my lovely new pc?

[marythemoose]

Hey. I saved up for about a year for a new PC, which i bought last Spring. Most of it actually came from aria (ta), and i want it mainly for two purposes; 1) to make music on ( i'm in a band & wanna record stuff) and 2) to play Heroes of Might and Magic V (cos im a bit of a heroes freak). Budget was about a grand, ended up getting the folowing:

Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi
AMD Athlon64 3700 San Diego 2.2GHz 939 1MB Cache
Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache
Asus GeForce 6600GT 128MB
Creative SB X-Fi Elite Pro
1GB PC3200 Elixir DDR SDRAM
Philips 2400BM 16 X DL DVD-RW
17\" GNR TS700C 8ms TFT Monitor DVI
Creative SBS580 - 5.1 peaker System
Alpine EZ-Cool MIDI Case Silv 400W

plus mouse, keyboard, etc. Guy at work got me a copy of XP Pro. Might get more RAM at some point. Looking at getting another PSU, the one I've got at the mo' is 20 pin, want a 24 pin plus something a bit quieter, maybe 420W Xilence ATX2.0 (?)
Not sure the PSU is gonna last, anyone think it's a bit slow? Also, I've been advised by someone to get another hard drive and run the music stuff off one, and the rest off the other; does this sound silly?

Any comments/advise are very welcome, thanks in advance!

Robbie x

[Belso]

Shame you couldn't of gone with an X2 mate. Dual core would have been excellent in this situation.

You have some very nice Audio components in there which will defiently help with your music.

I would though recommend a second hard drive outside of the case, so you can backup your important tracks incase you ever lost them. (Stay away from Maxtor)

The graphics card will do you fine for the games you want to play.

Would defiently recommend upgrading to 2GB's if you can afford it, as it will help with all the programs that will be doing different things.

Overall a pretty good build, just a shame you couldn't of gone Dual Core.

8)

P.S Get some high quality Headphones as i dont think the neighbours will be best pleased if your blasting tunes out full blast :wink:

[mac124]

Hiya Robbie, welcome to the forums 8) .

That pc looks like a reasonable spec and if it does what you want it to as well as you want it to then its perfect and you don't need to change anything but.... the only thing i would suggest is consider getting a dual core cpu, something from the 939 X2 range, this will give your pc a bit of a boost and increase it's useful life span, as will the extra memory you suggested.

I don't know what the required spec is for Heros Of Might & Magic 5 is but the 6600gt whilst a decent enough card, had one myself a while back, is now getting a little bit long in the tooth and for £100 you could upgrade to something like a 7600gt ddr3 which would give you a BIG boost when coupled to an X2 and 2gb of ram.

Ditto the external hard drive for the music stuff too.

As for psu well i am a firm believer of not cutting corners on the psu front and i would only recommend a good brand alonf such lines such as Tagan or Seasonic the 430 watt tagan is double the price of the one you chose, almost, but if the psu fails on you then you might be replacing more than the psu as cheaper psu's can take other components out too. Not saying the one you chose is bad but it would be prudent to do some research on it if you haven't already.

[Barley]

Hey peep!

I can only echo what others have aleady said really. Welcome to the forums, and nice PC!

I agree with regard to upping the RAM, you'll certainly notice the difference!

[marythemoose]

Thanks for the post's guys, appreciate it. Sounds like another GB of RAM would be a good idea, do you reckon another elixir would be OK?

Also a dual core processor sounds popular, but expensive? Would it make sense to run the one I've got until it's too slow, then upgrade at that later date?

With regard to the external hard drive, someone said something to me about an external firewire drive for backing stuff up, is that the same sort of thing? Would one be better than the other?

Good headphones is a good idea too :)

Oh yeah, i saw something on the box for my graphics card about getting two of them and linking them with a little link thing; would I be better off getting a replacement card which is better spec? (I'll prob leave the card as it is for the mo', but at some point will need to upgrade)

I'll look a bit more into the PSU; one of my requirements is that it is uber quiet (for the music making). I agree a decent make is usually worthwhile, i shall browse around a bit more.

Thanks again for all the responses, very helpful :)

Robbie

[Belso]

The processor you have now will be ok. No real point in selling and buying a Dual Core unless you can get alot of your money back.

Another 1GB of Elixir RAM will be good.

Same sort of thing mate, i personally would recommend getting a Ice Box from Aria, whacking in a Hard Drive, then once you have recorded a song, just copy it over to the external hard drive so you have a copy incase.

The thing on the box there talking about is SLI,
http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_learn.html Read more here.
No real need to do that as the graphics card you purchased will handle the games you want to play fine. When it gets time to upgrade then just buy a seperate card.

We say look into a Power Supply because if the cheap one goes up in smoke it can take alot of components with it. So it's worth paying the extra £60 or so for a new Power Supply. (Tagan, Antec are my personal recommendation :wink: )

No Problem 8)

[Firerat]

[quote:59c3e907be=\"marythemoose\"]Thanks for the post's guys, appreciate it. Sounds like another GB of RAM would be a good idea, do you reckon another elixir would be OK?

Also a dual core processor sounds popular, but expensive? Would it make sense to run the one I've got until it's too slow, then upgrade at that later date?

With regard to the external hard drive, someone said something to me about an external firewire drive for backing stuff up, is that the same sort of thing? Would one be better than the other?[/quote:59c3e907be]


I was going to say that USB2 would be 'faster', however it seems that although USB2 is 480Mbit/s and Firewire is 400Mbit/s, Firewire wins in the real world.
Guess you learn something new everyday 8)
http://www.qimaging.com/support/downloads/documents/FirewireUSB.pdf



[quote:59c3e907be=\"marythemoose\"]Good headphones is a good idea too :)

Oh yeah, i saw something on the box for my graphics card about getting two of them and linking them with a little link thing; would I be better off getting a replacement card which is better spec? (I'll prob leave the card as it is for the mo', but at some point will need to upgrade)

I'll look a bit more into the PSU; one of my requirements is that it is uber quiet (for the music making). I agree a decent make is usually worthwhile, i shall browse around a bit more.

Thanks again for all the responses, very helpful :)

Robbie[/quote:59c3e907be]