Trim the fat...

Dancer · 9 May 2006 at 16:47

I've found a good uppgrade for my machine, but it's about £150 over budget.

I can reduce to 1 GIG RAM, which saves me £50, get a Athlon 64 3700+ (OEM) plus cooler for £120 in this weeks deals or I can go for a lower spec GPU like X800XT for £112.

£54.95 Abit KN8 Ultra nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express
£169.95 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail
£144.95 GX-121-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3
£99.95 Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB)

Subtotal £469.80
VAT £82.22
Total £552.02

Any suggestions how I can bring the price down without taking too much of a performance hit?

Thanks.

mosfet · 9 May 2006 at 16:58

You could go Intel, 820/920 CPU, but you won't save too much

semi-pro waster · 9 May 2006 at 17:20

You could get the Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX to save around £15 which will offer about the same level of performance as long as you don't need a lot of PCI slots. You could change the Ram for OcUK value and save another £10 or so but it is difficult to make much more of a saving. If you aren't going to be doing a lot of multitasking then I'd get the 3700, if you are then I'd maybe get the cheaper graphics card.

Monstermunch · 9 May 2006 at 17:42

I would leave as is and save up the extra. To save £150 you'll have to drop the whole lot and start again and at the moment what you have is about min spec for a new rig, any less and it's out of date already IMO.

StarShock · 9 May 2006 at 18:05

one thing i would keep in that setup is the graphic card, bang for buck it is head and sholders above the competition, if you went for a cheeper one you would loose loads of performance for very little monetary gain

noxidjkram@hotm · 9 May 2006 at 18:29

Really need to state what the machine is for, that way we can judge which components you can save on - if any.

M

Dancer · 9 May 2006 at 23:00

Thanks guys, appreciate the suggestions... even if they seem to suggest I can't really downspec much.

The machine is used for gaming. Nothing too heavy duty, but I would like to be able to use it for at least a couple of years with most games. At the moment I play mostly World of Warcraft, with a bit of Civ IV, Dawn of War and Oblivion. So yes, I'd like to keep the X1800XT...

Other than that it's a TV, stereo and Word processor, but never while I'm playing games of course.

I don't use the machine for multitasking of any kind so maybe going for the 3700+ is the best option. That's £50 saved. If I also go for 1 Gig RAM then that is another £50. I can always scrape together £50 extra for the graphics card. I have even seen on this forum that there can be problems running a multi core CPU with many games and XP needs patching...

I might just bite the bullet and save up for the extra £150 if that makes a huge difference. Do I really lose out by doing 3700+ and/or 1 Gig RAM?

Foehammer2003 · 10 May 2006 at 00:47

Monstermunch said:
I would leave as is and save up the extra. To save £150 you'll have to drop the whole lot and start again and at the moment what you have is about min spec for a new rig, any less and it's out of date already IMO.

Is that minimum OCuk forum spec, or minimum giant retailer spec?

Coz my rig i have just about finished building aint even got an X1800 lol. (as sig)

Anyway Dancer is 2gig of RAM really essential? I would have thought you'd be better off with high quality 2x512 set than value 2x1gig and save a load to boot! EDIT Soz dude just re-read your previous post :rolleyes:

fornowagain · 10 May 2006 at 01:33

For a game rig I would change the 3800 for 3700 SD and clock the nuts of it. Other wise i wouldn't want to lower the spec tbh. 2Gb ram is quite good for games like Fear, stops a lot of loading.

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 09:26

Will my Antec Neo 480W power supply be enough and is it of the right type to power the motherboard and PCI-E X1800 XT graphics card?

It has to be ATX2.0 compliant right? I believe it is but am not 100% sure...

semi-pro waster · 10 May 2006 at 09:57

The Antec Neo 480w will give you enough power, it doesn't have to be ATX 2.0 compliant for it to work but if it isn't you will need a 20-24pin adapter for the motherboard and a 4-6pin adapter for the graphics card which takes 2x ordinary molex and makes them into a PCI-E adapter, you may get one with the graphics card but if not then they are available here.

The only way to really save money is to go for the 3700 I think, my other suggestions would save you a little extra but I'm afraid I'd simply advise saving up enough as otherwise it will be a false economy

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 10:12

Thanks, yes it has a 24 pin connector for the motherboard, so I guess it is ATX2.0 compliant.

Not sure it has a 6 pin adaptor for the the graphics card, but if I'm looking at the right model on the Antec site it does. I'll check when I get home.

Phew... if I had to get a new PSU that would have really blown the budget.

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 10:24

Now if I go for this one AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM), I'm assuming it comes without a fan as it's OEM.

So I'd have to add something like Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler and Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound which brings the total to £130 + VAT. I still save around £40 from the dual core though... not much I know but it does help a little...

pcoltrane · 10 May 2006 at 11:17

If you have to stick to the budget rigidly - get a 3000+ or 3200+ venice and clock it to within an inch of its life. The OEM 3000+ is only £75 Retail £82.

You should get at least 2.5ghz as long as your board does a reasonable HTT.

If you are prepared to spend £150 on the 3700+, then I'd say shop around - you can get 3800+ X2s for £170 delivered