Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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I'm after getting a new system together cos my laptop is beginning to piss me off now, cos its soooo slow !!
I've been looking at AMD 64 bit processor (939 socket) as a starting point cos i've had AMD before an they seem to perform pretty well.
However i need help on the following:
- Motherboard - what make am i after ??
- Graphics card - AGP or PCI express ?? what make ??
- DVD writer - which one really ???!!!
- Hard drive - what the hell is the difference between RAID and SATA ??
- PSU - What wattage psu do i want ideally ??
- memory - will 1024mb be sufficent ??
All for a budget of around £500ish.
I'm gonna carry on having a look through the 'geek shops' and see what i can find in the mean time
Cheers
Steve
[Edited on 06-11-2005 by mase5]
Mase
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Mase
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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i've found this processer and it looks resonably priced and has good reviews:
AMD (venice) 3200+
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=88109
will this do, or should i go for the 3500+ ???
Mase
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--Dave--
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the 3200+ will do you mate.
As for your questions above, this might help.
Motherboard - Abit or Asus' latest ones. Should set you back £80-£100. Abit's Fatality motherboard is one of the fastest at the moment.
Graphics - AGP is now dead, very few boards coming out now support it. PCI-Express is the way forward. An nvidia 6800 is a mid-range/mid-priced card that will play anything out now on relatively high detail.
DVD writer - doesn't really matter what make. As long as it does what it says it should do on the box. Pioneers and Sony are good, as are LG.
Harddrive - Don't pay any attention at the moment to SATA. It's mainly a gimmick that supposed to provide faster transfer rates than a normal hard drive configuration. It does, to a degree but isn't that important. What you want to look out for when buying a hard drive is the seek time. Western Digital Raptors are super fast but quite dear. It's all about how much you want to spend. Multiple hard drive and partitions can be set up in different Raid formats. This can get complicated and i suggest you just google for 'Raid review' or something like that.
PSU - Antec do good, reliable power supplies. With the latest generation of graphics card and Athlon 64 you'd want no less thatn 500watts these days i reckon.
Memory - 1gb is the minimum nowadays. Preferably a matched pair of 512mb so you can run them dual channel for slightly better performance. OCZ memory is good.
Thing is, the stuff i've listed there will take you well over £500 
Motherboard - £80
Graphics card - £150
Writer - £30
Hard Drive - £125 (74gb)
PSU - £70
Memory - £150
so, just over £500 but that's some good quality stuff there.
I'm currently in the process of upgrading mine, just gotta wait for November's pay 
I'm going for a San Diego 4000+ Athlon 64 with Abit AN8 mobo. 2GB of OCZ ram and hopefully a 7800GTX 
Hope this is some help to you mate, sorry for the spelling/grammar 
[Edited on 03-11-2005 by --Dave--]
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Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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cheers for that mate !!!
I think i've found a motherboard and a 256mb graphics card, but i can't remember the part numbers at the min. I'll post em up later so u can tell me if i'm barking up the wrong tree or not !!!
Mase
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Kyle T
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Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
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Im soon to order my s939 MoBo and CPU and im getting the AsRock dual mobo which has both an AGP and PCI-E slot, they have also got very good review. With this I shall use my same ram (1024mb of Geil pc3200) and Video Card (9800XT) until next month when I will upgrade to a decent PCI-E card.
I too am going for the 3200 Venice, as speeds of 2.6Ghz are commonly achieved, however I want to keep this system a little more stable than my current one so will limit my efforts to 2.3
Lotus Elise 111R
Impreza WRX STi
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--Dave--
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--Dave--
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Kyle
I have heat issues with mine at the moment and it frequently likes to reboot when i'm in the middle of a game would like to get rid of that if possible.
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Kyle T
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Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
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What, your graphics card?
If thats all thats wrong with it, take off the cooler, clean both the chip and the cooler up then reapply a new cooler if necasarry with some decent thermal paste.
What card is it?
Lotus Elise 111R
Impreza WRX STi
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Kyle T
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Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
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Although same applies with your CPU if its that whats overheating
Get a decent cooler.
Lotus Elise 111R
Impreza WRX STi
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Mase
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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which motherboard out of these two bearing in mind, i'm only having 1 graphics card.
ABit AN8 SLI PCI-E
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=12699652882&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=91381
OR
Asus AN8 SLI PCI-E
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=12699652882&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=82818
cheers
Mase
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--Dave--
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Kyle - it's the processor that's overheating mate, its majorly overclocked and just cant hack it to be honest. Running it at over 200fsb. it's only a 2500+ Barton
mase5 - Either mate, they're pretty much exactly the same and both offer the opportunity for some mild overclocking.
I've always stuck with Abit so I'd go for that one
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Kyle T
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Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
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Bartons are made for 200+ FSBs
Dont be a wimp
Lotus Elise 111R
Impreza WRX STi
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--Dave--
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Bartons run at 166fsb stock.
My memory can hardly run 200mhz either. Crappy twinmos 3200 stuff.
And it's not the cooler, I have decent thermalright one on there.
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Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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i reckon i'll go for the abit then cos its a bit cheaper. Right thats the next part chosen, now onto graphics card and memory.......
Mase
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--Dave--
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memory - OCZ - 1gb
Graphics - If you can afford it, a 7800GT. If not and don't do that much gaming then a 6800 will do you fine. Mate has one and he thinks it's awesome
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Cybermonkey
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7800's are bloody amazing
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Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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I can't really stretch to the 7800GT, nor the 6800 really. I have found a 256mb 6600gt. What do you think to this ??
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=4676&category_id=256&manufacturer_id=0#
Mase
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Mase
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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another quick query. Can you burn CDR / RW using a DVD writer ??
Mase
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Dan B
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Registered: 25th Feb 01
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Depends on the drive, but normally, yes...
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Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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right, i've been looking into this today and i've spec'd up the following system, so could you have a look an give me ideas on where to improve bearing in mind my limit is £500
Cheers
Processor - AMD 'venice' 3200+ 64 bit
Motherboard - Biostar N4SLI-A9
Graphics card - Sparkle Geforce 6600GT PCI-E
Hard drive - Seagate barracuda 80GB SATA
Memory - Kingston 1GB DDR400 184 pin (2x 512)
DVD ROM - LG GDR8163BB
DVD RW - NEC ND3550A
All fixed into: THIS CASE
Mase
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Dan B
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With a 6600GT, I'd be tempted to suggest a slightly more powerful PSU than the "cheapo" one likely to be built into that case......it may work OK, but I'd say it'd be right on the limit for how much power a 6600GT system would require (nVidia specify a high-quality 300W unit as bare minimum).
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Mase
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Location: Derbyshire
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yeah i suppose thats something i could improve on. I've seen the ebuyer value 500/600w psu's, but i'm worried those values are a bit adventurous a bit like a cheapo amp !!
Do you think all the other bits are ok then ??
Mase
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Dan B
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The rest of it looks decent enough, since you're working on a budget...
Wish my next upgrade could cost that little, my graphics cards alone (at current prices) total up to £750!
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Mase
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Registered: 16th Sep 01
Location: Derbyshire
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i'm hoping that i can upgrade the graphics card when i can afford it, but anything will be better than my laptop !!
Mase
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--Dave--
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looks good mate
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