Looking to upgrade (£800-1200)

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:35

No problem, that's why I posted a duel core build as well. Anything else on the spec interest you?

The beniifts of watercooling you mentioned are desirable, would your current system fit/adapt onto this new build.

I do think you get the benifits you mentioned with a Zalman aerocooler though. Moving to a mobo with heat pipe cooling on the chipset would create more silence vs the DFI boards fan. I might be me missing a trick on watercooling and the 3700, but it could also be the other way round!

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:37

my current water cooling kit is socket A designed, it would be a lot of hastle id prefer to just scrap it and buy a kit or pre-made case such as the tai chi

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:38

sounds expensive.

is your qtec 550 atx 2.0 and ok with pci express cards?

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:39

yea but easier, i could most likely transfer my current kit onto my new case but it would mean draining it, which is a real hastle

, im just idle with money to burn

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:40

and water cooling kits arnt that expensive really, the T/Take Bigwater SE (which will do the job fine) is about £55 and the VGA waterblock is about £30

dunno about the PSU. i just blew my old one and bought the biggest one available at the time

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:41

money to burn is good, but burning it on the perfect setup for you is harder. I'll take water cooling under recommendation, as I'v no experience. My perception was that since CPU's got cooler with the AMD 64's and heat pipe technology for air coolers was adopted the move towards watercooling was less benificial/worthwhile. I have the zalman aero so perhaps I have a bias.

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:44

ok scrap everything ive told you, just look at the budget and my needs,

give me a spec

lee87 · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:45

Xionic said:
Q-Tec dual fan 550watt

You need to change the psu. That would never power a X1900XT, it probably wouldn't power the 7800GT you originally specced either. Apparantly these are very noisy psu's and are of low quality. It seems pointless to have watercooling for quietness and to have this psu.
There are hundreds of posts on these forums of peoples qtecs exploding destroying there components, so I would change it as soon as possible.

I would have a look at getting a seasonic 600W psu. These are near silent and are very reliable.

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:47

thanks for that, will def get a new one

though both me and my brother have Qtec 550 and have never had ne trouble or found them noisy

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:47

plus or minus the PSU and of course the duel core decision I think the orginal spec I posted with the 4400, below, was solid, anyone else comment?

I looked for some benchmarks comparing call of duty 2 with/without duel core . Couldn't find any..

MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£84.95 £84.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
GX-032-OK OcUK GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) & Call of Duty 2 Bundle - Retail (GX-032-OK)
£179.95 £179.95
HD-017-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2004C 200GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-017-SA)
£57.95 £57.95
CD-024-NE NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-024-NE)
£25.50 £25.50
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95
CA-025-EN Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-025-EN)
£63.95 £63.95
CA-018-EN Enermax CS-527 Case Black No PSU (CA-018-EN)
£29.95 £29.95
CP-127-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£284.95 £284.95
Subtotal £852.10
VAT £149.12
Total £1,001.22

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 19:50

i do like the spec, may i ask why u chose geil over mushkin and why u went with the 7800Gt over the 1900XT

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 20:02

I got the ballistix pc4000 2gb kit but to overclock I had to slack the timings anyway. The benifit of overclocking from 2.2ghz to 2.5ghz on my system wasn't worth the overclock anyway so I run at 2.2ghz. The games play great!

I reckon the geil is good value and the money can go on things like the PSU. Depends a lot for you on how much you value overclocking.

A good screen makes a big difference to visual quality in games. £200 buys you a big jump in performance.

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 20:05

With the 7800 because I am familiar with the card. How does the 1900xt perform in benchmarks? The card makes a big difference in performance for games, although the 7800 works just fine at the moment. I'm looking forward to potentially going duel card in 12/24 months. If you go with the 1900xt would you need to go with a crossfire motherboard in case you want to go duel card in the future, I'm not sure.

kbc · 1 Feb 2006 at 20:07

Larok has specced a pretty decent system, included a decent PSU too. Definitely avoid the Qtec, no point getting the best components and a little toy that will blow those components up. It's overlooked too often.

lee87 · 1 Feb 2006 at 20:13

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF) 1
£84.95 £84.95
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-060-PC) 1
£319.95 £319.95
G.Skill 2GB DDR ZX PC3200 (2x1GB) CAS2 Dual Channel Kit (F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX) (MY-007-GS) 1
£134.95 £134.95
NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-024-NE) 1
£25.50 £25.50
Enermax CS-527 Case Black No PSU (CA-018-EN) 1
£29.95 £29.95
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD) 1
£64.25 £64.25
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM) 1
£179.95 £179.95
Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-002-SS) 1
£87.95 £87.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£14.95 £14.95
Subtotal £942.40
VAT £164.92
Total £1,107.32

The cpu is slower than the one in Laroks spec but you can probably overclock it to 4800+ speeds. There is a high quality psu with the X1900XT which will play all games at the highest quality.

Never heard of Mushkin so i'm not sure how good they are but G.Skill are good for overclocking.

Larok said:
If you go with the 1900xt would you need to go with a crossfire motherboard in case you want to go duel card in the future, I'm not sure.

You need a crossfire board if running dual X1900XT but I've heard the crossfire boards are not very good at overclocking though. You probably wouldn't need dual cards, by the time you do upgrade it might be better just to get a new card and not have dual.

Xionic · 1 Feb 2006 at 20:59

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (£334.82)
M/BOARD: DFI LanParty ULTRA-D (£99)
RAM: Mushkin 2GB DDR HP3200 HP (£187.94)
GFX: PowerColor ATI 1900XT (£375.94)
CASE: Enermax CS-527 Case Black No PSU (£35.19)
HDD: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB (£62.22)
DVD-ROM: Sony DVD-ROM (£14.50)

NEED A PSU - WHICH 1?

Larok · 1 Feb 2006 at 22:29

enermax or seasonic 500w+

Webzta · 1 Feb 2006 at 23:31

OCZ PowerStream 520w

Xionic · 2 Feb 2006 at 16:21

whats the cheapest PSU i could run the 1900XT on without risk.

Xionic · 2 Feb 2006 at 16:44

heres my current rig (with pics)

http://xionic.co.uk/rig.htm