Malaris

.Â

.

Well, my current pc is in too much of a state to continue upgrading, so I'm going for an entire new system. I know my way around a computer fairly well, but as this is my first full build I'm posting to get opinions and/or to see if I've made any oversights as to incompatible parts etc. $ 99.04 £57.47 CASE: Antec Super Lanboy ATX Case With 2x120mm Fans and No PSU $159.87 £92.77 PSU: Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU (CA-021-EN) $171.97 £99.79 MOBO: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 NF4 SLI ATX - Sound 2xgln 1394 USB2 SATA $603.05 £349.94 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 (ADA4400CDBOX) X2 4400+ socket 939 Dual Core 2.2Ghz 1Mb and 1Mb Cache $364.37 £211.44 GPU: Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-069-LT) $293.51 £170.32 RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS) $107.83 £62.57 HDD: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6V200E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-090-MD) $48.58 £28.19 DVD: LG GSA-4167BAL 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal IDE (Black) - OEM $404.87 £234.94 MONITOR: Samsung SM-930BF 19" LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-029-SA) $2253.07 £1307.43 SUB-TOTAL $18.27 £10.60 Belkin 11 Piece Toolkit $6.63 £3.85 Belkin Anti-Static Wrist Band $2277.97 £1321.88 TOTAL $15.15 £8.79 Postage1 $14.22 £8.25 Postage2 $2307.33 £1338.92 GRAND TOTAL The idea for this pc is a mid/top-end system, which is fairly future proof and easy to upgrade, by overclocking firstly(which most parts should be able to do well I think), and then buying extra parts. Initially I went well overbudget so downgraded a few components, and really I still am over budget, but by an acceptable amount. I live in the UK, so used a quick currency converter to include the price in USD, but from loosely browsing parts in the US seem a little cheaper. If you guys can substitue any equal/better components for the same/cheaper price, then please be my guest. CASE: Wanted a case with a side window without doubt, its nice and lightweight, plenty of slots for drives and I've read nothing but glowing reviews. I'm not greatly keen on how it look from the front, but I do plan to mod this pc at a later date. PSU: Probably the first component that I wouldn't mind downgrading, I don't know an awful lot about PSUs, but with a dual-core processor, 7800gt(with SLi in mind for the future) and several lighting mods planned, I made sure I gave myself a comfortable buffer. MOBO: Seems to be about the cheapest SLI motherboard about, only bad thing I've heard about it is the dodgy chipset fan, but apparently that was just on the older models? CPU: Went for the 4400 for the extra cache, can be OC'd to match 4600 speeds easily, and with proper cooling(future in mind) can allegedly reach 3Ghz. GPU: Cheapest 7800gt I could find, but hasn't scored the lowest in any benchmark I've looked at, may buy another in the future for SLi. RAM: Originally wanted a better pair, but these were significantly cheaper and have timings of 2-3-3-6, are overclockable and are a future safeguard being 2Gb(only use 2 of the 4 DIMM slots) HDD: Don't really need a big hard drive, as my old 80gb was just a little too small, originally wanted a WD3200JD, but had to cut down for the sake of my budget, plan to get a 10,000rpm hdd at some stage in the future, so this should suffice for now. (Couldn't find a drive with 16mb cache that was cheap enough) DVD: Decent reviews, fairly cheap price, but won't be used much in all honestly, even then only to read, but again, with the futre in mind I went for a DVD-RW. A response time of ~9ms seems more than adequate for me. MONITOR: Want a 19" minimum, a 4ms response time should cut out all ghosting for high-res gaming, went for a flatscreen to save on deskspace and for ease of transport to LANs. As this is my first complete build, I plan on picking up some tools- for peace of mind more than anything. I'll be buying this frmo 2 different suppliers, which is where the 2 postage prices come into it. The main use of this pc is for gaming(CS: Source and UT2007, and no doubt future games that will take full advantage of dual-core CPUs), with comms programs in teh background(IRC, MSN, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak2, Xfire), mainly online but LANning several times a year and a relatively small amount of video editing and rendering. I do plan to overclock at some stage, then go back to stock speeds and buy more parts - more ram, extra hdd, another gpu- and then overclock these (I know I keep bringing it up, but I'm aiming for this system to still run well for a fair few years, although I would like to upgrade as little and as far away as possible) Well, sorry for the long post, but I'm looking for last minute suggestions, changes and comments, or any advice on something I've overlooked rather than where to start with a new build. Thanks in advance

If changing resolution doesn't really affect your framerate, it could be your CPU capping the performance. "Processor: Intel® Celeron CPU 1200MHz" there's your problem

Originally posted by jmmijo: Quote: Two more words for playing WoW: LEEEEEROOOOY JENKINS is there anyone left connected to the internet who hasnt seen taht movie

for the measly 3-5 hours of gameplay it offers, best off steering clear of it

Originally posted by jchitman:

Originally posted by fbm6be5: Quote: My CIV 3 will not install there is a file missing Any information on which file is missing?

quite a pickle, have you checked for any recent restore points?

middle mouse button for me

IMO, I'd stick with the 6600GT, as the new ati series will be out soon But if u really must have one of those 2, just google for some benchmark tests, there'll be plenty on CSS and HL2 (sry for no link, got an exam in about 10 minutes 8) )

Philips Toucam II USB webcam for £20 had some spare cash to use up, not a bad price for 800x600 res.

Well I just took my 1 hour 30 mins ICT exam this morning, and I have to say it was ridiculous. (for those who don't know, GCSE's are part of compulsory education in England, which are a 2 year course involving regular exams and pieces of coursework, then resuting in a cluster of tests towards the end of the 2nd year [may-july], which is when the students are 16 years of age) The board which writes the ICT eam obviously have no idea how far ICT, its users, software and demographic have come. I was genuinely shocked at the types of question on the single paper - the ones that were to do with ICT (many question seemed to be about Business Studies for some unknown reason). Some examples of the questions on the paper are; (note: these aren't the exact wordings of the questions) How would one place a chart made in a spreadsheet into a word processor? How could a printer be connecte to a computer other than by a parallel port? Here is a list of computer components; *Keyboard *Mouse *RAM *Processor *Hard Drive *CD Writer *Floppy Drive *Printer *Monitor *Speakers List 2 types of input device List 2 types of output device One question even consisted of a simple business document, and the task was to circle and label things like left/right aligned text, italic/bold tex and a footer! Now, I can understand that people, even of the same age and year group, have varying levels of computer skills, but to be quite honest some of the questions on this paper were just plain insulting. The reason I chose to do this 2 year course was to enhance my already quite competent computing skills to an even more advanced level (nothing wrong with a bit of modesty ), and after confering with many of my colleagues in the same class as me, they all felt this way too. It seems the truth was shrouded from us in that this course was to teach people the extreme basics of computing, as this is the first time this course has been introduced, and they obviously wanted many takers so it looked good on the books. In fairness, there are some people who will have benefited from this course, who had no or little knowledge of computers prior to this course, but this course was not advertised or labelled correctly. IMO, the best way to learn about computing is with hands-on experience, and much of what I know now has been self taught by me actually exploring my PC, and learning what tings do, how they do it, and why they do it. However, unless one has a grade/mark/certificate to prove this knowledge, many employers won't give you the time of day to prove your skills, so, being set on my career in computing I thought this was an ideal opportunity to get a GCSE in ICT, so i can show that I have considerable skills in the field of ICT- how wrong I was. In england, compulsory education ends after these GCSEs (at 16), then there is the option to take 'A-Levels' - another set of 2 year courses, then it moves on to university. I had decided at a very early stage that I wanted to carry on at school and continue my education, gaining more grades, and improving my grasp of ICT even more. Now I'm not so sure, and may even end up dropping ICT as a subject at school, and wait until a university that spe[censored]es in some aspect of ICT. Thanks for mis-labelling an ICT course in which I wasted 2 years of my education government, thanks a bunch. *rant over*

just a sidenote, Ceasar 3 works fine on XP home

lol! My bet goes on the rinse, air, perfume one