Yet another concave me thread!

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We'll i've little over a month to go till i get my bonus through from work(one of the few perks of working for John Lewis!), we've yet to find out how much we'll be getting, but i'm guestimating that i can expect around £800-850. I've had my current rig for about 3 or 4 years now, and is slowly running out of steam, so decided to turn it into a basic media centre set-up.

So i need to sort out a new system that's going to be up to date, and can compete with the best of them for a while, so has to be as high spec as it can be for that price. Used mainly for gaming and photoshop work.

Things that are a necessity:
Antec Sonata II Piano Case (or a similary silent case)
Dual Core (pref AMD)
A DVD-RW as well as a CD-RW
Not sure if i want 1 or 2 Hard drives
M-board that has the option for SLI or Crossfire(depending on what card you reccomend), in case i buy another graphics card later.
Possibly 2GB RAM
Has to be as quiet as poss, so need to get some silent ish fans etc.

So please spec me up!

*edit* no monitor needed!
 
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Here ya go:

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£164.95 £164.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.50 £14.50
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£229.95 £229.95
HD-046-WD Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£60.95 £60.95
CD-026-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£65.95 £65.95
Subtotal £744.15
VAT £130.23
Total £874.38
 
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slothmeister said:
okay sounds good, is there anything that i slightly spec down on to get the CD-RW in aswell.

Also what is OEM??

Does this include delivery

Don't need one the DVD RW do CDRW as well!

OEM Means that the chip comes loose basically, with no heatsink or fan and a shorter warranty but otherwise exactly the same chip as the retail one.

No delivery will be extra - i'm only guessing but I would say around £30-£40ish
 
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slothmeister said:
Sounds good, just need to pick up thermal paste, etc. My first build aswell, so a little nervous!

Anything else that you can reccommend if i come across some more money??

MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95

MY-057-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£134.95 £134.95

This DFI Motherboard instead of the Asus and this OCZ Ram instead of the Geil Value. Together will allow you to really overclock your CPU from 2ghz to about 2.5ghz or maybe higher. Technically giving you the performance of a 4600 X2 processor which is a lot more money
 
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Monstermunch said:
Here ya go:

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£164.95 £164.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.50 £14.50
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£229.95 £229.95
HD-046-WD Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£60.95 £60.95
CD-026-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£65.95 £65.95
Subtotal £744.15
VAT £130.23
Total £874.38

The above spec is good & the Dual Core 3800+ CPU & X1800XT 512MB GPU are going to be a great combo. If you think you may want to go dual cards later, then stick with the Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire mobo.
 
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slothmeister said:
Sounds good, just need to pick up thermal paste, etc. My first build aswell, so a little nervous!

Anything else that you can reccommend if i come across some more money??

No need for thermal paste, the pre-applied stuff on a Arctic Freezer is as good as AS5.
 
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well thanks very much for everyone's help, now i've just got to wait for the money to come, and hope that the prices go down! I see that the X1800 has already gone down a tenner!

*Edit* What the... who changed the thread title?
 
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