TLicense Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 My home PC has finally made it's journey to the scrap heap a certainty after the processor burnt out yesterday. A couple of weeks ago one of the RAM banks blew so I've decided to give myself a little post Christmas treat and get a new gaming rig. I've never bought a system before, as I've always built my own, but am willing to go down whatever route is going to give me the best performance for my £750 budget. Apart from the Hard drives, which are 2 x 200GB Seagate Barracuda's, there's not really anything worth carrying over to any "new build" so I'd need everything from scratch. The monitor I've got is a 19" dell CRT, so that could probably do with an upgrade too. As for what it's used for, I do a bit of CAD using Catia V5r13 and a fair bit of gaming. I mostly play driving sims like GTR2 and FPS like the Battlefield series. So what to get, and where from? As I said, I don't want to spend anymore than £750 for the lot but other than that am open to options. Suggestions please! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 My home PC has finally made it's journey to the scrap heap a certainty after the processor burnt out yesterday. A couple of weeks ago one of the RAM banks blew so I've decided to give myself a little post Christmas treat and get a new gaming rig. I've never bought a system before, as I've always built my own, but am willing to go down whatever route is going to give me the best performance for my £750 budget. Apart from the Hard drives, which are 2 x 200GB Seagate Barracuda's, there's not really anything worth carrying over to any "new build" so I'd need everything from scratch. The monitor I've got is a 19" dell CRT, so that could probably do with an upgrade too. As for what it's used for, I do a bit of CAD using Catia V5r13 and a fair bit of gaming. I mostly play driving sims like GTR2 and FPS like the Battlefield series. So what to get, and where from? As I said, I don't want to spend anymore than £750 for the lot but other than that am open to options. Suggestions please! I'd go with something like what i have attached. 6 months or so down the line i would buy a raptor drive. DDR3 is still too expensive for me. If you plan on running 32bit windows then u could cut the ram down to 2gb (or 3 if available) also. Regardless of what you go for it still works out better in the long run building your own PC. If you don't, regardless of where you buy, you will end up with generic parts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creative Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 personally I think DDR3 is getting there for price. I would keep the monitor you are using already as I feel monitors are a personal choice. I would go for something like this. total comes in at £775. I have added a velociRaptor drive to use as your main OS drive and you can uses your 2 x 200gig for everything else. you could always take that out and add a LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray & HD Combi drive instead of the hard drive and the dvd drive so you could hook it upto your main tv for HD films etc. I like my dual core and with a little bit of tweaking you can get them to run very high speeds. My 3ghz dual core is running at 3.6Ghz at the moment without any problems on stock cooling. might be a bit overkill... but it would be bloody fast! lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 Thats a DDR 2 motherboard though is it not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewOW Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 I'm very surprised that you even have time for gaming with your heavy work schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creative Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 Thats a DDR 2 motherboard though is it not? i thought that but its specs are ddr3.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLicense Posted December 31, 2008 Author Share Posted December 31, 2008 I'm very surprised that you even have time for gaming with your heavy work schedule. Need to have something to help me wind down for an hour when I get home, plus anyway I'm going to have a month in the summer to do something or other. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b_have Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 Need to have something to help me wind down for an hour when I get home, plus anyway I'm going to have a month in the summer to do something or other. ;) Forget the gaming, howzabout four consecutive track weekends? I'd be up for that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLicense Posted January 1, 2009 Author Share Posted January 1, 2009 Do you guys recon it's worth the extra expense of getting an i7 CPU and ddr3 memory? Am just thinking it would be a bit more future proof, or should I spend the money on getting a better graphics card? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 Game console rather than a PC? Cheaper.. less likely to crash? (Mind you I'm not a game player so could be talking rhubarb ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
osso Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 DDR3 isnt that expensive, I'd get 2 sticks of 1GB DDR3 ram, leaving another 2 slots to upgrade to 4GB later if you feel you need it.... also I wouldnt bother with i7, get an intel quad instead around 2.8GHz.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLicense Posted January 1, 2009 Author Share Posted January 1, 2009 The reason why I'm thinking of going for i7 is that in a couple of years, there's more likely to be a quicker i7 processors, so it makes for a fairly cheap future upgrade. If I stick with a quad core, then when the socket type becomes obsolete I'll have to buy yet another motherboard. (That's exactly the problem I had with buying a quick socket 939 rather than a slightly slower AM2) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 DDR 3 is a 50/50 call imo. It all honestly depends how long you want it to last. RAM is dirt cheap now. If you want to be on top of your games then you will have to overhaul your PC at least every 2 years, that does include a new motherboard. If you were to come to me and ask me to build/spec you one then I would recomend you build a rig that you will replace in two years and invest in a i7 then. Spend less than £750 (you can do it for sub £500) build a PC for today but invest in bits you can reuse such as the case and monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 What thoughts do you folks have on the AGEIA PhysX accelerator cards? Worth the investment for an enhanced gaming experience or a bit of a gimmick? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 I wouldn't bother with a Core i7 as you're not in need of bleeding (expensive) edge. I think the first list was pretty good, Q6700 and lots of ram for CATIA...if the CATIA software you use can use the CUDA engine from nVidia it would be worth going for an nVidia Cuda card like the GTX260 instead of the HD4850 listed. Ageia is now owned by nVidia, so it's in the latest GTX cards, so as an add on it's not a good idea, as you can get it built in... The really hot thing to get at the moment is an SSD Hard Drive, these are more expensive than std hard drives but they are amazingly fast, and if you're loading big files into memory then one would be worth its weight in gold. Have a look for OCZ V2 SSD's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Michael - at first they seemed a great idea, now they truely are a gimmick. Nvidia have released drivers that support PhysX acceleration. IIRC its 8 series upwards cards that are compatible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homer Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 The really hot thing to get at the moment is an SSD Hard Drive, these are more expensive than std hard drives but they are amazingly fast, and if you're loading big files into memory then one would be worth its weight in gold. Have a look for OCZ V2 SSD's. Is that really the case? Last time I looked (a month or two ago) the benchmark results were still far in favour of good old 7.2krpm HDD. Access rates are obviously quicker on the SSD, but real world tests for gamers showed that the HDD's were still 50-100%faster reading and writing volume data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Don't know how much you have looked into it Darryl but a trusted snippet can be found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive,2006-3.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Is that really the case? Last time I looked (a month or two ago) the benchmark results were still far in favour of good old 7.2krpm HDD. Access rates are obviously quicker on the SSD, but real world tests for gamers showed that the HDD's were still 50-100%faster reading and writing volume data. I've not seen those reviews...The SSD's should always be faster due to no moving parts...The std HDD's simply can't compete on a I/O level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 seek/Access times and read speed should be better for flash. I understand for sustained writes conventional hard disks are still significantly faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 seek/Access times and read speed should be better for flash. I understand for sustained writes conventional hard disks are still significantly faster. Write speeds are indeed better, but you should be doing much of that in a game. The fact of the matter is that not all SSD's are equal yet as the technology is maturing (fast) and so it's costing a bit at the moment for the truely bonkers fast cards like the Intel's. BUT it's not just about speed, it's lack of heat, noise and less space required. If you have the cash for them they are IMO the best way forward for the standard user. It's worth noting that SSD speeds ramp up with capacity in most cases. The 64Gb SSD's are usually blown away by their bigger 120-250Gb cousins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLicense Posted January 2, 2009 Author Share Posted January 2, 2009 I think they're probably one to keep an eye on for the future, but other than storing created files on them, I couldn't justify the cost of one compared to a standard HDD. At the moment I've got a 200gb HDD that I've partitioned into 50Gb of OS and the rest for software and data. That get's backed up onto the second HDD. I've currently got about 30Gb spare. (It's not particularly tidy in there to be fair!) So I'd be looking for something greater than 200Gb to make it worth while and at the moment they're just prohibitively expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLicense Posted January 2, 2009 Author Share Posted January 2, 2009 This is quite interesting:- http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-overclock,2112.html Off the back of this, it looks like the better option for me would be to go for an i7 cpu and a half decent graphics card. Then when the graphics card prices drop simply upgrade that. Sure it wouldn't be as quick as a balls out dual core system, but in a year or so when the graphics card prices have dropped, I can upgrade that (which would be cheaper than upgrading the Mboard and CPU) and it should be a step change quicker. Plus in the meantime Catia, which I believe is multicore optimised should perform better with the i7. Sound sensible to you guys??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Core i7 and a LGA1366 mobo is an expensive but route but if you feel processing power is the most useful to you then obviously it's the best route forward. You could afterall get a 920 now and upgrade that as funds allow. I expect the P6 (1366) mobo's to be in use for a good few years/cpu's to come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 I'd definately buy a lower end i7 and top of the line motherboard if I were to buy now, like you say much easier upgrade in the future then when you can just drop in a faster i7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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