CS system builders - I welcome your advice!

[Darren S]

Right chaps. I've been requested to help in putting together a PC for my nephew - the good news being the budget at £1.5k

It's 99% used for gaming - so the GPU, CPU and memory are all important - along with the mobo of course.

The budget is to include a new monitor (he's currently got a 4:3 19" TFT which I might get them to keep as a secondary monitor) a new case, keyboard and mouse.

So far, I have my eyes on the following:-

• i7 920 CPU @ 2.66Ghz (is there much point going for the higher 940 or 950 ones?)
• The best ATi card I can find - stock seems to be a nightmare? :S
• Antec P183 Black case
• Asus Rampage II Extreme mobo
• OCZ 6GB DDR3 PC3-15000
• OCZ Z Series Gold 1000w modular PSU
• A quick hard drive - maybe a 10k Raptor drive - assuming I can get one with a half decent capacity
• Generic Pioneer/Sony/Panasonic DVD-RW jobbie
• Windows 7 Home Premium Retail
• Iiyama 26" E2607WSV-B Prolite monitor
• Logitech G15 v2 keyboard
• Logitech G9X mouse
• Owt else?

The biggest issue I have is with regards to stock - in particular the graphics cards.

If anyone has some input on what to change/edit, I'd appreciate it. I've got a large purse to play with, but I don't necessarily want to spend all of it - lol. An extra £300+ for a slightly faster CPU or something is just a little daft to me.

Cheers guys....

D.

 

[tyranical]

Just as a point, I wouldn't blow a huge part of your budget on "the best ATI card I can find". Graphics cards move on so quickly these days that if you go and pay £300+ for a graphics card now, you'll be able to get it for half that in 6 months, loses money faster than a bloody clio. They also don't tend to offer that much of a performance gain over a lesser (but still highish end) card, certainly not enough to warrant the extra cost. Generally speaking that is, there are of course exceptions where graphics card take a huge leap, but in general they take lots of small steps very quickly.

I'd also avoid windows 7 right now until its had a service pack or 2 to iron out the issues.

Apart from that it sounds good, although I don't think a fancy keyboards needed either and i'd have gone for a razor mouse, you've also forgot to add a decent metal mousemat.

 

[Longy]

Nothing wrong with Windows 7! more stable than Vista, and why put XP on it - it is seriously getting old now.

How about a decent set of speakers?

 

[NB 02 HOT]

Don't know if this is any use to you but its in stock. if its not what youre looking for theres so good discussion on the other cards and differences etc...

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/543878/ati-hd-5770-1gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi?page=1

 

[tyranical]

Regardless of how "old" XP is, its still the best overall windows operating system available right now for compatability and stability. Vista was a major fail, windows 7 looks promising but needs a service pack or 2 before its up to XP's standard imo, XP needed 2 service packs to fix it when it first came out.

 

[DMS]

I've been using Windows 7 for months on end now.
I was testing the RTM versions at work for compabitility with our existing AV solutions, as well as ensuring that the Microsoft ISA Firewall Client (shipped with ISA 2006) works correctly on it. I was also doing a load of group policy testing etc...
I've also been using it on my home PC since 3 days before the general release date (Technet subscription FTW!).
Anyway, so far I've not had one single problem with it. Haven't had any hardware that didn't have a working Windows 7 driver, or where the Vista one wasn't sufficient, it's never crashed, never had any performance issues, and no software I've installed has had any problems whatsoever. I've even installed C&C Red Alert 2 on here to see what backwards compatibility is like, and as long as you put all the .exe's in Windows XP compatibility mode it plays flawlessly.
I can appreciate people saying it needs a service pack or two before they'll trust its reliability etc, but that doesn't really matter all that much in a home environment. In a business environment maybe, but worrying about such things for a home user who is probably only ever going to play games and watch p**n on the computer is a bit pointless.
Put it this way, it's leaps and bounds ahead of Vista when that was released (prematurely). Windows 7 is what Vista should always have been, just without WinFS.

Half the problems that Windows 7 users will experience are down to themselves. Generally, if someone doesn't like Windows 7 they'll start telling people to avoid it like the plague, and just because they don't know what they're doing doesn't mean it's a bad OS.

 

[Rossy197]

D where will you be ordering the components from ?

Your list looks very good, I'm not a ATI fan and have always had Nvidia, Don't ask me why but i just have lol

Can you overclock ? That's something to bare in mind when buying the processor, If you can overclock you could always buy a "go" stepping chip that is guaranteed to overclock x,y,z amount etc. Obviously its a guide but they generally overclock better than some batches

10k raptors are good but space is sacrifised for speed, If the budget allows get 2 raptors and raid 0 them, They'll run in pairs and will be extremely fast

I get all my stuff from www.overclockers.co.uk

They are very good and have most things ready for next day delivery

 

[DMS]

10k raptors are good but space is sacrifised for speed, If the budget allows get 2 raptors and raid 0 them, They'll run in pairs and will be extremely fast

This.
I have 3 x 36GB 10k Raptors in my PC in a RAID 0 configuration.
I just have one C: partition spanned across all the disks.
Anything I download gets downloaded to my C: partition, then I just do all the extracting etc locally and copy it across to my Drobo when finished.
It's quick when you need it, and the lack of redundancy in a RAID 0 array is addressed by the Drobo.
If redundancy was an issue, maybe consider getting 3 10k Raptor's and building a RAID-5 array instead. That way, if one breaks it can simply be replaced.

 

[nosluom]

i'd go for a solid state hard disk over a raptor! some of the newer ones are kicking out unbelievable speeds plus they're silent unlike the raptors

 

[Rossy197]

i'd go for a solid state hard disk over a raptor! some of the newer ones are kicking out unbelievable speeds plus they're silent unlike the raptors

Agree on the speed part but they are so expensive and you get minimal storage.. Well enough for most users but no way justify the asking price

£ for £ SSD's are not worth the money imo

300gb raptor - £176 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-238-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768

256gb SSD - £599 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-006-CS&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427

^^ yes the ssd is a good brand in the link but if i was paying £400+ for a HD i'd want much more for my money

 

[Longy]

Regardless of how "old" XP is, its still the best overall windows operating system available right now for compatability and stability. Vista was a major fail, windows 7 looks promising but needs a service pack or 2 before its up to XP's standard imo, XP needed 2 service packs to fix it when it first came out.

I can't wait to see DX11 in XP!

Oh and 64bit XP is amazing He's got 6GB ram - not much use on a 32bit version for XP now is it.

about time you moved on

 

[the1]

I have pre-ordered this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804/show_product_reviews

Seems to be getting pretty good reviews...

 

[conneh]

Why not have a Raptor/SSD for a primary drive, then a 1Tb Samsung F3/WD Caviar Black for storage - unless you are confident with using RAID.

Also look into OCuK bundles that come pre-clocked, for gaming - CPU speed can play a big part.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-012-OB&tool=3 - 4Ghz, should last him a while.

 

[Gareth]

Personally (and I am a big PC fan) i'd rather have one of the new LED 27" iMacs. PC gaming is dead, I walked into game on Saturday to find they don't sell PC games anymore, supermarkets was one thing, but GAME?? Next year I think I'm going to buy one and use it as my main computer, then move my PC where the second PC in our home is.

http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html

 

[Darren S]

Thanks for the responses guys - much appreciated!

tyranical - I've not had any real issue with Windows 7 64-bit, tbh m8. I needed to edit an ini file to get UT3 working and it has been fine ever since. Strangely however, that used to crash all the time in XP. Oh, and I tried to install Starsiege again on here this afternoon. But bearing in mind it's from 1998, I didn't have much luck - the installer reporting that "...the version of Windows NT is not sufficient enough' - lol!

I think I'll take a closer look at the SSD drives, but I think they are still a little price-rich for me - certainly when compared with the capacity available with more standard issue SATA drives.

Gareth - interesting point that you make about the iMac. Ironically, the dual-OS nature of the Macs these days, might actually help in promoting games coming out on the PC in the first place. I do think that even a 27" iMac would be a compromise as a gaming platform though - and that Magic Mouse would just feel sluggish compared to the latest Logitech and Razer offerings. As for graphics - even the quad-core 27 incher only has an ATi 4850 onboard, with the GDDR3 memory. I'm still on my 4870 with GDDR5 in my own PC.

Longy - I did forget the speakers! I know 110% that he won't want/need the full 7.1 offerings and the like. Either a decent desktop pair or even a good 2.1 solution would be more that useful. I'll add that to the list.

Cheers,
D.

 

[Krispwee]

Thanks for the responses guys - much appreciated!

tyranical - I've not had any real issue with Windows 7 64-bit, tbh m8. I needed to edit an ini file to get UT3 working and it has been fine ever since. Strangely however, that used to crash all the time in XP. Oh, and I tried to install Starsiege again on here this afternoon. But bearing in mind it's from 1998, I didn't have much luck - the installer reporting that "...the version of Windows NT is not sufficient enough' - lol!

I think I'll take a closer look at the SSD drives, but I think they are still a little price-rich for me - certainly when compared with the capacity available with more standard issue SATA drives.

Gareth - interesting point that you make about the iMac. Ironically, the dual-OS nature of the Macs these days, might actually help in promoting games coming out on the PC in the first place. I do think that even a 27" iMac would be a compromise as a gaming platform though - and that Magic Mouse would just feel sluggish compared to the latest Logitech and Razer offerings. As for graphics - even the quad-core 27 incher only has an ATi 4850 onboard, with the GDDR3 memory. I'm still on my 4870 with GDDR5 in my own PC.

Longy - I did forget the speakers! I know 110% that he won't want/need the full 7.1 offerings and the like. Either a decent desktop pair or even a good 2.1 solution would be more that useful. I'll add that to the list.

Cheers,
D.

If you can push for the Aego M's for speakers its worth it. They are around the £120 mark. If not then the JBL Creatures are nice and pretty good quality and you should be able to get them on the cheap as replacement ones are coming out very soon.

 

[Marky_]

You play Tribes?

 

[ChrisR]

I'd personally go for a small ssd for os/office install and then a larger second drive like a WD black for large installations and data.

The new Kingston 40gig drives are quite good and cheap, about 70 quid and use the intel controller of more expensive drives.

Read speeds are very very good but write speeds are slow, however they are adequate for an os drive.

Or even better get a few and RAID them, will up those write speeds nicely

http://www.trustedreviews.com/stora...n-SSDNow-V-Series-40GB-Desktop-Upgrade-Kit/p1

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1111/1/

SSD tech is still pretty new and seems to be always changing so I don't think I'd be wanting to spend a lot on them just yet, but for £70 or so it's worth a try.

Going to be getting one of these at work as soon as my supplier has them, will borrow it and try it at home

 

[Darren S]

You play Tribes?

Only had a quick dabble, m8. My cousin in Australia went mental over this - kept asking me to go online (hmmm - on a 56k modem?!) and it seems to have a proper core following.

I much preferred the 'mech side of the game in terms of Starsiege and others like MechWarrior, etc.

D.