Building a new PC? Look here first.

[ket]

Your one-stop for any and all advice, provided by yours truely Naturally recommendations will change as time rolls on, but for now the aim in this thread is to highlight differences to people, and how these differences can have big impacts for very little extra money. So without further ado heres my recommended system of the moment!

CPU: E8200 OEM £101
About £20 more expensive than the E7200, what does that £20 more get you? A whole lot really! A additional 3MB cache, what should be a much better overclocker and 130MHz extra default frequency vs. a E7200.

Mainboard: Asus P5Q Pro £94
Stalwart, reliable, 3 years warrenty, excellent BIOS support and with enough overclocking options to shake a stick at, this is THE ultimate budget board of the moment. It skimps nowhere and brings outstanding value for money. Oh, its a fantastic OCing board too.

RAM: 4GB G-Skill PC8500 £51
Roughly £7 more expensive than cheap PC6400 this memory is the ultimate companion. Lifetime warrenty, low operating voltage, default frequency of 1066MHz vs PC6400s lowly 800MHz, and with some OC room to spare on this PC8500 kit (anywhere in the region of a extra 100MHz), and a 8 layer PCB vs. the more common 6 layer PCB, this stuff is built to last. Regardless of popular belief, 8GB memory is NOT needed. 2GB memory is even enough if you know how to properly optimise your system.

Graphics: Asus HD4830 512MB £84
Enough onboard memory to keep you going for some time, 640 Shader Processors, all the trimmings you would expect of a modern graphics card and default frequencies of 575MHz core and 2GHz GDDR3 memory, this card is no slouch. For the money theres absolutely no arguing this is a blazing fast card, and if it is OCd, the card quite comfortably reaches HD4850 performance and perhaps a little bit more. Not bad at all.

PSU: Hi-Power 800w £67
A key area you must NEVER, EVER, skimp on. The PSU is one of the hearts of the system. Cheap out you can expose yourself to instability and unreliable operation. If your really unlucky, maybe even blow all of your brand new system up. Fortunately, this PSU will see you having none of the former. This unit is reliable, powerful, stable, and will easily see you through many years of service. Being modular as well, if theres some unused cables, just unplug them from the PSU and store them safely away for future use! The only caution on this unit is the fan grill, it juts down a bit. If you find yourself unable to install the unit due to this, don't worry. You can easily remove the grill and put the screws back to hold the fan in place, no disassembly of the unit itself required.

HDD: 500GB WD Caviar 32MB cache £56
Easily the best SATA2 HDD of the moment, with a 5 year warrenty to back it up, what else can be said? You would be a fool not to get this drive.

Total Cost: About £453 + postage

There you go folks, my recommended system of the moment. Its fast, powerful, and CHEAP! Weather you decide to OC it or not.

[audioave10]

I like your choices...NewEgg no longer sells the E8200 so I went with
the E8500 since it will be my last dual-core. Got the EO best stepping.
That's in the US as you might still find the E8200 in Europe.

[Nightwatch]

Yeah, good choices, and good advices, particularly on the PSU front.
So you vouch for the ATI 4830/50 cards strongly.

[ket]

Indeed I do. The HD4830\50 cards are nothing short of brilliant. One thing I did forget to mention is regarding the memory. PC8500 allows you to utilise more bandwidth with a FSB1066 and up C2D than what PC6400 can provide, which leads tp snappier performance all-round

[Nightwatch]

Good advices
On the Graphics card area, another question; as you seem to have a first-hand knowledge on ATI 4830/50 cards, how would you compare ATI 4850 with Nvidia 260 (216 cores) particularly performance, heat, power consumption areas, lol, what else left anyway, we already know ATI is cheaper anyway. I do not quite trust professional review sites, as advertising can cause people say many things that they would not wish to say.

[ket]

In all honesty, I think the HD4850 is at least equal to the GTX260 in actual games, which is what matters, not benchmarks Power consumption I would lean toward ATi edging, though theres not much in it from what I've seen. Heat though is a completely different story, get a HD4850 with a decent cooler on (not the single slot rubbish) and it will have load temps around 60c, which is significantly better than load temps I've seen of various GTX cards.

[Nightwatch]

I've always used vidia, but, hey, I don't own shares in Nvidia, so I may consider an ATI card this time around. Prices are more favourable (particularly) in this economic climate and if the performance and reliability are on a par with that of Nvidia... then so far, so good. Also Nvidia throws a new card every a few months making people feel as if they are lacking behind; not a good attitude, either. Thanks for the tips.

[ket]

Heres a little bit more info that will make you feel better nVidia may "launch" new cards every few months, but a vast majority of these "new" cards are just renamed models of existing cards, thats it. So you could say (and be right) nVidia dupe their customers.

[VINTAR]

Well I just need my Motherboard and CPU now, then I`ll drop you a line KET for some advice like what to install first and so forth cause I`m a real noob when it comes to building a pc from scratch.

I have a few manuals on component installation, but nothing on the software side of things, beside, you just cant beat good old experience

[ket]

/gay impression/ I'll be waiting vintarius /end gayness/

[VINTAR]

Thanks Kettie, I will drink of your knowledge

[ket]

Make sure you bring a straw

[VINTAR]

Aye, I`ll bring a straw and a hoover just incase

EDIT: what is the ideal case size? I mean one that would comfortably fit a lot of addons?

[ket]

Depends on what the user plans to have in the system really. Case size is whatever the user decides looks big enough for them. The only thing I would advise sticking to as a rule of thumb is make sure the case you buy has fittings for a 120mm fan front and back, with a side panel that allows for a 80/92mm fan.

[VINTAR]

Ok thanks.

I have seen a few cases with a perspex side panel with a big ass fan in it.

Is it worth getting me one of these?

[ket]

Gimme a link to check it out, an I'll let you know

[Nightwatch]

OK, after the new PSU shorted the outdated mobo, becuase the new PSU specs did not go well with a three year ago's technology, I've now decided to get a ASUS P5Q mobo. I couldn't find the Pro version as immediately avalible to buy and as I don't plan to go Crossfire or something I don't need the Pro or Deluxe versions.

This came not in a good time as I had been planning to wait longer and then to go to i7 Intel Nehalem standard, now this will wait for much longer.

The question that I want to ask is on the CPU front.

Core 2 Duo versus Core 2 Quad....

I've put my eyes on
1)Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9x Multiplier
..or,
..Core 2 Duo, E8500, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.16 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9.5x Multiplier

against:

2)Core 2 Quad Q8300, Yorkfield Core, S775, 2.50GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB Cache, 7.5x Core Ratio

-------
OK, the question that wonders my head is, while brushing aside all the not-so-conclusive reports all over the media, in real terms and from the users point of view, will a Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.50 GHz be better in performance than either of the above Core 2 Duo processors (E8400 and E8500) ??

What are the ideas? You've been using these CPUs for some time, and surely must have some experience that must be taken into account.

I need to get answers as soon as possible, today. Sorry short notice. But I can't wait longer without a PC, it's upsetting a lot of things including the schedule of the mod. I was a couple days away from giving myself the OK for its release stage.

Ideas??

[EggChen]

Never used any of those CPUs buddy, but as ever with PCs I think the question cannot be answered simply.

It all depends on the task or game in question. Stalker for example is poorly optimised for dual core, let alone quad. However GTA IV is optimised for quad (getting up to 70% usage of my quad core). How much newer games will be threaded to use quad core is still up for debate, some games even crash when using quad core (Fallout 3 for example, though there is a fix).

One thing I can say, is at times I have been listening to music, downloading and defragging all while playing Crysis maxed at 1440x900 without a problem, or even the slightest hiccup.

I have a Q9550 : 2.83Ghz (stock speed) 1333FSB 12Mb cache

[Nightwatch]

Thanks for the reply. I've been going on over the lists whole day, as soon as I get a laptop time. laptops are not my favorite computing experience that I look forward.

Reading your experience on the games you mentioned became very useful, thanks. I'm going now for the Quad core, not dual core, I've decided now. I'll get a Core 2 Quad Q8300, Yorkfield Core, S775, 2.50GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB Cache, 7.5x
That will be enough I expect, I'll push it a bit, say a ten, then another ten, let's see, to a 20% OC, so making it effectively a (about) 3.0 GHz chip. I'm getting a big cooler to help me in this.
I need to order things tonight, altough this rebuilt has come very untimely (as I mentioned before, I had been waiting for to go i7 later) but now I have to do it. i7 will need to wait for another such day.