First full Build - check over pelase

[Malaris 0]

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

[Sampson 0]

The only thing I might suggest is using a Raid 5 configuration. That will mean getting a couple more hard drives and blowing your budget big time, but since you intend to keep this system for a few years, and you are counting on dependability, having the machine striped in such a way that if one hard drive fails, slapping a new one in and having the other two drives restripe it, at least in theory, gives you some breathing room in case you are not a compulsive about backing up your system. Since you have plans to tax this machine pretty hard, your hard disk will be the one of the most vulnerable components from shear wear.

[Edited by Sampson on 2006-01-02 15:16:17]