Ok so planning on buying this machine asap but wanting to have a bit of advice on anything i may have done wrong.

the spec for the machine is i need a beast for 700-800 pounds. I intend to use this for about 3-4 years and so far everytime i've bought a machine i've intended to elave space for upgrading but then haven't done so. i just wait 3-4 years by which time any upgrade isn't worth while and buy a new one. so this is what i have come up with from ebuyer.

Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM £29.99

Sony DRU-190A 20X DVD±RW DL & DVD-RAM IDE internal - Retail With Multi Bezel & Nero £16.56

Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 XMS2 Dominator Memory Xtreme Performance Kit with Fan CL5 2.1 V £84.99

Hiper 770W 5th Gen Type-R PSU - With 4x Integrated USB Ports, 4x PCI-E, 4x SATA £84.60

Antec Mini P180 Black MATX Case - No PSU £59.99

DFI LANPARTY JR P45-T2RS iP45 Socket 775 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard £99.69

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket 775 (3.0GHz) 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £137.46

BFG GTX260 OC2 Edition 896MB Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card £226.32
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for a total of 744.79 inc vat (i missed out im buying a cable)
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OK so my concerns about this machine are

A> the 4gb memory. i know xp limits at 3gb but you can do a tweak to get 4. anyone know about doing it is it worth it or should i stick with 2?

B> the powersupply. is this actually too much power? i dont see my self upgrading to SLI or anything

C> the motherboard. basically i looked for the most expensive mATX mobo i could find on the site. it said lanparty so i assumed the engineers had gamers in mind when they made the thing.


anyone see anyhting wrong with what im buying or can recommend alternatives/comrpomises i.e. smaller power supply, bigger somethign else?

Well if you want it to last 3 - 4 years I would buy a quad core processor.

Not looked up your mobo yet, but you want something that will work well with your DDR2 1066... £100 sounds cheap, but then Had me crying into my 8800's.

Also your psu is probably more than enough for that rig. I have a 750w Toughpower (Thermaltake ) running a quad-core, 4gb RAM @ 2.1v and Twin 8800gtx's. Although I could probably do with an extra 100w, the computer generally runs fine.

My advice would be to hold off till after Xmas also if you can. People say prices for current kit are going to drop loads as things like DDR3 and PCI-express 2 roll in.

That setup will definately kick ass though. Those fast dual cores have an advantage in one way over older quads like my Q6600 with their FSB of 1333 (Q6600 is 1066)... Something you'll have to weigh up, especially with that fast memory.

Im also thinking of getting a new desktop, but have decided to hold off until January when the new intel core i7's are out. You should see fairly decent price cuts on processors then.

Edit: Actually the core i7 is coming out this year so im just thinking of january sales

Something to remember though is that quads will probably give the worst TF2 performance :/ Being that TF2 is single core native and individually the quads cores aren't usually as strong. If you are not doing things like rendering, music making stuff etc and only playing games I see no reason atm to go for more than a dual core. Or you could wait for the new architecture like the others say.

phook. was soo eager to buy it tonight but then you brought up the "why not wait card".

now my problem is that makes a lot of sense; i just bougth a new (first) car (a metallic orange fiat punto. oh yes, orange. i went there) and my colleage at work is saying if you bought a new car you should save money and drive it on the road a bit incase of repairs.

but but but...

fallout 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! !

*sigh*

you guys talk sense though. the reason i didnt go quad core is because of the same reason i regret getting a 64bit amd proc last time. you need to wait for software to get used to it. now admiteddly in 4 years you'd expect it to work out, but my current trend in gaming seems to be, buy a reasonably good computer and then spend the next year or so playing old games i've wanted to play all Maxed out, rather than buying a mega beast (something i'd consider in the 1000£ region) and being able to play maxed out games for the next two years or so.



aaaargh torn apart. the usual if i wait a bit more i can get more for my money is one of those reasons that would keep you always waiting but on the other hand the whole christmas waiting thing and cheapness is killing me.


ok so lets be reasonable, how much money do you think roughly my kit would drop by. if it would drop by something (in total) of an order of 200-300 pounds for the whole thing then yes i'll wait, because thats a price for a projector which i also really really want. if on the other hand it means that i'll get the whole thing for 50 pounds less, Maybe 100 pounds less, then perhaps not and i'll buy it now.

so any ideas howm uch i can see myself saving by waiting till christmass?? anyone else waited till christmass and seen crazy assed savings?

the things i can see myself saving money on really are the proc, ram and thats about it. the optical drive and case most probably not, at least not much. the PSU likely to stay similar just be a better one. and HD will continue price drop trend as normal (and i dont want to be downloading anything on this machine anyway so HD space is purely for running apps and games).

Well I think that even if you wanted to go for a machine now you could save quite a bit of money on a cheaper system than the one you have quoted

I'm not really the most techie guy, that would have to fall to Pilsy or K3D, I think asking their opinion on the base bits to build a good e8400 and 9800GTX system would be the best bet as a 260 is still expensive for what they are atm and you can get a nice 9800 for £130. Also I think you could save on the PSU if you don't want to go SLI, I run a Corsair 520hx (£50-£60) and that handles everything fine and my 8800gtx has higher power requirements than the 9800, I also run an e8400.

I'm running fallout3 on the 8800gtx at 1680x1050 loads of stuff on highest and it's still over 30fps so a 9800 would definitely be enough for any game of this generation or the next imo.

Also worth mentioning I think, I had this through in an email the other day http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-P4584A these sort of deals seem like a good cheap way to get started, but won't be as good in the end as picking everything yourself and building from scratch.

I second the point about Quad cores. Although I do own one myself and my TF2 performance is great (I've not even enabled the multi-core option yet )
Other games, though, have been a bit more hit and miss performance-wise; although I blame throwing Vista64 into the mix too.
Some seem to fly under Vista in DX10... others I've resorted to installing in XP for proper performance.

Unless you're happy overclocking a quad to get the most out of it one of those snappy, fast Dual-cores with the 1333mhz you were thinking about should fit in nicely with the timings on your 1066 DDR2.

But like N said, someone like PiLsY's advice is golden here!

a bump so pilsey might find it when he's on. and also;

anyone else waited before to christmas sales and knows roughly how much you can expect to save on a machine by waiting? still very trigger happy on the buy option, but they ran out of my processor so i guess i'll wait a bit. just dont know how long i can sit around watching people add "omg i finished fallout 3 and it was so amazing my brain melted through my peepee" posts.

I run a quad core and if anything it runs better on tf2 than a single or dual core (with a bit of tweaking you can set it up so that each core has set jobs i have one core handling textures etc while another is dealing with the extra sound processing and the other two handling everything else so it is useful) but if you want to make it cheaper buy a 250gb samsung spinpoint for the hard disk cause they are cheaper and more reliable and then get a Sapphire HD 4870 for the graphics card so you reduce the price with minimal performance change and the power supply is definitely powerful enough instead of being in a sense of ambiguity with the 260.