Gaming base-station advice

[Consoles_Suck]

Hi(long time no use of forums), ive lately had no desktop pc for quite a while due to the use of my laptop and the sale of my old pc(specs in siggy).

Anyway, my budget is £1100 - deffinatley not over this amount. I only want a base-station and already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.

I was thinking along the following lines but any experiences, better prices or advise is welcomed.

XFX GeForce 6800 GS Extreme XXX Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-056-XF) [size=-1]
[/size]-Price: £154.95 [size=-2](£182.07 Including VAT at 17.5%)[/size]
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/6800PCI_Series.html#aGX_2d056_2dXF

DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)


-Price: £129.95 [size=-2](£152.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)[/size]

 

[Consoles_Suck]

ok.. the post was cut off half way... anyway, i would greatly appreciate any advice of mobo's processors, ram and graphics that you have

 

[Me__2001]

from the bechmarks and reviews that card seems pretty damn good have a look for some comparisons between that and a normal 6800GT or ultra also the X800 series are pretty sweet for their price, that motherboard is good i think you'll be happy with that one just make sure it has a silent chipset cooler, a 3700 Athlon 64 would be a good gaming CPU or get a 4000 if its in budget, get atleast 1GB of Corsair, Geil or OCZ RAM and you should have a nice system

 

[Consoles_Suck]

ok, ive priced ur recomendations up on overclockers.co.uk and are in budget with 2gb of OCZ pc3200 dual-channel platinum series and a 4000+ processor


the graphics benchmarks do indeed look inpressive, however a 7800gt OCUK branded grx card is around £20 more, i havent heard much on these cards but the clock speed seems lower, will a later chipset be better?

ive also incuded a:
Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV (CA-005-HP)
and a
Akasa Eclipse-62 Aluminum Case (CA-005-AK)

 

[Consoles_Suck]

oh, btw - whats with the 'make sure its a silent cooler', is this an issue as i believe the northbridge is not passivley cooled on this board or any DFI Lan-Party mobo

 

[Me__2001]

because the fans are usually so small and the air they need to move to make any affect is loads they spin incredibly fast as an example the ASUS A8N-SLI deluxe has a NB fan that spins about 9000 Rpm which most people have found to be really annoying, if it has a heatpipe then your ok or you could change it for the zalman NB cooler

the newest cards should be better but i would get a differend brand, the leadtek or the BFG would be my choice over OCUK

Edit: you should be ok with the NB fan as it seems to be quite big

 

[Consoles_Suck]

ok.. all seems good, once last thing is that i read somewere 2 paired 66000gt's perform better than a single 6800gt, is this true?

 

[Me__2001]

looks good to me, but if you get the A8N32-SLI from Asus then you get a heat pipe for the NB so you dont need to get the Zalman heatsink, it also costs the same as the DFI

 

[Me__2001]

ok.. all seems good, once last thing is that i read somewere 2 paired 66000gt's perform better than a single 6800gt, is this true?

ok im confused now, anyway depending on the game yes the 6600GT's will out do the 6800 GT or Ultra

 

[tomsega]

If you're building this for gaming, I wouldn't get anything less than a 7800gt with a budget like that. You'll get much better gaming performance in getting an average processor (like a 3200) and a very good graphics card, than you would doing it the other way around. My 6800gt is already struggling a little under Call of Duty 2 and FEAR, and it'll probably only be 6 months before it feels more obviously middle-of-the-road. Also, the Xbox 360 has been alikened in performance to something inbetween a 6800 and a 7800. Judging by your username, you'd want to beat THAT wouldn't you?

EDIT: I agree with ME_2001 - The SanDiego 3700 is the best bang-for-buck Athlon 64 processor. The reason for this is because it has more cache than the previous CPU's - so it is actually physically more powerful rather than just clocked at a higher speed. Similarly, I think the 4000 is intrinsically just a higher clocked 3700, so you might be better off overclocking one of those and getting a decent case/fans.

 

[Consoles_Suck]

judging by my username i suppose so . Ok well ive just realised that overclockers dont accept visa-electron which effectivley stopped me ordering what i was going to. However.. as i dont want to be beat by a console, do you know any other sites that accept electron and are reliable and i can re-order in a fassion that flattens xbox-360

 

[Reefsmoka]

If I were spending £1100 on just the base station of a computer I would defiantly aim higher than a loppy 6800 GS!


I would be looking at:

AMD64 4000+ = £250
2 Gig Ram = £200
7800GTX = £340
Mobo = £100
HDD = £60
CD/RW = £20
DVD/RW = £40
Case = £40
PSU = £60

Thats what I would be aiming for, no less .

 

[tomsega]

I haven't come across someone that doesn't accept Electron in aaaages. Scan and Ebuyer certainly do.

By the way, in response to your 2x6600 vs 6800gt question: The two 6600's will only really Equal the 6800gt, but will be MUCH louder, un-overclockable, and more demanding on your PSU. At the same time, a single 6800gt costs the same - so if anything it would be better to just get ONE for now and maybe add another later. Similarly, however, 2 6800gt's will only perform and costs as much as a singular 7800.... and on it goes....

 

[Consoles_Suck]

hehe... hmm well i probably wasnt looking so high since i was spending like £200 on case and psu -.-

know of a good online retailer?

 

[Reefsmoka]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/http://www.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Consoles_Suck]

i was using overclockers lol, they dont appear to accept visa elcectron + i emailed asking about electron with no reply and there phone service was 'busy'. So i would have to have a problem with them

 

[Me__2001]

try www.overclock.co.uk

 

[PotGuy]

3700+ is definately the best processor for the money.

You can get it for £159 including VAT - thats £80 cheaper than a 4000+ would usually be - and can be effortlessly oc'ed to match it.