Help needed building my own PC

[TommyG]

Lo guys,

I want to update my PC and rather than go to PC world and pick one up I’d like to try and build my own.

It will mostly be used for playing games (FPS) and surfin the net. Burning CD’s and playing and possibly burning DVD’s. I haven’t got a clue where to start so any help would be much appreciated – My budget is limited as well to around ?600. I only need the tower as I have a monitor, printer, scanner ect


Thanks for any help

Tommy

[superkully]

Buy Micro Mart. I used that for the adverts when I built mine.

[nips]

Try:

http://www.ebuyer.co.uk

http://www.tekheads.co.uk

http://www.extremecooling.co.uk

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Just makesure that you buy a Motherboard with loads of PCI slots and with 8x AGP support and you should be fine!

[TommyG]

Thanks for the links nips.

In regards to Motherboards would you recommend AMD or Intel?

[vic_viper]

Looking at your budget i'd say definitely go down the AMD route. They preform equally as well as a Pentium but for a lot less cash.

[nips]

It depends on what you are looking for... It shouldn't have much of an effect other than the price of your machine.

I'd suggest AMD, they are cheaper and the quality of the product is really high. There is no real differene between Intel and AMD quality...

There are loads of REALLY good AMD boards like 'Asus' for example... Make sure that you have a big power supply in your case. The higher the supply the more stable your system... But shop around, see what's best for you...

I'm looking at getting a Dual Processor Asus board next... But the price needs to drop a little!

With regard to GFX card, I'd suggest that you go for the Radeon 9500 Pro. Perfect Balance between performance and Price in my opinion... The GrForce cards are also very good and have very good support with the Detonator Drivers, but now that Radeon now have the Catalyst Drivers... it's too close to call... I know which I'm with though.

I'd buy RAM quick as well... It's really cheap... If you are going to get 512 RAM in total I'd suggest 2 sticks of 256 ram and have that running in Dual DDR mode... It's apparently better than 1x512 RAM...

Apparently Crucial do really good quality stuff...

In respect to HDD, I suggest that you go for the highest RPM you can get. Maybe go for a slightly smaller HDD with a really high RPM for games, no less than 30 gig I'd suggest. And maybe another HDD for other things such as music etc... It may save money... but that is personal opinion...

And Soundcards are pretty cheap. ?25 for a Soundblaster Live! with 5.1 surround... not bad!

Like Superkully said, buy Micromart. It's really good. Just loads of adverts etc.

[TommyG]

Excellent advice, thanks nips really appreciate that. Time to sit down and work it all out now ^ ^

I’ll get back to you with the results

Thanks again

Tommy

[Adrock]

I recently upgraded and did some research. So basically this is some of the best stuff to buy if you want a system that will play all games.

An Abit NF7-S (version 2) motherboard, this is a really top quality board. Most overclockers choose this board.

I bought an AMD cpu, at the moment your best bet would be a +2600.

As for GFX i would say the best would be a radeon 9700pro but they are expensive. The next best would be a 9500pro imo, i got a geforce4 and i'd prefer a radeon.

Memory your looking at 512mb or 1024mb depending on how much you wanna spend. Dual Channel is supported by the motherboard i've mentioned above so it'd be better to get 2 sticks to add up to the amount of RAM you want. If you can get Twinmos with Winbond chips all the better as this stuff is the mutts nuts. If not crucial is more than sufficient.

A 400w psu should be more than enough for what you want.

Tekheads is excellent service, i'd say the best i've used.
www.komplett.co.uk also have excellent service too.

Anymore questions i'll try my best to help

[oracle]

I would reccomend the asus a7n8x deluxe it has: dual lan, on board .1 sound ddr 400 support, its as fast as anything and its onlt around ?100.

i agree with the previous users here a ddr 400 setup would be an excellent choice as would a radeon 9500pro, but perhaps a 9600 or a non pro 9700 would also cater to your needs and last longer against future games.

Processor wise a 2600+ or a 2700+ would suffice

get a nice combi drive, and a decent looking case perhaps a lan li (v pricy) but http://www.overclockers.co.uk do a load of decent price and decent specced, they also do a range of quality psu's id reccomend an enermax 450w.

hope this helps

[TommyG]

Thanks again for your replies - My only snag now is which grx card to get, i think i've more or less got the rest of it sorted cheers.

Is it really justifiable getting the much more expensive radeon 9700pro as opposed to the radeon 9500pro as Arock said.

Basically this will be my set up for the next 2 maybe even 3 years and i don't want it to be outdated too quickly - Having seen the Halflife 2 footage would the 9500 be able to handle something like that adequately?

[Fire]

If you plan on using your new PC for all the up and coming PC games over the next few years without upgrading again, I'd got for the 9700 or 9700 pro if you can afford it.

9500 Pros will run HL2 and Doom 3 fine but a 9700 would make sure you'll be able to run both at top-whack and make short work of most games running on their engines for years to come.

A good plan could be to maybe leave off and use a really cheap/existing graphics card and wait to buy a 9700pro until right before HL2/Doom 3 comes out, should of dropped a fair bit by then

[nips]

Well. The 9500 Pro is in my opinion better than the 9700.

The only difference really between the 9500 Pro and 9700 is that the 9700 has 256 bit interface and the 9500 pro only has 128 bit.

There is a review of 9500 Pro at Sharky Extreme:

http://www.sharky-extreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/1549851

And 9700 Pro:

http://www.sharky-extreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/1449721

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Sharky's site is playing up a bit for me, you have to open links in a new window a few times I have found...
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If you are looking to get a PC for under ?600, you can't do it with a 9700 Pro Card... that is up to and over ?300 in some places alone. The 9500 Pro is fully compliant with DX9 and benchmarks really well...

I'd personally advise against the 9700, and go for the 9500 Pro over that, but if you want to go all the way then, yeah, the 9700 pro it has to be... unless you can afford a 9800 pro... it has a cool LED on the fan!

[nips]

At Tekheads.co.uk...

9500 Pro: http://www.tekheads.co.uk/site/produ...oductId=601561
9700 Pro: http://www.tekheads.co.uk/site/produ...oductId=601564

[H-Man]

I'm upgrading my pc the week before Half Life 2 comes out - should be some great , cheap hardware about then

[nips]

I'm may get the 9500 Pro when CS:CZ comes out... I want crisp graphics and a solid 75frame rate... If my 8500 can't handle that, then I need something that damn well can!