Build Advice for an ex-hardware follower

TouchingVirus

Current Machine

Bear in mind it's over 4 years old at this stage and has had one or two additions over those years:

AMD Athlon 3800+ 64 @ 2.41GHz
MSI K8N Diamond motherboard
1GB Ram - no idea what type, too lazy to look
2xDVD-RWs (both IDE)
3 Hard Drives - 2x200GB and 1x300gb, two SATA, 1 IDE
Ati Radeon X850-XT Platinum
Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW - 22" LCD, 1680x1050 max resolution

Other Info:
Mouse - Razer Diamondback 1600dpi (I'm a lefty )
Keyboard - Logitech G11
Sound - Logitech Z-5450 over S/PDIF Optical cable
Thermaltake Kandalf Black PC case
Windows XP Pro SP3, tweaked to bejaysus

Background

My parents PC is older than mine, and they need a bit of an upgrade [still on 512mb ram ]. There's probably nothing worth saving in the above rig so they're getting everything bar the keyboard, mouse, monitor & soundsystem.

I used to play a lot of games on my PC, seem to have moved on a bit from that now but I've got new games that just won't play on my machine (e.g. The Witcher Enhanced Edition, Crisis etc). I'd like to be able to get the best experience whenever I do choose to play those games so I definitely wanna keep that option.

I'm not upgrading my monitor any time soon, it's only a year old and I've better things to be spending money on (like the machine or stuff for my DJ'ing hobby). Same with the mouse, soundsystem and keyboard - they're all perfectly adequete.

What I mainly do with my PC at the minute is develop websites for work, store a ****load of music, play the odd game [definitely more of a casual gamer than a hardcore one], watch plenty of TV shows, DVD's etc, do a fair amount of Audio/Video work (working in Ableton, Reason 3, Traktor, Video editing and processing) as well as the usual stuff like spend half my day sorting out music, uncompressing files (pr0n :cool:), browsing the internet and going about my business.

Again, I can't see anything there that's going to take a hit from upgrading but I can see a fair bit that'll get better - the Audio/Video stuff I do, the ability to play Blu-Ray Discs would be a definite must, and then of course there's playing games Oh, and future-proofing it a tad would be a good idea too, don't plan on doing periodic upgrades unless I have to, I'm more a buy-once, then again in 3 or 4 years (if you can't tell)

I used to be mad into the PC hardware, I researched my last big buy for near a month, read hundreds of sites. I've a job now, not that much time anymore but you all seem big into it so maybe you can help..

Budget

Umm, tough question ..it can stretch a tad if the machine is worth it - how does €850 sound?

Questions & My Own Stuff

CPU - next-gen i7 processor or a Yorkfield? Which one is best bang for buck - the i7 920 or the Q9450?

Motherboard - if I get an i7 I'll need a socket 1366 motherboard, they're pretty damn expensive - ~€250 for an average one. Could get a pretty mid-to-high spec 775 for that price. So given the CPU advice, what about the motherboard? I'd been eyeing up the ASUS Rampage for a while - is it overkill for what I need? I think I was all about future-proofing when choosing that one but with the 1366 socket new to the market maybe I can settle for a lower spec X48?

Graphics - I'd picked a HIS HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX that I was reading about last month, the review said it was great value in that it was only €175 and I'm not MAD into the gaming so you can take that up as it plays crysis pretty well What say you guys? Should I shell out for the 4870 or the 260 GTX? If so, can you point to why?

RAM - Well I'm a bit lost on this one, DDR2 or DDR3? I'd chosen this one a month ago from Dabs - Corsair Memory 4GB (2X2GB KIT) DDR3 1333MHZ 240PIN DIMM but am I right? Is there better value there?

Storage - 2xHitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1TB SATAII drives in a RAID-1 setup (mirrored drives, really don't want to lose data)

Optical Drives - 1xLG Electronics Blu-Ray/HD DVD-ROM COMBO 16x DVD+/-RW Retail BLK + 1xLG Electronics 20x DVD+/-RW/RAM SATA Black - €22

Power Supply - Corsair Memory 620 Watt, ATX, EPS12V, PS/2 - Again is there better value or am I going a bit overkill? it's €113 for the PSU

PC Case - I would consider getting a Coolermaster HAF 932 if the price of the system is under-budget, my Kandalf is well worn and pretty damn heavy (18.1kg net weight). If not then I'll keep the Kandalf, no worries there

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From my above (1 month old, limited) research I'm over budget at €1174 and thats with just 1 hard drive and no new case

QX9450 - €262 - Scan
MB - €250 (off-head for motherboard) = Dabs
HDD - €226 (I can drop one off until I get more money) - €113 - Dabs
GFX - €175 - Scan
RAM - €151 - Dabs
PSU - €113 - Dabs
Optical - €110 - Dabs


Hopefully I went into enough detail for you guys to give me some pointers - any help is much appreciated. If you can come up with some savings please let me know from whom, I'm using Scan & Dabs up there (I know Scan isn't the best, I was in a rush).

leninbenjamin

for games alone a quad core isn't a necessity at the moment, very few games take advantage of it. You could get something like the e8400 and over-clock it a little, and the performance will be about the same for €100 less.

as for the Graphics card, the HD 4850 should be more than adequate for the resolution you'll be playing at.

I'm **** when it comes to the mobo's but i'm pretty sure paying €250 for a socket 775 is just burning money... if you're willing to pay that for a mobo, might as well get a socket 1366 and an i7-920 (which would be as equally a waste of money when it comes to games)

hmmm... must be the alcohol, completely missed the audio/video work part. depending on what you're doing here it may be worth the quad then... if it's encoding or that, and just make sure the system has plenty of RAM. from the audio point of view, a high clocked duo still has some advantages depending on what exactly it is your doing (working with many samples? i think then quad... adding effects or such then the core afaik... but it could be the other way around, i'm not familiar with that area at all, so a bit more reasearch will be needed on your part)

TouchingVirus

With me wanting to future-proof a tad I'll most likely stick with the Quad for the CPU, cheers for the suggestion though.

From the review of the i7 920 I read, it beats the crap out of the Q9450 for compression in WinRAR, DivX - the lot. The processor might be worth the extra few bob, but then I have to get a socket 1366 board and even the low-end 1366 boards are in the €240 range.

I'm a bit of a procrastinator on new technology as well, the first batches are usually utter crap and the socket 1366 is pretty new

Blazer

Stick with Q series 775 Intel CPUs.
Also paying €250 for a 775 board is pointless. Around €150 will be grand.
The board in my sig is a brilliant board+ overclocker and it only cost me €163 on dabs.ie (190 on komplett).
You can pick up a QX9650 etc on boards for about €300.
Savage cpu and easily overclocks to 4ghz on air cooling.
Ram is dirt cheap and will only cost you €100 for 4 gigs.
For video I'd do with either 4870 or GTX260.
Both ATI/Nvidia support movie converting through the gpu which is miles faster but I think Nvidia are ahead with this as CUDA has been out longer and is more widespread.

TouchingVirus

Cheers Mathew, I'll stick with the Socket 775 then but I assume you meant a Q9650 because QX9650's are like a grand brand new Should the board I get have an eSATA port, a lot of folks elsewhere are saying it probably should

What about Ram? I know that it depends on the motherboard if it supports DDR3 but should I go for DDR3 if the board does DDR2 and DDR3 or is DDR3 just not worth it's money at the minute?

I notice you've got an X-FI soundcard - can I ask why? I just never saw the point in getting an actual soundcard, the 5.1 or 7.1 onboard sound is always fine with me over S/PDIF.

Donald-Duck

Don't bother with DDR3, it's still not worth getting. And won't be till the i7 processor becomes mainstream

Blazer

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Cheers Mathew, I'll stick with the Socket 775 then but I assume you meant a Q9650 because QX9650's are like a grand brand new Should the board I get have an eSATA port, a lot of folks elsewhere are saying it probably should

What about Ram? I know that it depends on the motherboard if it supports DDR3 but should I go for DDR3 if the board does DDR2 and DDR3 or is DDR3 just not worth it's money at the minute?

I notice you've got an X-FI soundcard - can I ask why? I just never saw the point in getting an actual soundcard, the 5.1 or 7.1 onboard sound is always fine with me over S/PDIF.

I got it for playing BF2..makes a huge difference than other cards or onboard.
Of course Vista screwed this all up and Creative didn't help themselves either.
Saying that if you played COD4 on my pc and played it on a pc with onboard you will notice a huge difference in quality of sound.

TouchingVirus

I'll be getting Vista 64-bit at some stage, did Creative sort out their incredible mess yet?

Blazer

Nah..they're still as bad as ever.
If I was starting over again now I'd get the Asus Xonar D2X.
It's as good as the X-fi if not better.
Anyware EAX is gone in Vista so Creative doesn't matter anymore.
And it's no harm to teach Creative a lesson with all the crap they pulled.
Here's a review of the xonar

http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-xonar-d2x-review/1

Donald-Duck

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

I got it for playing BF2..makes a huge difference than other cards or onboard.
Of course Vista screwed this all up and Creative didn't help themselves either.
Saying that if you played COD4 on my pc and played it on a pc with onboard you will notice a huge difference in quality of sound.

Its not in anyway vistas fault that a company refused to write drivers for their product.

TouchingVirus

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Its not in anyway vistas fault that a company refused to write drivers for their product.

You're a real Vista-Defender on this board, I've seen your posts. You've no need to defend it in this thread

Donald-Duck

TouchingVirus wrote: »

You're a real Vista-Defender on this board, I've seen your posts. You've no need to defend it in this thread

The reason for the post was that Creative have an absolutely disasterous policy. They class the 3rd party drivers to fix the problem as illegal(unless somethings changed recently?). I'd strongly recomend against anyone getting a Creative sound card. Regardless of using 2000,XP,Vista

TouchingVirus

Yep, I know - that's why I called it "Creative's Mess". What they did wasn't right so if it's a choice of on-board sound or an X-Fi I'll take the onboard tbh

Blazer

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Its not in anyway vistas fault that a company refused to write drivers for their product.

Vista was partly to blame as MS removed Directsound support from DX10.
But Creative was really crap and took ages to come up with Vista drivers.
Nearly all of my games such as BF2 used OpenAL anyway so I still have proper sound.

daveharnett

Some suggestions:

q9300 - €207 - should oc to 3ghz on stock cooler.
GA-P45-DS3L - €93
WD 7500AACS - €73
Corsair 520W Modular - €89 - Plenty unless you plan to SLI later on.
4GB OCZ Reaper 1066 - €76 DDR2. Half the price with no major performance loss - RAM speed doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the core 2s. I'd have gone for ddr2-800, but this will make overclocking that much easier.

Total €535 + 175 for Graphics + 100 for optical puts you in around your budget without any major compromises.
You're stuck with the case unless you want to roll back your expectations quite a bit.
I dare say you could get close to 3.5ghz with an aftermarket aircooler too.