Reccomended Build?

R

Rising Phoenix

Geek Trainee
Basically, I have been given the power to come up with requirements for in my dad's words "The best gaming computer"... What do people reccomend? I'd say, the more "affordable", the better but basically, what is the best of the best, and if that seems to outta budget reach, what is the best out of the affordables? I think the last estimate was somewhere in the region of €1500 (But anything considerably under that would be preffered. :P) but I think that leaves plenty of room for some good stuff? no?

I'll be using it for games, but I dunno if it might be worth mentioning that I do a lot of Photoshop painting too, and just a tiny bit of 3d modelling (still no good at it)...

thanks.
 
Haven't really worked with the Euro, but I was able to find a reputable site with an Irish variant of it's site, Komplett.ie.

Motherboard: Abit AB9 € 144.00
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 € 192.50
RAM: Corsair XMS2 2x512MB PC2-6400 € 192.00
Video Card: Gainward 7900GT € 274.00
Hard Drive: Western Digital 250GB SATAII € 81.51
Optical Drive: Samsung 18x DVDRW € 40.99
Sound Card: Terratec Aureon 7.1 € 64.00
Power Supply: OCZ GameXtreme 600 € 130.00
Case: CoolerMaster Centurion 532 € 75.00

Total: € 1,194.00 (+shipping and taxes)
 
Looks fairly reasonable... Cheers. I'll get my dad to have a run through those...

I'm not very good at the hardware, but comparing that CPU with my own, I'm not sure if it's an upgrade, even though it probably is?

atm, I have an Intel Pentium 4, 2Ghz. I'm wondering, does the "2mb" on that CPU refer to the cache? if so, Everest is telling me mine's 512mb...

What I might do actually is list out what I already have, and compare them? would that be better?

Also, might be worth mentioning that my goal is to be able to run Half Life 2's HDR, I can't run it now, not sure if that would make a difference to what's been suggested, which look pretty tidy as it is.
 
Yes. The 2MB on the Core 2 Duo is the amount of L2 cache it has.
Don't rely on clock speed to tell you how good a product is. While it's not to be ignored, the Core 2 Duo's do more work per clock more efficiently than the Pentium 4's ever did. You can pit the E6400 up against AMD's Athlon64 FX-60 and it goes toe-to-toe with it. Keep in mind the FX-60, up until just recently was the fastest desktop CPU available, and cost close to $1000 USD. Until the Core 2 Duo came out, AMD was slaughtering Intel's Pentium 4/Pentium D in performance.
Needless to say, I think you will certainly see a difference. Additionally, you should benefit from the dual core feature of the Core 2 Duo. You won't have trouble running HL2 with HDR enabled at all.
 
My dad has asked me to run this system through you guys... I, personally aren't too sure what everything is, they look a little like numbers and letters to me. :p If I could get a comparison between what's been suggested and this, below, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Standard system (for initial price):
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz | ASROCK ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 945P (SATAII/DDRII)
ATI Radeon X1900 GT 256MB Sapphire | 250GB Samsung SATA-II 7200rpm/8MB HD
1024MB 533MHz DDR II RAM Kingston | LG H10N 16x Multiformat Double Layer DVD-RW
8 Channel Superior Quality Audio | WLAN WIFI 140Mpbs / DSL-ready Ethernet
 
That would also work. The 945 is a little slower than the P965 chipset, but you'll probably be hard pressed to find a difference that you'd notice.

The only question I have is what power supply you'll be using.
 
Big B said:
That would also work. The 945 is a little slower than the P965 chipset, but you'll probably be hard pressed to find a difference that you'd notice.

The only question I have is what power supply you'll be using.
Click to expand...

u wudnt believe it B but a worker in a local store where i went for work experience recommended a Q-TEC 650watt psu (£70) and said that is well worth it. then he changed his mind and sed that the X-POWER 650 watt sli PSU for the same price, he sed that is really cheap for a 650watt psu. what a dumbass.
 
Not sure, think a 350 Watt... That's all it says... doesn't say what make or type or anything... We'd probably want a 400 or 425?
 
The Radeon X1900 series draws a lot of power. Wattage is a poor way to measure a PSU. As izzy noted, he was offered a really cheap 680W. There's a reason it's so cheap: it's crap. There are several lines of voltages (referred to as rails) that provide power to various components. The one that is becoming more important is the 12V rail, as PCI Express video cards and modern CPU's all run off of it. Yes, the two power hogs in a system run off the same DC power. That 680W may have 1 14A 12V rail, and you want to have at the minimum 25A, 30-35A if you're thinking SLI or Crossfire. They may have a high 5V and/or 3.3V, which was good in the days of the Pentium 3 and older.

In short, the PSU is something you don't want to ignore. You're investing good money in your CPU, RAM, and video card. The last thing you want to do is drop a bottom barrel PSU in there. A good PSU is going to start in the range of $80-120 USD (I think it's about the same values for the Euro), and start at around 500W, give or take a few watts.

Some common, good quality units would be the following:
-Antec TruePower TPII-550 (550W)
-Enermax EG565P-VE/EG565P-AX (535W)
-OCZ Powerstream 520 (520W)
-Tagan TG-480-U22 (480W)
-Hiper Type-R 580 (580W)

Also, anything 500W or higher from Silverstone or Seasonic would well be worth your consideration. If you really want to go for the gold, look at PC Power & Cooling, but do understand they're the Rolls Royce of PSU's, so expect to pay accordingly.

I've also got a more in-depth PSU FAQ in my signature.
 
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