New PC...,but what to get?

[JojoTheSlayer]

Am thinking of buying a new PC, but I dont know what to get or if I should wait a bit (2-3 months)...

Budget: 1000-1300£ ( 10.000 - 13.000 NKR Norway )

The thing is am only gettting a new stationary midi tower.
No shuttle or Laptop.
No Hardisk needed.
No Monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.


My min standar is:
AMD 1xPCI-E (no sli system), PCI-E Nvida 3dcard,dvd burner(giving away my old tower whit cdrom and dvd), 64bit system whit 800fpb computer...
Also ofC, it has to run PlanetSide at good fps! :D
And be better than my current system...


Any good tips to get the best for my money?

Current sys:
P4 - 2,5mhz
1024 ram PC2700
Gigabyte 8INXP motherboard.
ATI 9800 pro 128mb

Thx :)

[knaggsy]

one tip is build it yourself dont buy a package..

ill write a full spec with links in the morning.. as for now i sleep.

[Hovis]

AMD 3500+ 64bit is the best value for money CPU you can get.
Have to go PCI-E for the mobo. Asus A8n SLI Deluxe is good and less than £100 even if you don't want SLI now it's worth getting, and the option is there.
If you wait for the 7800GTX and don't mind paying around £400 for it then you can guarantee perfect framerates on every game currently in existence or development.

Those are the main bits I'd say. Coolermaster Centurion is a good cheap case and Arctic make a very good CPU cooler but the name escapes me. Don't use the reference AMD cooler, it's noisy and pants.

[JojoTheSlayer]

Asus A8n SLI Deluxe is good and less than £100 even if you don't want SLI now it's worth getting, and the option is there.

The other sounds nice. Leaves me a good marker for what I should aim at, but does the motherboard have "optional" sli? Ergo am not forced to use it, but can upgrade from 1x3d card to sli later?

I thought you ether had sli and where forced to have 2 3d cards or you didnt and only needed one 3d card?

Also why should I get G70 chip?
Does it give so much more performance than the next best the uber price is worth it? Or is it like a few more frames than the others for 200£ more?

[Hovis]

Nah, SLI boards will always work with one card too. Thing was SLI was really just a stunt when it was introduced, like the 6800 Ultras. People thought it was way too expensive for anybody to seriously want two cards. Turns out people are loving it, but because it was never even considered for being 'standard' at first you won't find many, if any boards, that can't run a single card setup.

[Endangerment]

sli just 2 cards runnign together? guessing this makes it good. oh and as im here in tech room i shall ask a few more questions of our all knowing teachers.

wtf is raptor drives, the good/worth it

raid on motherboards - what does it really do and again worth it?

pci-e heard bout it sounds fast, but is it worth money atm, plus if u want sli dop u have to have 2xpci-e slots.

pci-e again, hears it is 16x atm, but plans for 32, so any supprot that atm or worth waiting for?

cheers guys i am a n00bish pc maker, (i know where bits go- but not what are the best bitz) :)

[One Armed Scissor]

A neuronet processor, a learning computer.... sarah connor?

[Hovis]

sli just 2 cards runnign together? guessing this makes it good. oh and as im here in tech room i shall ask a few more questions of our all knowing teachers.

wtf is raptor drives, the good/worth it

raid on motherboards - what does it really do and again worth it?

pci-e heard bout it sounds fast, but is it worth money atm, plus if u want sli dop u have to have 2xpci-e slots.

pci-e again, hears it is 16x atm, but plans for 32, so any supprot that atm or worth waiting for?

cheers guys i am a n00bish pc maker, (i know where bits go- but not what are the best bitz) :)

Raptor drives are fast hard drives. Pretty good but small and costly.

Raid is where you bind two hard disks and data is written half to each. Legend has it it's faster, truth is it's about the same speed just twice as likely to go wrong, since if one disk dies you lose everything.

PCI-E is what all new graphics cards are made for. No point buying AGP now.

SLI is literally two cards running together, so yeah you need two ports, two cards etc etc.

16x PCI-E is plenty. Even if 32x was on the cards nobody would demand you have it. 16x will be good for a couple of years.

[Mastacheif]

in reality raid is faster than the same drive in normal and you do notice take it from me

[Hovis]

in reality raid is faster than the same drive in normal and you do notice take it from me

Not -that- much faster though. IMHO it doesn't really warrant doubling the risk of you hard drive crashing and losing all your stuff.

[Nyana]

currently SLI is where one card renders the upper half of your screen and the other card renders the lower half

[knaggsy]

- AMD Athlon 64 4000 San Diego (Socket 939) Dual DDR400 CPU
- AMD Approved Cooler
- DFI LanParty Ultra-D nForce4 Ultra Dual Channel PCI-Express Motherboard
- Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR BALLISTIX PC4000 CAS2.0 Dual Channel Kit
- 250GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 16mb cache SATA 150 Hard Drive
- PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT PE Platinum 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card
- Pioneer DVR-109XLS 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
- Creative Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 7.1 Sound Card
- Silver floppy drive
- Coolermaster Silver WaveMaster Case
- Enermax 600W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Power Supply
- Metal Braided Rounded Floppy Cable (0.5m)
- Metal Braided Rounded Ultra ATA100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m)
- Metal Braided SATA Cable


£1200 approx

[Echor]

in reality raid is faster than the same drive in normal and you do notice take it from me

Not -that- much faster though. IMHO it doesn't really warrant doubling the risk of you hard drive crashing and losing all your stuff.I use raptors in raid 0, they are faster that way.

As for data loss, who cares? Just store everything on another drive also. If you have a single drive and it fails you've still lost your stuff if you haven't backed it up (backing up means storing on at least 2 drives other than your main imo) Also raptors have proven reliable, like other high end drives have a mtbf of over 1200000hrs, and carry a 5 yr warranty (like other good drives) so if one fails, rma it.

For maximum speed though, they are no where near that of SSD's :) (my next project I'm hoping, install OS in under 4 mins, wipe it at the click of a button)

[Endangerment]

oh i thought raid was where both drives were identical so you could effectivly acces at double the data rate. will have to start saving up all my pennies for a new system.

[JojoTheSlayer]

- AMD Athlon 64 4000 San Diego (Socket 939) Dual DDR400 CPU
- AMD Approved Cooler
- DFI LanParty Ultra-D nForce4 Ultra Dual Channel PCI-Express Motherboard
- Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR BALLISTIX PC4000 CAS2.0 Dual Channel Kit
- 250GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 16mb cache SATA 150 Hard Drive
- PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT PE Platinum 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card
- Pioneer DVR-109XLS 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
- Creative Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 7.1 Sound Card
- Silver floppy drive
- Coolermaster Silver WaveMaster Case
- Enermax 600W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Power Supply
- Metal Braided Rounded Floppy Cable (0.5m)
- Metal Braided Rounded Ultra ATA100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m)
- Metal Braided SATA Cable


£1200 approx


Looks like a nice setup Knaggsy, but I need to know what contry these prices are from. Since some contries are much cheaper than Norway :(. Also the toll means importing isnt economic.

Also how much was the CPU?

[Endangerment]

we could post it to ya on the sly, or if u wanna pay my petrol ill drive it to ya, nvr been to norway could be fun :)

[JojoTheSlayer]

Okay I have been searching a bit more....

These are the current Motherboards (HK) am looking at:
-------------------------------------------------------
(Pirces and links from Norway :). 1.00 EUR Euro = 7.85885 NOK )

1*
DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-D hovedkort
1.595,-
http://netshop.no/aspx/login.aspx?ReturnUr...d5490&plid=5490

2*
Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 ATX,S-ATA, GbLAN,Firewire,DDR, PCI-Ex16
1.190,-
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.asp?sku=305264&cks=PLS

3*
MSI K8N Diamond, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 BT,54g,Dual-GbLAN,Creative Live,PCI-Ex16
1.895,-
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.asp?sku=307872&cks=SPK


Which of these should I choose?


Ram:
-----

Since nForce4 motherboards only can run Pc3200/DDR400 ram. I thought that maby I could just as well put the ram I have in my current tower ( Twinmos 2x512 CL2,5 PC3200 ) into my new tower and just buy another 2x512. Totaling at 2GB. Is this wise/economical or is it better to fork out the 150 to 200 EUR Euros more for 2GB of lower latancy(CL) ram?

[knaggsy]

id say the asus board...


oh and hte prices are from the UK from uk businesses.. to ship abroad.. it would probably cost around £100 for the lot to max your budget.

[JojoTheSlayer]

id say the Asus board...


Okay, Why?
Just preferd brand or something else?
Am kinda wondering since the DFI card is the same as you posted, only diffrence is thats its a SLI (2xPCI-E x16 slotts)

[DeadTeddy]

SLI is great simply cause if you decide you need more GFX power in a few months, you can (theoretically) buy the exact same card you have already, put them both together, and you have a powerful 3D solution without throwing out the old one. like doubling your ram :)

raptor drives are made by western digital. they've only got like 72 (I think) gigs but they are very fast. cost allot too. many gamers buy one for the OS, and a large 200 gig drive for storage.

raid as far as I know is actually supposed to make your data safer by writing the same thing on 2 drives or if you have 3 identical drives, it writes 2/3s of the data to each drive meaning you always have a backup. I guess I missed out on this new type of raid.

as for all those "worth waiting for" questions. unless you know of an official anouncement about prices going down on date X, never wait. there's always something to wait for, if you start waiting, you won't buy a PC.

[Erzan]

i have

1GB DDRAM
250GB hard drive
3GHz
NIVIDA Geforce FX 5600 ULTRA
128MB video meory

Runs perecftly... with like 4 games all up :cool: