£1000 max on new gaming pc+general use

[thelostsoul]

I have not built a pc for over two years now, so be gentle.
I want this mainly for games, but also for the internet and for watching a dvd now and then.
Any advice about what i have choosen would be welcome.

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) £77.49

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) £72.79

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail(ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) £147.99

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 120GB 6L120M0 SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-072-MD) £50.47

Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) £111.57

Viewsonic VX912 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-014-VS)
£252.57

OcUK GeForce 7800GTX SILENT Extreme 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) (GX-033-DE) £264.32

Total £977.20

Does this look like a balanced system?
Is the monitor suitable?
Will i be able to play F.E.A.R and Oblivion on this?
Please help.
Thelostsoul.

 

[ACESHIGH]

I have not built a pc for over two years now, so be gentle.
I want this mainly for games, but also for the internet and for watching a dvd now and then.
Any advice about what i have choosen would be welcome.

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) £77.49

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) £72.79

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail(ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) £147.99

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 120GB 6L120M0 SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-072-MD) £50.47

Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) £111.57

Viewsonic VX912 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-014-VS)
£252.57

OcUK GeForce 7800GTX SILENT Extreme 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) (GX-033-DE) £264.32

Total £977.20

Does this look like a balanced system?
Is the monitor suitable?
Will i be able to play F.E.A.R and Oblivion on this?
Please help.
Thelostsoul.

Would advise to get the ...
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£214.97*Including VAT
... this is a better all round processor.

Also ditch the above graphics card. This one is quicker & much cheaper ...
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-121-SP)
£217.32*Including VAT

or if you like the even quicker (at higher resolutions), it has double the ram, is quicker & yet still cheaper than the Nvidia card, how can you go wrong ...
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£252.57*Including VAT


The rest is all good.

You may need one of these ...
Samsung SH-W162C 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-068-SA)
£23.44*Including VAT
... these are very quiet.

 

[Eliminos]

I really wouldn't recommend getting a DiamondMax either. Maxtor are probably the least reliable hard drive make. Have a look at Hitachi Deskstars for speed or Western Digital Caviars for extreme reliability.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Welcome to the forums, the system basically looks fine but I'd definitely consider the changes that ACESHIGH suggests in terms of the going for the 512mb X1800XT. The X2 3800 I wouldn't have said was quite so important yet but in the future it may well become so.

As far as I am aware the monitor is fine and yes you will be able to play any game out just now very nicely.

 

[thelostsoul]

Thanks for the quick and imformative responses.
I will look into changing the harddrive for a different one, but i am getting confused with the graphics card.

I did chose the Power color Ati Radeon x1800xt 512mb at first then changed my mind after seeing a comparision chart on a well known web site, don't know if i can say what web site it was, don't want to break any forum rules seeing that i have just joined.

Is it ok to put a link up or not?.

Anyway the geforce was better in every test, as far as i could see.

As for the dvd burner, i should had mentioned i already have one waitng to fit.

One final question for now, Viewing angles on monitors, does the monitor i have picked have a good viewing angle?

Thanks.
Thelostsoul.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Are you sure the review wasnt for the 7800GTX 512MB, as these are very different to the 7800GTX 256 MB cards, with far higher core & ram speeds.
Also when were the reviews done as, many were done when the X1800XT cards had just come out & didnt have the best drivers, whereas the 7800GTX which were out first had their proper drivers.

The X1800XT is faster with their new & improved drivers even in OGL games, than the 7800GTX 256MB you mentioned above. No doubt. The X1800XT is also cheaper - post in the graphics card forum & you will see what i say is true.

 

[Energize]

I really wouldn't recommend getting a DiamondMax either. Maxtor are probably the least reliable hard drive make. Have a look at Hitachi Deskstars for speed or Western Digital Caviars for extreme reliability.

Maxtors are one of the most reliable drives ive ever used, they have never failed me, unlike hitachi deathstars.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Maxtors are one of the most reliable drives ive ever used, they have never failed me, unlike hitachi deathstars.

I agree, i think the Maxtors a good, fast drives. Never had a problem with any i have owned.

 

[thelostsoul]

Just checked again, the review was on 2nd dec 2005, and it was the 7800gtx 256 MB card. I am not doubting what you say, i was just going on what i have read.

As for the harddrive, i am going to stick with the Maxtor.

ACESHIGH,
I am taking what you say onboard and appreciate your input.

Yours,
Thelostsoul.

 

[ACESHIGH]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/228

In our benchmark Radeon X1800 XT with 512 MB was faster than GeForce 7800 GTX with 256 MB. Period.
Once again, we could say that Radeon X1800 XT is really faster than GeForce 7800 GTX.
As a side note, GeForce 7800 GTX model from XFX we included in our comparisons is factory-overclocked, running at 450 MHz (instead of 430 MHz) and memory running at 1.25 GHz (instead of 1.2 GHz).

See the stock X1800XT beats an overclocked 7800GTX.



http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/10..._promised_land/

Benchmark Conclusions:
From these two synthetic and four "real world" game engines you can see that ATI has taken the 16 pixel shader and 8 vertex shader pipelines from the X850 generation and massively overhauled them into a highly efficient system. In many of the tests at 10x7 and 16x12 resolutions, the 24 and eight pipelines of the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX could not keep up with the ATI X1800XT.
One of the most drastic leaps was in 3DMark 2005 where the 16x12 4xAA 8xAF score lead the NVIDIA 7800 GTX by over 1,100 marks.
Then with the OGL fix for games like Doom3 Quake 4, the X1800XT pulled ahead even more.



http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2556

The X1800 XT will be good competition for the 7800 GTX, besting it in many cases

The additional tests that we've run help to solidify our assessment of ATI's situation with the X1000 line. Our tests show that the high end ATI cards handle enabling antialiasing better than NVIDIA cards overall.



http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=843

In the regular scores without AA and AF the X1800XT of course dominates.
As you can see there is no competition here. The X1800XT crushes the two other cards. With no AA/AF even the X1800Xl can almost keep up with the GeForce 7800GTX but as we turn on AA/AF it falls behind.

 

[thelostsoul]

Ok, thanks for your help, this is what i am going to go for, unless anybody else can see a problem with it.

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) £77.49

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) £72.79

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail(ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) £147.99

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 120GB 6L120M0 SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-072-MD) £50.47

Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) £111.57

Viewsonic VX912 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-014-VS)
£252.57

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£258.44

Total £971.32

Just on final question, i have never purchased pc components online before, is OverclockersUK a good company to deal with?. going by this forum i would wish to think so.

Thanks.
Thelostsoul.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Now thats better, all good stuff listed.

Yes, overclockers.co.uk (OcUK) are a great company to deal with.

 

[thelostsoul]

Well i ordered this today, should arrive tomorrow.

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST
MB-088-AS Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) 1
£61.95 £61.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) 1
£124.95 £124.95
HD-091-MD Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 160GB 6V160E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-091-MD) 1
£43.95 £43.95
MY-080-CS Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) 1
£94.95 £94.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) 1
£214.95 £214.95
MO-014-VS Viewsonic VX912 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-014-VS) 1
£214.95 £214.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) 1
£65.95 £65.95
Subtotal £821.65
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £14.95
VAT £146.41
Total £983.01

Just a couple of questions if you don't mind, not built a pc for a few years now.
I don't plan on overclocking this, so is there any need for any extra fans?.
I'm i right in saying the motherboard will arrive with all the cables i need?
i have not ordered a floppy drive for this, i am right in saying i can set the bios to boot to my cd/dvd first, so that i can load windowsxp from that.

Thanks.
Thelostsoul.

 

[AMDX23800+]

Upgrade to the AMD X2 Dual core 3800+ , its well worth the little extra

 

[Fruit&Veg]

Does anyone else feel that the 450w PSU isnt enough for a super duper rig like that? Surely it would save a lot of hassle and future upgrading hurdles to upgrade to a nice 500w??

 

[thelostsoul]

Thanks for your comments.
First of all, this build was on a strict budget so there had to be compromises.
I saw no need for dual core as it is mainly for gaming.
As for the psu, i wanted that particual case, seeing that it came with a psu as well was a bonus for me. I am lead to believe that antec produce very good psu's.
Thanks also for thinking it was a "super duper rig" thats why i don't intend upgrading it for at least 18 months if possible.
Still would like somebody to answer my questions.

Thelostsoul.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Just a couple of questions if you don't mind, not built a pc for a few years now.
I don't plan on overclocking this, so is there any need for any extra fans?.
I'm i right in saying the motherboard will arrive with all the cables i need?
i have not ordered a floppy drive for this, i am right in saying i can set the bios to boot to my cd/dvd first, so that i can load windowsxp from that.

Thanks.
Thelostsoul.

The PSU should be fine, especially since your mobo isnt dual cards.
No need for extra fans, though if your overclocking it would help & they are cheap. Obviously it depends on your room.. if you put it above your heater for example. Yes it can boot from CD.

 

[thelostsoul]

Thanks again,
Still waiting for it to arrive, will be happy when i've built it and its up and running.

Thelostsoul.