Help req £600-£700 to spend on a new machine

[JimC]

Hi I am looking for a new machine and have about £600-£700 to spend on her however I am not to sure what to go for.

I was quite tempted by the trident vista http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Syste...roductId=26661 or http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Syste...roductId=26662 at a push as I would also want to get Vista ult aswell however I have been told to avoid the AMD chips and go for an intel core 2 duo as they are far better.

So I was hoping to get a machine with the E6600 http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=23828 and at least 2 gb of decent memory and with all hopes a 500gb drive. I will be using the machine for gaming so a nice graphics card would be good.

Every time I start building it I end up with a machine costing more than my budget so can anyone help me put something together please

[Barley]

Are you comfortable with building your own system etc? If so, it really is the best way of getting value for money

So you'd like 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive if possible, and a system that can handle gaming.

Do you need an OS, or do you have a copy of XP for example you can use?

[JimC]

I am comportable putting the parts together yeah, as for OS I do have XP home but I'd like to get vista ultimate oem for my new machine but if i can get something good I can go xp home on it for a month and then get vista

[mac124]

Right assuming you DON'T need an OS / monitor / keyboard / mouse then this is about as good as you are going to get, imho. You could go for a cheaper mobo if you wanted but i have one of these and it is rock solid and overclocks well (you WILL be overclocking as its the law if you have a C2D cpu :wink: )



If you need a monitor / os etc then you will need to do ALOT of cutting back to things like mobo and gfx and maybe cut it down to 1gb of memory and a smaller hdd but even then i doubt you will get a decent \"gaming\" setup for around £600.

Oh i didn't include a case as basically thats cosmetic so what i like you might not. DON'T buy a case with a psu and didtch the psu in my list as psu's supplied with cases aren't worth using for a powerful pc.

[JimC]

looks good - would you recommend changing the E4300 for a E6600 as for the price difference I am thinking that would be a better chip and also as I am over clocking I will prolly need a better heatsync than what ocmes with the proc or so i am reading.

Other than that the grx card is the one I was thinking about getting anyways and the memory seems an absolute bargain!

Edit** i do need a monitor but I have a sperate budget for that and OS I can wait a while for that if needed

[mac124]

Well the 6600 is a faster chip and can overclock to higher speeds plus has extra cache so if you can afford it then yes i would say go for that and a better than stock heatsink but it will probably add £70 to the overall price (£45 for the cpu and £25 for the cooler)

[JimC]

sorry another question: am i reading this correcly \"Memory 4 x DIMM, max. 8GB, DDR2 800 / 667 / 533 MHz, non-ECC, un-buffered memory, Dual channel memory architecture \" 4 slots so I could add another 2 of the \"1GB PC6400 Elixir DDR2 800 SDRAM \" at a later date?

[mac124]

If you wanted to yes you could add 2 more, though it wouldn't be worth it till you changed to vista, and then only if you changed to 64bit vista as 32 bit only sees a max of 3gb iirc. at the moment there is no real need for more than 2gb for 99.99% of users

[Barley]

Hate to burst the bubble, but I doubt that PSU is going to be powerful enough. to run a 8800GTS it's been proven in a number of places you're going to want a 500+ PSU. I know first hand that this is also the case

Popped the 8800GTs in with my Tagan 480w PSU, and it struggled to do anything. Changed to a 800w PSU, and it's happy days

Everything else Mac specced up is very nice though, but if you want to play games you're going to need that extra GB of RAM to take you to 2GB.

[Barley]

Few PSU choices for you, remember you only get what you pay for. Cheap PSU will be rubbish

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=24586
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=24513
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=24287

Personally I'd go for the Seasonic.

[mac124]

Yeah have to admit i wasn't too sure about the psu i did a psu check on my 4300 system and with the 7300gt it came out at a little over 300 watt so i figured 480 should be ok but yes a 600watt seasonic would be an excellent choice (i have one in my gaming rig )

Not sure if you noticed Barley but i did spec 2gb (2x 1gb sicks), albeit value but should allow a decent cpu overclock.

I reran my system with the psu calc (http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine) but substituted 8800gts and power was calculated at 420 watts, bit close to the 480 watt psu i specced but it should still work.

Also an overclocked / overvolted X2 needs more power than an overclocked / oervolted 4300, apparently. :shock:

[Barley]

Ahh right, sorry mac, I didn't notice there was 2GB in there, I just saw the low price and assumed that was 1GB, nice find!

As for the PSU, there's a chance it could run it, but it'd be really depressing if he put the whole thing together, and it didn't I think these days anything that's a named brand in the 500-600w range is going to be a must have.

[mac124]

Your probably right as the calc thingy does seem to suggest it would be running balls out so to speak on full load which wouldn't be all the time but as a gaming rig it's possible it might be a fair percentage of the time.

@ JimC on reflection mate you may be better off say going for a 250gb hdd for now and upping the psu as Barley suggested to the Seasonic psu, it isn't cheap but it is a damn fine psu. You can easily add hdd's at a later date when you NEED that extra space.

[JimC]

hi again

would the following case and psu be sufficiant or would you still recommend opting for the Seasonic 600w?

Aria Gamer DarkStar 500w Case Quickcode: #24546:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=24546

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]