New Spec Please, Realistic between £1000-£2000

Associate
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Hey Dudes,

I'll be looking to upgrade soon ( in 2-3 months), and i was in the process of budgeting for my new comp, and realised i aint gotta a clue how much to spend!!!!

So i already have a monitor Belinea 102035w which runs at native res.

Probably need everything else with the exception of speakers.

Now heres the deal, i want it for Gaming, a bit of adobe, office applications and internet, and i would like for the computer to last me at least 3 years.

What spec would you guys recommend? With a budget of between £1000- £2000, i would like it to perform the above tasks really well, but dont want to waste money.

I am more concerned about the above from a budget point of view.

Would like at least 400gb Hard drive space in total tho.

Thanks
 
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Soldato
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31 Jul 2005
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If your not upgrading for another 2-3 months there isn't much point in doing a spec just yet as the new geforce 7900 will be out next month and the new AM2 socket will be out in june.

This might make the socket 939 cpu's and mobos cheaper as well. So whatever is specced now might be much cheaper in a few months and you could get something better.
 
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Associate
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to be honest i was more interested in the amount of money i shall roughly need, as opposed to specific component parts (although the info would have been great, to give me an idea).

But i see your point dude..... Things do change kinda quick.......
 
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5 Jan 2006
Posts
173
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
GX-045-CO ATI Radeon X1900 ***Crossfire Edition*** 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-045-CO)
£329.95 £329.95
GX-113-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-113-SP)
£329.95 £329.95
HD-003-HI Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 NCQ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A31619) (HD-003-HI)
£209.95 £209.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£21.95 £21.95
MY-002-MK Mushkin 2GB DDR XP4000 Redline Extreme Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) (991493) (MY-002-MK)
£199.95 £199.95
CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£159.95 £159.95
CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£59.95 £59.95
CD-028-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-028-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
Subtotal £1,409.55
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
VAT £248.42
Total £1,667.92

I left out keyboard/mouse/case because its all down to preference. I'd recommend a Logitech G15, a Razer Copperhead and a Coolermaster WaveMaster, but its up to you on that. Might be worth putting a 580W Easycon in instead, but its out of stock at the moment. If you want to save money, you could always put just the XTX in for now and crossfire it later. If the A8R32-MVP comes out before you order it, it would really be worth ordering that. The 2006 3800x2s are great clockers: mine is at 2.6GHz on stock (1.35) volts. So its not really worth getting anything higher.

edit: AM2 may be worth waiting for but it may be a while before bugs are ironed out and we get a decent idea of good motherboards. As for the 7900s, the X1900s look better from initial testings. Asian board parteners have not ordered very many and are not impressed.
 
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thanks elminos.

Hopefully since i am not looking to get anything for around 2-3 months things should have stabalised with regards to the am2, and the 7900.....

With regards to the case i was thinking either an Akasa Eclipse 62 or a silverstone tj 05. Some of the new lian li's look good, but i dont know when they will be released.
 
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11 Feb 2006
Posts
2,185
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£334.82
Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£82.19
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£164.44
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3055) (GX-046-CO)
£352.44
NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£32.84
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£75.14
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£75.14
Tagan TG580-U15 580W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-009-TG)
£91.59
Silverstone Temjin TJ05 - Black (No PSU) (CA-007-SV)
£82.19

Total inc VAT: £1290.79

I think that will be more than enough for a 20" monitor, and the two Hitachi hard drives can be setup in a raid array to give you well over 400GB.
 
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Hi Explicit,

Will the spec that you provided be a big improvement over a:

p4 3.06ghz
1gb RAM pc 133
6800 GT

Thanks mate

What kinda of performance increase am i likely to see.
 
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with explicit's: super pi 1m of 35s, 3dmark06 of 5.5k

most games will play on high settings at 1600x1050 (or whatever your monitor res is)
 
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Meds said:
Hi Explicit,

Will the spec that you provided be a big improvement over a:

p4 3.06ghz
1gb RAM pc 133
6800 GT

Thanks mate

What kinda of performance increase am i likely to see.

haha, words can't express how big the difference will be. Very fast dual-core processor with 1MB L2 cache per core. Quality 2GB RAM with tight timings of 2-3-2-5 1T, which is very good for a 1GB sticks. And the graphics card...oh dear...the X1900XTX will slaughter the 6800GT from every angle possible. There's just no comparison. It really will be a major jump from what you have at the moment.
 
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Excellent.... So i think i'll set the budget at £1500 inc keyboard, and mouse.

How noisy will this system be? cause my mrs gets narky bout the noise. ( Comp in the bedroom, until we find a house)

Was initially planning to wait for conroe..... But i bought F.E.A.R and it ran rubbish on my system, which is tempting me to upgrade now.....

Will see what happens. Thanks for all the advise guys... Hopefully when i've got the cash in a couple of months we can fine tune the specs.... And i'll be using a much faster comp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Associate
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I've got the Big Typhoon, and with two 7 volted akasa ambers, 1 120mm and 1 80mm, the system is nice and quiet. Its still audible, but after a year with a coolermaster jet7... I can sleep whilst it is on.
 
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OP
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without spending a wad of cash can the above comp be made silent?

I hear the seasonic psu are silent. I'm concerned about the cpu cooler, and the GFX cooler. Cause in my current system they seem to be the main factors
 
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So how long would one expect a gaming pc to last???

And would say spending £250 on a gfx in 2 years time, extend the life to 3 years
 
Caporegime
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Its not many months before you need to start cranking down the settings in games. If you spend £250 on graphics later on then it should give it a boost. Personally what I would do, is go with what is best value for money at the moment and then use the rest for later upgrades.
 
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