Critique my build please!

Tails142

Okay the goal of this thread is to show me alternative options/ideas and possible save me money, there's a recession on dont ya know!

The goal of this PC is to play Age of Conan well but also be my main PC for the next 3 or so years so has to be somewhat futureproof.


Motherboard
Asus Rampage Formula Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-268-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1050&name=Asus%20Rampage%20Formula%20Intel%20X48%20(Socket%20775)%20PCI-Express%20DDR2%20Motherboard
£160

I picked this essentially because of two features, DDR2 memory, Dobly7.1 onboard sound. It could be overkill, I wont be using the crossfire, at the moment dont need the dual gigabit ethernet. I'll be sticking a wireless card in one of the PCI slots. I need DDR2 memory because DDR3 is just too expensive and I want a lot of RAM as you'll see later. Possibly this is the one place where I could cut back reasonably and save money.

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-192-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793&name=Intel%20Core%202%20Duo%20E8400%20LGA775%20'Wolfdale'%20%203.00GHz%20(1333FSB)%20-%20Retail
£97

I see this as being the most bang for my buck. I'm hesitant to go Quad as I dont want to take a performance HIT in non-multithreaded applications that I run (AutoCAD, older games) so I think duo will suffice. Motherboard allows room to go up to a higher quad processor when they come down in price should I need it. Moving up to 3.16Ghz on a Wolfdale (45nM) is an extra £30 which I'm not sure is worth it. A 3.20Ghz Conroe (65nM) is available for the same price as the 3.00Ghz Wolfdale (45nM). Is the difference heat output and energy use or is their performance difference? I must check that out...

Memory
Corsair 8GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (4x2GB) Supplied with Airflow Fan
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-148-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817&name=Corsair%204GB%20DDR2%20XMS2%20Dominator%20PC2-8500C5%20TwinX%20(2x2GB)%20Supplied%20with%20Airflow%20Fan%20(TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF)
£198

Okay I've gone with 8GB - I will agree I probably only need 4GB for the moment, but I want to future proof this a bit and for the sake of saving 50 quid down the road I'll just max out the motherboard now and avoid any problems monkeying around with different RAM types if I buy later.

My only concern is with the motherboard layout, a large graphics card and a fan on the RAM that I might run into space conflicts...

Drives
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-053-SA
£83

Thought about a RAID setup but it appears that this 1TB drive with 333GB per platter provides very reasonable seek times. I have a raid setup on a network server in the house so I can use that to store precious files (READ: Drunken Photos) so I think I'm getting a pretty good deal here for 1TB. I can throw in another couple of Terabytes down the road later if I want as there'll be 5 other SATA controllers free... maybe the motherboard is overkill....

Graphics
BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-072-BG&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1176&name=BFG%20GeForce%20GTX%20260%20OC%20896MB%20GDDR3%20TV-Out/Dual%20DVI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail
£190

Graphics card market is pretty saturated and moves very quickly. Think I'll just jump in as high as I can afford, this GTX260 seems to be a pretty economical offering. The motherboard supports PCI-e2.0 so a good match...

Case, Drives & Power
I'm unsure of what case to get, could use some reccomendations. Will probably just pick up an Antec tower case. around £60 is the budget.

Just going to get standard DVD-RW for the minute, see them for £15 which is not too shabby.

Depending on what's in the case may use that or get a Corsair 600W or something.

OS
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66R-02034)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-041-MS&groupid=33&catid=20&subcat=&name=Microsoft%20Windows%20Vista%20Ultimate%20SP1%2064-Bit%20-%20OEM%20(66R-02034)
£100

Need 64-Bit for the 8GB of RAM; not sure what the difference is between Ultimate and Premium but it's probably something I want.

Monitor
Going to stick with my 19 inch I have at the moment with a view to upgrading to a 22 or 24 in the next couple of months.

---

Okay so that's the build. I would appreciate any thoughts that people have on it. Where I could save a bit of cash or spend a little more, anything I've overlooked? I'm just gonna go with the stock cooler on the processor for the minute, no plans to overclock.

Planning on buying it all on Overclockers and getting it shipped over together, less likelihood of things going missing I think. If anyone sees any of the parts cheaper elsewhere I'd appreciate a heads up, now HW.de though I want to pay by Credit Card cos the weather is **** and I'm not going outdoors.

I'll probably order on Friday morning... or I might leave it till Monday, thanks in advance for the feedback!

Tails142

Oh it all comes to £910 GBP which is around €1150 euros. So a pretty high end yet economical build?? Would you agree?

sink

Tails142 wrote: »

Graphics
BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-072-BG&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1176&name=BFG%20GeForce%20GTX%20260%20OC%20896MB%20GDDR3%20TV-Out/Dual%20DVI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail
£190

Cheaper and faster

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - £182.11 inc VAT

PogMoThoin

This HD4870 is the best bang for buck value out there at the moment, and since your considering a crossfire motherboard, You can add another later when the price drops.

BTW, You might get much better value for money if you shop at hardwareversand.de. I've given up shopping on ocuk myself, they're overpriced and the change the VAT rate at checkout. I'll put a similar list together for you and post it here.

partyatmygaff

+1 hardwareversand.de

btw if it was me i'd get a q9350 and overclock it for the cpu and a hd4870(even though i am a Nvidia fanboy )

PogMoThoin

Tails142 wrote: »

Oh it all comes to £910 GBP which is around €1150 euros. So a pretty high end yet economical build?? Would you agree?

No, they change the VAT rate at checkout, it will cost you more.

Here, with all of your OCUK components list including Vista 64, I changed the gpu to HD4870, added a 750W psu and dvd-rw, only thing missing is the case but thats personal choice. Shipping is an extra €30.

Sqaull20

Tails142

Thanks for the input guys, I really appreciate your help. The Radeon 4870 seems to make more sense, in fact I've decided to get two and use the crossfire capability!!

The other change I've decided to make is to step back from 8GB to 4GB of RAM - I've heard of voltage issues occuring when placing 2GB in all four dimms with the board I'm going with. Down the road I can pick up 2x4GB dimms if I need the extra RAM

I was very opposed to using Hardwareversand.de but I've looked at the price differences from them versus Overclockers and at first view they are substantial. But the whole bank transfer REALLY puts me off using them, why cant they just be less akward (crazy GERMANS) so I did a bit of a comparison.

I checked the 5 most expensive components across three e-tailers, Overclockers, HWVersand and Komplett. Overclockers prices are taking into account the 17.5% VAT and exchange rate of 1.25 Euros to GBP.

First table is the full price comparison, second table shows how competitive the price is when I mix and match between the lowest prices of Komplett and OC.uk. I was going to look at elara.ie but they dont have any of the brands of gear I want. Dabs.ie are out because of the crazy hoops they wanted me to jump through the last time I tried to order off them - would be easier to just queue down the bank and order off HWVersand.

ITEM      |  DESC                                      | OC.uk | HW   | Komplett
=================================================================================
Motherboard   |  Asus Maximus Formula X38                  | 190   | 199* | 199
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Processor     |  E8400 Wolfdale 3ghx core duo              | 143   | 133  | 159
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Graphics      |  2x[ATI Radeon 4870 512mb (any brand)]     | 440   | 420  | 460
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Memory        |  Corsair PC8500 4096MB Kit (2x2GB)         | 146   | 90   | 110
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Hard Drive    |  Samsung Spinpoint F1 1tb                  | 123   | 114  | 123
-----------------------------------------------------------======================
                                                           | 835   | 746  | 821


    ITEM      |  DESC                                      | OC.uk | HW   | Komplett
=================================================================================
Motherboard   |  Asus Maximus Formula X38                  | 190   | 199* | 
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Processor     |  E8400 Wolfdale 3ghx core duo              | 143   | 133  | 
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Graphics      |  2x[ATI Radeon 4870 512mb (any brand)]     | 440   | 420  | 
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Memory        |  Corsair PC8500 4096MB Kit (2x2GB)         |       | 90   | 110
--------------|--------------------------------------------|-------|------|------
Hard Drive    |  Samsung Spinpoint F1 1tb                  | 123   | 114  | 
-----------------------------------------------------------======================
                                                           | 1006  | 956  | 


*HWVersand Dont Stock Maximus Formula, price for similar X48 DDR2 version

The biggest price difference was in the RAM - With OC.uk being 56 euros dearer than HWversand - luckily Komplett have that ram for €110 with 12.50 shipping cost.

So by buying most of the components off OC.uk and the RAM from Komplett - I pay 66 altogether for postage. So its 1072 versus 986. 94 euro difference... all balancing on how lazy I am.

PogMoThoin

Like i said before, OCUK change the VAT rate at checkout for Irish sales, as soon as You imput an Irish address they re-adjust the invoice, somebody please back me up on this. I've dealt with them several times and it is always the way.

I now always deal with hdv.de, I highly recommend them. Although their bank transfer is a bit of a task its actually painless.

Plasmoid

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Like i said before, OCUK change the VAT rate at checkout for Irish sales, as soon as You imput an Irish address they re-adjust the invoice, somebody please back me up on this. I've dealt with them several times and it is always the way.

I now always deal with hdv.de, I highly recommend them. Although their bank transfer is a bit of a task its actually painless.

What do you know... they do. How bizzare.
I mean, they dont pay the vat to ireland... so they just pocket the change.

partyatmygaff

Its called business, if you had the oppurtunity to run a business like that who would say no to extra money?


Ditch em and get to a real store like hardwareversand!

Tails142

I'm not sure I see what people are talking about... I see VAT being charged at 17.5% alright at my checkout; this is shown on all the items in small grey font below the VAT free price in bold orange font.

Does the VAT rate change to the Irish 21% for you guys? It's not happening for me, I go right through to ordering and it stays at 17.5%.

The prices in the post above showing a difference of 90 quid between OC.uk/Komplett and HWVersand are taking into account VAT and delivery.

Ditch em and get to a real store like hardwareversand!

Real stores generally take credit cards I thought?!? I would even settle for Paypal or something

I dont really see what the problem is you're gonna pay VAT at 21% in Ireland if you buy here. You'll always pay VAT on goods abroad even if it doesnt go to Irelands GOV, its how the EU works... and fair enough I dont know why OC.uk show the VAT free price in bold; maybe its something to do with the fact that if you get them to BUILD the machine for you they can charge a lower rate of VAT, in Ireland its 13.5% if you buy a service as opposed to goods.

Anyway thanks for all your input, I'll post up the final details of what I'm going to order in a while. The budget kind of went out the window

Oh one last question: does anyone know if I'll need to get any extra cables or anything? Been a while since I did my last self-build; I presume SATA drives (HD & Optical) come with SATA cables??

Tails142

Tails142 wrote: »

I'm not sure I see what people are talking about... I see VAT being charged at 17.5% alright at my checkout; this is shown on all the items in small grey font below the VAT free price in bold orange font.

Does the VAT rate change to the Irish 21% for you guys? It's not happening for me, I go right through to ordering and it stays at 17.5%.

Ah I see what you're saying now, after you enter your credit card details and before you confirm the order, the VAT changes to 21%, bastards :mad:

Tails142

Alright, just finished ordering there!

In the end I went with a mixture of Hardwareversand.de and OC.uk - I've attached a price comparison spreadsheet - Bascially if I had've bought everything on OCUK it would've cost €1890; and you could buy it all on HWVersand for €1619 - that's a saving of €270 and that's taking into account the unexplainable VAT raping on OC.uk.

I had to go with a mixture of OC.uk and HWVersand due to not having enough cash in my a/c until the next payday so needed to through some stuff on the credit card. In the end I only lost out about 86 quid, 42 on hardware price differences and and 44 on postage.

I made some changes from my original and second spec. I went back to 8gig ram, two Radeon 4870's in Crossfire. Got a deadly Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming case, went for a Arctic 7 Pro cooler (only 13 euro, 8 when you consider that the CPU without fan was 5 quid cheaper). Went back to the X48 motherboard too as HWVersand didnt stock the X38 board. I also went for the 3.16ghz duo cpu. Apparently the motherboard has some utilities to do some easy (light) overclocking so hence the extra cooling I went for in the case and cpu fan. I changed the ram from Corsair to OCZ just simply due to availablity and also the Corsair ram had fans on it which I dont feel is necessary with the case I have and may just make some extra high pitched noise as they were only 40mm.

The PSU I went for was the Corsair TX750W - I hadnt planned on going for such a high wattage but it was the only PSU with 4 pci-e power connectors which is what I need, and will be plenty capable, read a review where they got 900W out of the power supply before the circuit breakers in their office blew

Just back to the prices for a sec as I did some lengthy investigating so its worth pointing it out. See the excel spreadsheet for details. Komplett were pretty much non-competitive in any of the items I was looking at. In fact, for the E8500 3.16ghz cpu I got, they were over 100 euro MORE EXPENSIVE than HWVersand who were offering great value €129 euro, versus 195 at OC and 235 at Komplett. The other great saving I made was on the RAM, €184 on HWVersand, €220 in Komplett and €303 on OC.uk!! Saved 30 quid on the motherboard too with HWVersand over OC.uk. I could've saved another 34 quid on the graphics card but at 454 quid for the two I had to put them on my credit card due to no money in my account this month. OC.uk were also competitive on the DVD drives which were only 22 quid, HWVersand didnt have Vista Ultimate 64-bit OEM, or the Antec Twelvehundred case and I was also hesitant to go with them on the keyboard and PSU so just went with OC.uk as the price savings werent much too worry about the hastle of umlauts and two pin plugs.

All in all I'm delighted with the PC that's on its way to me, I just hope it all works when I put it together. Thanks for pointing out the savings at HardwareVersand.de and that Overclockers.co.uk were a bit of a rip off. If i hadnt come here I propbably just would have ordered it all off of Overclockers and been down 270 euro.

PS. In answer to my question above it appears that SATA cables generally come with the motherboard, and you almost always get one for each device it can handle, so nothing to worry about there.

PogMoThoin

Now do you believe me

BTW I've got that 750w Corsair, its lovely and quiet. I also got my HD4870 2day but i'm in the middle of a reinstall so I've not tested it yet.

Gonna be a nice rig m8, good luck

Pog

tonton-bob

Sqaull20 wrote: »

big image with interesting prices

which website is that :eek:

Tails142

That was a screen capture from www.hardwareversand.de

Which I can now reccomend as having great (the best I've seen) prices and a slightly akward payment option.

AlmightyCushion

Tails142 wrote: »

That was a screen capture from www.hardwareversand.de

Which I can now reccomend as having great (the best I've seen) prices and a slightly akward payment option.

Yeah, their biggest downfall would be not accepting credit cards.

Tails142

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Yeah, their biggest downfall would be not accepting credit cards.

Just realised you can do an International Credit Transfer through online banking :pac:

PogMoThoin

Tails142 wrote: »

Just realised you can do an International Credit Transfer through online banking :pac:

Yes, but You'll still need a trip to the bank for the first order, after that its just so simple

Tails142

Well half the stuff has arrived, got the delivery in from OCuk yesterday and the case arrived today.

Still waiting on the payment to HWversand to go through


The Antec 1200 case is BIG just hope it fits under the desk LOL

HD4870's look so tempting, cant wait to get them hooked up, pity the motherboard is coming from HWV... resisting putting them into my current rig, depends how soon that HWV payment goes through.

Been using the Logitech G15 keyboard at its pretty cool, I really like the little display on the top, shows you your health/stamina/mana when you're playing AoC... nice feature. Yet to set up the macro keys but I can see them being very useful.