Building a gaming machine for £1200

[Bob_the_lost]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2670&p=2

 

[bmd]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2670&p=2

Ok, I'm convinced, it's a nice case and it comes with a psu. Nice one.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Once i get myself a job i'm getting one of those myself, especially at that price

 

[bmd]

From Ebuyer -

Antec P150 UK Mid-Tower Case Aluminium - with NEO-HE 430W PSU £66.67

BFG NVIDIA 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 PCI-E £268.05

Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz - Skt775 Fsb1066 4mb £196.94

Shipping Band: £4.79
Shipping Surcharge: £0.60
SubTotal: £537.05
VAT: £94.00
Total: £631.05

From Overclockers UK -

Gigabyte GA_965P_DQ6 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £129.95

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £107.95

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB ST3200820AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £47.95 x2 £95.90

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM £21.95

Sony DDU-1615 DVD-ROM (Silver) - OEM £12.00

Subtotal £367.75
VAT £64.36
Total £432.11

Total £1063.16

I can't work out what ram to buy for the board. Ideally I want two 1GB sticks but do I need a super dooper matched pair or can I get away with any old ram as long as it's DDR2 800?

eta: found it, I think. Is that ram ok for the board?

Also, I've got a 250GB external Hitachi drive that I was going to put in it but looking at the price of a couple of 250GB Seagate Barracuda drives I may well put them in, what do you think?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

That RAM is fine, you could go faster, or slower but that's the optimum price/performance ratio as it is. Matched pairs are preferable, but as long as they are roughly similar it should work.

Seagate barracuda .10 drives are excellent, .9 and .8 (the cheap ones) are not so great, but good enough (come with a nice warranty too). Overclockers has samsung spinpoint 250GB drives (SATA of course) for just under £50, which are the cheapest i can find.

 

[bmd]

Ok, I've changed the ram to the GeIL as it's on offer and after reading a review of it it looks pretty good. 2 x 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives, an NEC DVD RW and a Sony DVD Rom drive. That's it, sorted. I hope. Just under £1100, which is nice.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Looks good.

 

[bmd]

Looks good.

You're getting bored of this now, I can tell.

Thanks very much for your input bob, it's really appreciated.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

No problem, it's just hard to see all that hardware and know you shouldn't be buying any of it

 

[bmd]

Well, I've bought it all, no doubt I'll be posting up here crying about how it won't work, 6 months later that it's full of spyware, 6 months after that wondering whether the hard drive is going, then finally asking about what are the best parts to buy for a new machine.

 

[tw1ggy5]

ah i was just about to post a build til i saw the last post.
Very accurate tho, *kicks a64 machine thats crawling along for no good reason*

 

[stevepinker]

If i could add one thing it would be to get a good power supply, I got me a cheap £35 to run a 6600Gt and it gave out after about 2months
It said 550w on the box but it was shit and cause me no end of trouble

But who wants to pay £70 for a PSU its just not a sexy purchase


Also when i upgrade my computer after that i found no real benefit to the super ram and replaced it with cheaper ram with no noticeable lost of speed

 

[bmd]

ah i was just about to post a build til i saw the last post.
Very accurate tho, *kicks a64 machine thats crawling along for no good reason*

What was the build? I got quite a lot of inspiration from the one you posted on Wookeys thread, be interesting to see what you're thinking about.

 

[bmd]

It's all arrived! Fuck me I'm more excited than a dog with two cocks. I'm wearing the t-shirt that came with the graphics card and I've put the teflon pads on the bottom of my mouse that also came with the graphics card. What now?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

It's all arrived! Fuck me I'm more excited than a dog with two cocks. I'm wearing the t-shirt that came with the graphics card and I've put the teflon pads on the bottom of my mouse that also came with the graphics card. What now?

Stop there, once you've gotten over the "wow" factor of having all that and put the tshirt on it all goes down hill.

 

[bmd]

Stop there, once you've gotten over the "wow" factor of having all that and put the tshirt on it all goes down hill.

Still, it's a great t-shirt, I look like a right geek in it. I think it was designed by a pc enthusiast.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Still, it's a great t-shirt, I look like a right geek in it. I think it was designed by a pc enthusiast.

I've never gotten one

 

[bmd]

Good grief, this is really doing my head in. There are no other power lines coming off the psu except the main atx plug and the smaller cpu power supply. How do I power the optical drives if there are no lines from the psu? I've looked all over the bloody thing to check if they're somehow hidden but there really are no other lines.

HELP!

eta: Ok, so it's got detachable power cables, the outputs are right underneath the main cable. Useful.

Hate the case, there is only one screw per optical drive to hold them in with, they're flapping about in there like no ones business. The elastic band set up for the HDDs is an unbelievable faff to sort out as well.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Heh, the Neo HE is a modular PSU. The only wires that are fixed are the main ATX ones, the rest plug into the sockets.

Sockets run along the top of the PSU, you should have the wires somewhere, if not then give ebuyer an email and complain. Check out the write up here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article273-page1.html

 

[bmd]

Yeah cheers mate, sorted that, and the optical drives (I should have rtfm first).

Now I can't find the lead from the power switch and when I do find it the only place to plug it in on the MB that looks even remotely like the right place is taken by a lead called 'pwr led' that plugs in to a place on the MB called...wait for it...'power led' and that's for the led for the power switch.

So it won't switch on. Could the power switch just be coming straight from the psu atx supply? I've got a diagram here with all the power inputs on the MB and there's no mention of one for the power switch.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

The motherboard manual should have a complete and exhaustive list of which pins are for what in addition to the general labled photo. There has to be a power switch in there, probably near that pwr led you found, there's normally a 12x2 or so bank of pins for you to connect up.

 

[bmd]

The motherboard manual should have a complete and exhaustive list of which pins are for what in addition to the general labled photo. There has to be a power switch in there, probably near that pwr led you found, there's normally a 12x2 or so bank of pins for you to connect up.

Yeah found it, the manual is really coming in handy. @me

 

[bmd]

We have lift off!

I was running Hitman: Blood Money last night with everything up to 11 and it didn't miss a beat, I'm well chuffed with it.

I'll be converting a few vids tonight whilst playing a game to see if it can handle that, probably not but it's fun trying.

I was wondering if I need a 64bit edition of windows, does it make much difference?

Anyway, despite my whining it wasn't that difficult to build, I reckon it took me about 6 hours in all.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

I was wondering if I need a 64bit edition of windows, does it make much difference?

None, you only need 64bit when you start using more than 2GB of RAM. If XP were programed better then it'd be >3.2GB. Either way you don't need it.

 

[bmd]

None, you only need 64bit when you start using more than 2GB of RAM. If XP were programed better then it'd be >3.2GB. Either way you don't need it.

Cheers Bob, you're a star, thanks very much for all your help with this, I really appreciate it.