building a pc and needing help

Headshot

i hope this is the right thread but im building a new pc [im not but a friend is]anyway i got my self a x800 so what else do i need.my budget is 600 euro thats all
i have a monitor already so what else do i need

i want the maximum performance out of my graphic card [or near enough]

i would like to have a cool case but cheap

if i had to get parts from america i would

so can ye help

duridian

You are lucky to have a rather good graphics card for a startoff but even allowing for that, €600 is still not a lot to work with, especially if you plan for a gaming rig. You will probably have to make some compromises if you want to stay within budget. For example you may have to sacrifice one or other of things like storage space (hard disk size), or the amount of ram, or a faster cpu or a dvd-writer, or more featured motherboard etc. in order to stay on the €600, basically you can't have everything top of the range for that sort of bucks is what I am saying, you will have to decide what you need most.

CPU(Allowing about €150): I presume you want to go better than Athlon XP since you are trying to sell an XP system at the mo(I think everyone on boards knows that by now ). Athlon64 seems to be the favoured processor by most gamers but Pentium4 is decent too. Intel's Celeron and AMD Sempron are less powerful processors and should be avoided if possible. Also you may be able to buy a slower chip and overclock it to get more speed that way but remember that if you do this you will also need to improve the cooling which could add expense as well. Realistically on your budget you are looking at either:
1)Athlon 64 2800 or 3000 in socket 754(I think the newer socket 939 models would be a tad too dear for you)
or
2) Pentium 4 2.8 or 3.0 GHz in Socket 478 (again the newer LGA775 Pentiums would be too costly, not necessarily in themselves but the motherboards and ram needed by these cpus are quite dear, plus most LGA775 motherboards have PCI-E graphics slots and you need AGP for your X800, don't you?)
If you don't plan to overclock then the basic fan/heatsink that come with the cpu should be ok, you are on a budget after all.

So far €150

Motherboard(allowing up to about €90) : It will depend on the CPU you decide on. However, many motherboards have extra features like Firewire, loads of RAID controllers/ hard drive connnectors or gigabit lan which push up the price of the board quite a bit. If you do not need or intend to use these features then why buy them? Many of the top of the range boards have similar but less "fancy" stablemates that are significantly cheaper. If possible stick with the likes of Abit, Asus, MSI as they make the best quality boards nowadays and also these three tend to have a good range of different boards.

So far €240

RAM: (up to about €110)You should get at least 512MB of RAM in this day and age. The type of RAM used nowadays is DDR (double data rate) ram. This has increased in speed also over the past 2 years and the type you would want for either cpu type I mentioned above is DDR400 also called PC3200. Another factor in ram is the CAS rating, with this a lower number is better (eg. CAS 2.5 is better than CAS 3.0) but don't worry too much about the CAS.

So far €350

Hard drive: Most motherboards nowadays can use the newer (and faster) Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives so you should get one of these, but make sure your motherboard can accept a SATA. A decent 80GB SATA drive can be bought for about €70

So far €420
That leaves about €180 to get a case and power supply and an optical drive. It would be wise to get yourself a decent power supply of at least 300Watts. There are cheaper brands which seem to give more watts for less money (eg. Qtec) but they are a bad deal in the long run. You are better off giving €60 for an Antec Truepower 330Watt than paying maybe €40 for the likes of a Qtec 550Watt. If I was on a €600 budget I would hold off on buying a DVDwriter for the moment and get a DVDrom/CDRW combi thereby leaving a bit more for the PSU and Case. You could possibly get a DVDwriter if you went for the like of the Antec SLK1600(link) which includes a good 300W PSU for around €60. Alternatively you could shave a bit off by cutting back on the other parts but if I was building this for gaming I wouldn't like to skimp on the core items of CPU, motherboard and memory and you could always save up and add a DVDwriter later.
Choose your parts carefully, do a bit of research on them before buying and you should be ok.
Oh and buying stuff from America isn't the most practical I'd say unless you have a tech savvy relative coming over on hols soon or something.
The main sources people on boards use are:
Komplett
OcUK
JES (German supplier)

Edit: Needless to say, watch the for sale forums on boards. You might pick up a bargain.

BloodBath

What he said but you should really get at least a 400w psu. That rig would use about 300w of power so getting a 300w psu is pushing it tight.


BloodBath

Headshot

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118334&cks=PRL

i was thinking of getting that upgrade kit

i wouldnt mind people giving me links to what i need to build my new pc

Nukem

Just looked have you told us the exact spec of the X800,it would help,if its a PCI-E or AGP would have a big a big bearing on the RAM and MOBO hence the CPU......... yada yada

OCuk Bundles

Headshot

its agp card

duridian

Yeah I reckoned it was AGP cos you said elsewhere on boards that you had used it in your AthlonXP system.
What Bloodbath said regarding the 300W is right, you may get away with it but you will not have much juice to spare and I wouldn't really advise getting a PSU that low in wattage as you wouldn't be able to add in extra bits in the future due to the lack of power.
That upgrade kit you mentioned with the 3.2 P4 is not bad but it will almost certainly mean you will have to go over the €600 before you have a complete pc. For example that kit at €464.00 plus

Cooler Master Centurion Case Black Aluminium (Without PSU) €54.99
Fortron/Source Powersupply ATX-400W OEM 120mm, SATA Special Edition €65.00
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB S-ATA 8MB cache 7200RPM €70.00
Strangely I couldn't find any DVD/CDRW combis on Komplett.ie but expect to pay about €45 for a 16x52x model. So altogether this Komplett example would set you back more like €700 & about €20 for delivery, but would IMO be a damn good pc when combined with your graphic card.

With OCUk's bundles : (for the approx euro value take the sterling value and add half, this is only a rule of thumb)
Intel bundles The first 3 bundles are more in your price range and have good features.
AMD64 Bundles Here I think the first 2 bundles are in your price range and again are well featured. OcUK seem to charge £22(€33) delivery to Ireland whether you are ordering a lorry load or a matchbox.
Personally I deal more with them now than Komplett, they seem to have a bigger range of stuff nowadays. Komplett's .ie site for some reason seems to have less and less choice of parts each time I visit, even though their .no site still has loads of stuff, as per the lack of DVD/CDRW combis mentioned above.

Azza

Intel's Celeron and AMD Sempron are less powerful processors and should be avoided if possible

The AMD Sempron 3100 on socket 754 out preforms the Athlon XP 3200 despite being 400mhz down in clock speed and only having 256kb cache compared to the XP's 512KB. Effectively a Sempron is AMD 64 with reduced cache and its 64bit extensions removed or disabled. More to the point its architecture is otherwise the same as the AMD 64. Its performance is very close or identical to a AMD 64 2800. However the socket A Semprons preform considerable worse than the 754 one but still usually have a higher FSB than the Athlon XP's. There is plenty more Semprons to come on socket 754 though. Socket A is on the way out along with Athlon XP chips. Above all don't go for Celerons there very poor chips.

If you want an Athlon XP I would recommend the 2500 Barton which is easily overclocked to 3200 speeds or better still the Athlon XP 2400 Mobile Barton which overclocks even better. Its also mulitplyer unlocked. The recommended motherboard would be the ABit NF7-S Rev 2. Its a really good board for overclocking.

My personal choice would be be a socket 939 motherboard from Abit and a AMD 64 3000 winchester chip. Which are really good overclockers and offer excellent performance. A retail chip and Abit motherboard would cost you almost €300 including heatskin.

Not up to speed on Intel stuff prefer AMD. But I'm sure if you want to go the way of the P4 someone can give you some good advice on them.

Ram I normall go high end but I hear both Crosair and Geil do excellent value ram that are reasonable overclockers at excellent price. PC 3200 (DDR 400) is the speed AMD 64 and Athlon XP support. I would not worry too much about timings but the tighter (lower) the better. AMD 64 really like tight timings.

Hard Drives and ROMs I will leave up to yourself. Not great on ROMS. But Samsung and Western Digital are brands I would recommend for drives. Western Digital are more expensive though.

Least a 400W PSU.
Cases are more of a personal preference but I really like Antec cases.

duridian

Azza wrote:

Effectively a Sempron is AMD 64 with reduced cache and its 64bit extensions removed or disabled...
...Cases are more of a personal preference but I really like Antec cases.

Err.. doesn't that make it is a less powerful processor, which is what I said? Dunno, I wouldn't really go for any Sempron in a gaming box regardless of which socket. The new Celeron D chips based on Prescott core seem to have received a much warmer welcome (no pun intended on the Prescott heat thing ) judging by the reviews. Again though budget chips and gaming don't really mix well in my opinion, and since Snoop has a X800 card, surely he intends playing games.
Agree on Antec cases, they have some nice models. Especially like the Sonata.

Azza

Depends it make it less powerfull than the Athlon 64's but still ahead of the XP's which aren't considered slouchs but I thought money was a factor and they are buget chips. Sempron 3100 outpreforms any Athlon XP chip in Doom III for example. I would go for AMD 64 myself though or a P4 to go along with an X800.

Actually correction Sempron 3100 not faster than an Athlon XP 3200 its actually only slighly better than Athlon 2600 but there is alot more semprons coming. I have seen it been put against the Celeron D (2.8GHz) and the sempron beat it in nearly every test.

Headshot

i heard that komplett are charging 35 euro for postage now
should i get stuff from elara instead

ya i want my pc gaming

change of plan i might be able to go to 650 for my budget

Headshot

i saw a great tower in pc world limerick but i dont know is it for me its 40 euro and its huge but i dont know is it good enough

lads could ye tell me what do ye think of this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=47832&item=5133440435&rd=1&ssPageName=WD2V#ebayphotohosting

BloodBath

Elara is expensive, www.jes-computer.de offer the best value for money but ordering is a little more complicated.


BloodBath

Nukem

Is there sales in Komplett and Jes and all the others for christmas or is that wishful thinking :eek:

duridian

@Nukem: Can't say I've noticed any of the online retailers dropping their prices in the run up to xmas in previous years.

@Snoop: Looking at that link you posted. The case and power supply as illustrated look very much like Qtec brand to me, which would not be good and the PSU is only rated 350W which if it is indeed a Qtec makes it a poor stake. I am a bit suspiciious as well of the way that they won't say exactly what hard drive or optical drive is used, instead just listing potential brands which it could be. By the way just in case you are misled by the German heading "Komplett PC" this means "Complete PC" , not necessarily that the parts used were purchased from Komplett the online pc parts retailer. The fact that the seller is in Westphalia, Germany, it could be hassle if something was wrong with the pc. Even though Jes-computer are in Germany at least there you are dealing with an online retailer who are bound by certain obligations but this might be just some private individual selling this on Ebay.