Buying A Pc

[nickspoon]

So, anyway, my current PC, a Celeron laptop, sucks hard. So now I've got me some cash, I'm going to buy a new one. Unfortunately my budget is a bit tight and I don't want to spend more than about £300.

This is what I'm looking at (self-built, parts from ebuyer):

1 x ASUS A8V-XE SKT 939 PCI-E 6 channel audio LAN ATX £30.92
1 x Asus Nvidia 7300GS 256MB PCI-E £34.65
1 x Casecom LG-7760 Black/Silver Trim Mid-Tower Gaming Case - With 350W PSU £14.45
1 x Sumvision 3-in-1 Keyboard/Mouse/Speaker Desktop Bundle - Silver/Black Wired PS2 Keyboard with Black/Silver USB Optical Mouse and Black/Silver USB 2.0 Speakers £8.50
1 x D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G510 802.11g/b Wireless Adapter £14.92
1 x AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k L2cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor £43.48
1 x Philips SPD2400BM/00 16x DL Black Bare OEM £16.99
1 x Seagate ST3160811AS 160GB 7200.9 SATA II 7200rpm Drive - OEM £35.33
2 x Ebuyer 512mb DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin Extra Value Ram £52.70

The total comes to £312.41 inc. VAT & del. Those are pretty much the cheapest components I could find

Of course, this being the first time I've bought a PC from parts, there are a few things I need to know. First off, would buying a 3700+ for £15 more be worth it? It runs at 2.2GHz with a 1MB cache.

Also, is that reasonable value? If you know of anywhere in the UK where I can buy all those components cheaper (not eBay), I'd love to know. I'd rather buy all from one site.

Lastly, could I run XGL/Compiz on that? That's the main thing I want to do. That and enjoy not using a Celeron

 

[DemonStar55]

you should be able to run xgl/compiz

 

[Aaaaaaaa]

yeah, fork out the extra 15 quid. it will be worth it. Considering howe long a pc lasts a person (good few years)m 15 quid isnt that much to pay for a little more power.

 

[nickspoon]

Thanks for the replies so far. Any other suggestions? Graphics card, PSU, Motherboard? I'm drowning in specs here.

 

[Vollgasasi]

you wanna game with that thing? if yes that gfx card won't make you happy.

 

[nickspoon]

On that note, I've switched to a 7600GS, which is apparently OK for games. 12 pixel shaders

I can't go any higher, else the graphics cards get into the £100s range, and that I don't want. Price is now at a reasonable £348 all inc.

 

[Vollgasasi]

you should be able to get a 7600gt for less than 100 pounds. if not, there is a 7600gs on the market from galaxy which has almost gt speeds and is not much more expensive than a standard gs. and you should maybe get a dual core 3800+ (or a recently released 3600+)

 

[Epicenter]

Do not, DO NOT buy a motherboard based on a VIA chipset like that one. Opt for something with the NForce 4, or at the very least NForce 3 (if you do not need PCI-Express) chipsets. They are much more stable and are less likely to send you into driver hell or give you strange compatibility and stability issues. I'm personally using an inexpensive-but-sturdy Biostar TForce series board with the nForce 6100 (onboard video included) that I'm quite thrilled with.

If you do a lot of multitasing or use multiprocessor aware applications, an X2 3800+ is advisable over the low-end AMD64 series. They're rarely over $150 now and are an excellent value.

Don't skimp on your RAM; for very little more opt for Kingston, Corsair or Crucial memory. Other decent brands are Patriot and PQI, in my experience. The more big-name companies can afford better quality-control and are not much more expensive at all. Do not buy special expensive low-latency memory as it will make nearly no difference for performance. You've got the right idea buying 2 identical sticks, keep that up to maintain dual-channel capability.

DO NOT, DO NOT use the power supply that comes with that case. I cannot emphasize this enough. They are uniformly poor supplies included with nearly all cases with very few exceptions. That case is not an exception. (Cases with Antec or Enermax supplies would be.) I'd replace that with a decent Antec supply conforming to the requirements dictated by this very good guide: http://www.shsc.info/PowerSupplyGuide/ .. I'm partial to the Antec True II 380W supply personally. Remember, wattages are misleading, oftne manufacturers save money by marketing supplies with a high wattage, where the 3.3v and 5.0v rails supply more current, while 12v is the rail utilized by nearly all modern hardware in the greatest quantity. Decent supplies will provide more amps on the 12v rail. (Example, the TrueII 380 even provides 2 distinct 12v rails.)

The optical drive is OK, I'm fond of the NEC ND35xx series personally. I got mine for $30 and it supports DVD+/-RW and double-layer burning, is extremely reliable, quiet and burns quickly. Good call on the video card and hard drive-- the video card, that is, so long as you don't intend to do any extreme gaming, e.g. don't try and run FEAR on it at high resolutions or Doom 3 on Ultra settings .. things like that. For most games though it'll be pretty powerful.

 

[Vollgasasi]

since the k8 amd (athlon 64) the via chipsets are equal to nforce chipsets. performance and stability wise.

but i agre with epicenter for the psu. 380 watts antec power is more than enough. it should be quiet and stable.

 

[nickspoon]

Thanks for the recommendations

Any advice on what to buy for CPU fans? I've got one from Arctic Cooling.

As for a PSU, there's one from Antec here, but I don't want to spend £45 on power alone. Is it really worth it?

EDIT: Just tried out the new PSU/CPU/Memory stuff on eBuyer, and it comes out to £449.79, £149.79 over what I want to spend. Oo-er.

 

[Vollgasasi]

converted to euros.... for that amount i could get a dual core, 2gb, geforce 7900gt machine in germany.... damn uk is expensive... :blink:

you don't need to spend that money on the psu though, your cpu and gpu shouldn't suck that much money to make it unstable. but it probably will be a bit louder than the antec one.

 

[nickspoon]

Yeah, in the UK we have 17.5% VAT, not to mention everything being horrendously expensive thanks to the government takes on pre-sale stuff. So yeah. This'd cost USD 756 or EUR 595 (without the Antec PSU).

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, Seagate SATA 7200RPM 160GB HDD, 2x512MB RAM, DVD-RW, nForce4 motherboard, wireless card.

 

[Epicenter]

A powerful and extremely quiet CPU cooler is the Zalman CNPS7000-Cu or AlCu .. 7700 is beefier but harder to mount on a wider variety of boards. There are some very cheap nForce 4 boards out there, keep looking and you will find a nice one. I got my TForce one for a mere $45-ish (open-box NewEgg discount.)

Absolutely buy at least a decent PSU. It's not an issue of needing a 'high-end' PSU just if the PC demands a lot of power-- the PSUs in those cases are godawful. Even a midrange machine these days, or a budget box- can cause them to blow their stack and send a lovely spike of power to all attached devices, causing irreperable damage. They are really that terrible. I've had one kill a motherboard, RAM, video card, and destroy the cache on a processor. (It works, if you can tolerate 12 MHz 286 speeds with the L2 cache disabled..) You can often tell a good PSU by its weight-- a good PSU like an Antec/Enermax unit will weigh a LOT, and a cheap terrible one will be light as a feather. If you want a cheaper but still quality PSU, look into Forton Source (FSP) as well. Thermaltake also makes decent PSUs. Not as good as the others but still safe bets.

A good combination to keep costs down, but quality up, might be an inexpensive NF4-based Biostar, Foxconn or EPoX board, Patriot or PQI memory, and an FSP supply .. if you can stand a less fancy case, you might find a good deal with an Antec case that carries an included decent supply, e.g. one of their Smartpower 350/450w models.

 

[nickspoon]

Is it advisable to go for AM2 over Skt 939? I kinda want to be reasonably future-proofed, and so upgrade availability is quite necessary, but is there any noticeable performance difference between the two?

 

[refractor]

Firsly, I concur with the "get a better PSU" recommendations. Not just because cheap ones are well, crap, but because the better the PSU the better the power conversion ratio. A cheap PSU may be only 40% efficient, whereas a decent one should be >80%... so it'll save you money on electricity bills.

I believe I have only once upgraded a CPU without upgrading the board at the same time (and that was because I'd bought a Duron and it just didn't cut it for what I wanted to do). "Future proofing" in PC terms tends to be something that's extremely difficult (and largely pointless) due to the rapidly changing market.

If you're not going to be overclocking the system then the stock AMD heatsink/fan will do you just fine.

To muddy the waters further, some of the German suppliers are pretty cheap and are happy to ship to the UK (and other, rather smaller countries <_< ). I use computeruniverse.net quite often and other than being rather disingenuous with their "in stock" ratings they're fine.

 

[Epicenter]

Is it advisable to go for AM2 over Skt 939? I kinda want to be reasonably future-proofed, and so upgrade availability is quite necessary, but is there any noticeable performance difference between the two?

AMD's newer processors, for the most part, will be on Socket AM2, not 939. I'd go with AM2 personally unless cost is an extremely sensitive issue, since you'll need to use DDR2 memory, which at the moment still costs more than DDR. Performancewise, there is nearly 0 difference between the two. And unless you expect to need a quad-core processor in the near future, 939 will suit you just fine.

 

[DavidBeoulve]

I got this:
http://tabletpcartist.googlepages.com/purexs

It's due to arrive either today or tomorrow.

I strongly recommend Conroe, even the cheapest chip is faster than almost all the AMD chips. Sorry Nick, I didn't read it all so price might be a big issue for ya.

 

[Epicenter]

Conroe is faster right now, indeed-- I'm interested to see what AMD cooks up for the next round. However it's very new, often not available in enough supply, and probably still VERY expensive in the UK. Also I don't know as much about that platform so I could not make the most educated suggestions regarding the motherboard and RAM, while with the K8 platform I know exactly what will work best and what'll cause trouble.

Now, that said, I can't help but think you really did yourself a disservice with that AAC machine you bought. Sure, the guy seems intelligent and helpful, and didn't try to say, upsell you with a useless 'one tiny step up, $100 more' videocard like the XTX, but I seriously doubt you use that machine to such capacity to make it worth that pricetag. You should've been able to come in well-under $2000 with the same primary components. The PSU also appears to be pretty majorly overkill. Personally, I prefer to buy what I need, as I expect to realisically need it, at a decent price middleground. Since if I spend $2500 today it'll be a machine that doesn't do all I need it to tomorrow-- when I could've bought a machine that was in the middle and upgraded for cheaper later.

For example, my existing machine with an Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 1024MB of DDR400 memory, 2 160GB Samsung Spinpoint HDDs and 1 80gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, eVGA 6600GT (128MB, PCIe x16), Biostar TForce-6100 Socket 939 board, an NEC ND3540A DVD+/-RW Burner (double layer), and Antec Phantom 350 PSU came in not much over 1 grand (I even threw in some budget liquid-cooling gear to ensure it was 100% silent from 2 or 3 feet away, a big requirement of mine.) I overclocked the CPU from the default 2.2 GHz to 2.85 GHz, and it's extremely difficult for me to work it to 100%. I don't exactly demand 90 FPS in FEAR or anything, though. I do more high-end CPU-heavy computational tasks than anything; jobs that task the processors, RAM and HDDs more than anything. So to each their own.

 

[nickspoon]

I ordered, I received, I built.

Surprisingly, it worked first time. Which isn't bad, since this the first computer I've actually built. It idles at ~43C.

Unfortunately, I haven't got a proper PSU or HDD yet (coming on Monday, I hope) so I have to make do with running Live CDs and using the (incredibly noisy) PSU that comes with the case for now.

 

[Epicenter]

Well glad to hear everything went together without any major death or property damage. Congrats.