Hi guys.
Been a while since I've wandered in these parts but I remember you were pretty helpful and knowledgeable back then. As it says in the title I've got £600 to spend on a box and another £200 give or take to get a monitor and speakers. I'll actually be buying this in a month or so (payday in other words) so things may change a little but I don't see any major new chips on the horizon.
I'm not going to price up an OS as I was planning on kicking off with the Windows 7 RC and upgrading that to the full OS in autumn, I've been using Windows 7 Beta on my laptop after Vista crapped out on me and insisted I was a pirate (second time that's happened to me, both times with HP laptops so never again to both HP and Vista) and it's proven comfortable and easy to use with most of Vista's niggles ironed out.
So, here's the box as it stands (prices from OCUK rounded to the nearest 5)...
Antec Sonata III 500W (£115)
PhenomIIx3 720 BE (£120) - Obvious choice really, lots of power and some headroom for future clocking.
Gigabyte UD-4P (£130) w/ 4GB DDR3-1333/1600 (£60-70) - more future-proof?
OR
Asus M4A79T (£90) w/ 4GB DDR2-1066 (£40) - significantly cheaper
XFX HD4850 (£130) - lifetime warranty and good performance
1TB HDD (£80-100) - Probably a WD Black but whichever looks better at the time.
DVD Drive (£25)
Either way it creeps in at around £600, more like £550 with DDR2 and a slightly lower-spec motherboard, not sure which to pick as I'll likely keep this basic PC for a few years only upgrading the GPU or the storage space. Over time I'll likely add a few bits and bobs, maybe a sound card, probably an extra HDD for a backup RAID, Blu-ray drive so on and so forth but for now, this is it.
Any suggestions which way to go on the memory issue would be welcome, as would any kind of general improvements to the setup. I'd prefer to go AMD with this but I wouldn't refuse an nVidia card and if an Intel processor is significantly better for the price I'll go with it. Also I don't NEED 1TB of space at the moment but I imagine I could eat up much of the space over time so if dropping down to a 500 GB HDD would free up enough cash for improvements elsewhere then go for it.
As to monitors and sound systems I have no idea. I'm not a major audiophile and nor am I desperately demanding on the image front but I should think I could get a decent 1680x1050 monitor and a solid 5.1 sound system within the £200 budget. No idea which to pick though.
Cheers!
Been a while since I've wandered in these parts but I remember you were pretty helpful and knowledgeable back then. As it says in the title I've got £600 to spend on a box and another £200 give or take to get a monitor and speakers. I'll actually be buying this in a month or so (payday in other words) so things may change a little but I don't see any major new chips on the horizon.
I'm not going to price up an OS as I was planning on kicking off with the Windows 7 RC and upgrading that to the full OS in autumn, I've been using Windows 7 Beta on my laptop after Vista crapped out on me and insisted I was a pirate (second time that's happened to me, both times with HP laptops so never again to both HP and Vista) and it's proven comfortable and easy to use with most of Vista's niggles ironed out.
So, here's the box as it stands (prices from OCUK rounded to the nearest 5)...
Antec Sonata III 500W (£115)
PhenomIIx3 720 BE (£120) - Obvious choice really, lots of power and some headroom for future clocking.
Gigabyte UD-4P (£130) w/ 4GB DDR3-1333/1600 (£60-70) - more future-proof?
OR
Asus M4A79T (£90) w/ 4GB DDR2-1066 (£40) - significantly cheaper
XFX HD4850 (£130) - lifetime warranty and good performance
1TB HDD (£80-100) - Probably a WD Black but whichever looks better at the time.
DVD Drive (£25)
Either way it creeps in at around £600, more like £550 with DDR2 and a slightly lower-spec motherboard, not sure which to pick as I'll likely keep this basic PC for a few years only upgrading the GPU or the storage space. Over time I'll likely add a few bits and bobs, maybe a sound card, probably an extra HDD for a backup RAID, Blu-ray drive so on and so forth but for now, this is it.
Any suggestions which way to go on the memory issue would be welcome, as would any kind of general improvements to the setup. I'd prefer to go AMD with this but I wouldn't refuse an nVidia card and if an Intel processor is significantly better for the price I'll go with it. Also I don't NEED 1TB of space at the moment but I imagine I could eat up much of the space over time so if dropping down to a 500 GB HDD would free up enough cash for improvements elsewhere then go for it.
As to monitors and sound systems I have no idea. I'm not a major audiophile and nor am I desperately demanding on the image front but I should think I could get a decent 1680x1050 monitor and a solid 5.1 sound system within the £200 budget. No idea which to pick though.
Cheers!
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