i975 chipset mobo reviews and you will note them discussing modded drivers to run SLI on crossfire mobo's.

I think you should also seriously consider a x1900xtx card which has 16 pixels pipes and 3 pixels processors per pipe (making roughly speaking 48 pixels pipes). I was about to buy a 7950gt but found some info on the x1900xtx and reviews are saying it is the fastest card around for a single GPU (7950gx2 will beat it due to 2 GPU's):

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.Asp?IMODULE=CTVX1900XTXPCIE512MB

I have that mobo and thinks it's great but I bought the CNPS9500 heatsink for it (many reviews rate it very highly):

http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=514

The PSU this is the one that keeps winning technical review after review after review, OCZ GameXtreme 700 ($154.99US):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817341002

RAM well there are many brands to choose from but that GSkill did very average in a DDR2 shootout, Micron makes some of the best memory chips for RAM out there (also consider Samsung chips) and their Crucial Ballistix range wins appraises from many keen enthusiasits:

GSKill failing to impress:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/27/in_search_of_true_ddr2_bleeding_edge_memory/print.html

Serious RAM:

http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule.asp?family=DDRII&tabid=DDR2+PC2-6400

Some of these products you may deem expensive but you are speculating on a gaming machine that is to last 3-4 years. I have used all of the above parts but are expecting 2 years of good performance because by then DDR3 (4?), Quad GPU cards, Quad CPU's, etc etc and there will be the games that utilise this sort of technology and those are the sort of games I want to play.

Hope this helps some.

 

It seems the graphics card is somewhat the most difficult choice, looks like it is worth to get a budget gaming card and buy a better one later.

As for Bold Eagle's suggestion, I have looked at the memory again. Trying to keep the price down a bit, would it be better to buy one [FONT=&quot]'OCZ® Gold Edition 1GB DDR2 PC8800 1100Mhz with Gold XTC Heatspreader[/FONT]' or to get 'Corsair ValueSelect 2GB DDR2 (2x1024MB) PC5300 Dual Channel Kit'[FONT=&quot]? The former would cost £146.88 and the latter £155.10 - or what about [/FONT]2GB DDR2 PC8000 [FONT=&quot](2x1024MB)[/FONT] Dual Channel Kit from OCZ? Anyone knows this make?

 

in the long run, i think the last choice of RAM would be the best

 

Here is a good link for comparing Vid Cards against each other so you can explore some of the earlier models and put them in benchmarks against each other:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

As for the RAM give me a day or two and I will have a better look, have just got home and are going spotlighting for critters (not to shoot, just observe) in about half hour.

Would be really helpful if you could provide either more specific product codes for the parts and or weblink as the technology changes so quickly and the Corsair probably has at least 2 different revisions in the market for the products you mentioned (Value Select 2X1Gb).

Really don't underestimate a good PSU personally I buy cases "without" the PSU so I can put a decent one in as the cases that come with them are normally budget or generic ones at best.

 

Yes I was looking at PSUs, around 500W, last night but got a bit confused. There seems to be the inferior type that provides "alternate" current, or something, and then there are the "proper" 500W psu's that are about twice the price. But how can I tell the difference? What are good makes? Obviously I would want something that doesn't sound like jet plane taking off but not too expensive... maybe something with 120mm fan or two fans running lower speeds?

And talking about fans. I am totally ignorant about case fans, I have never had one (I'm only running Athlon 64 3000+ in full case and no overclocking) I thought it once, when the cpu was quite hot but didn't want to start drilling the case - it was easier to get rid of one of the bits sticking out on the PSU and turn it the right way up: it had been like that with my last mobo/processor system - only then I DID have a jet engine on top of the processor and temperatures were running 40 degrees despite the psu blowing hot air directly on cpu.

I will be back with the links for RAM and hope to find some cards for scrutiny when I get home: my break is up.