First build opinions

mercury127

My poor Dell Dimension 3000 is starting to show its age (read: seeps liquid metal during Peggle) and I thought I'd try and enter the big scary world of computer building. I'm trying to buy as much tech locally as possible because I'm expecting a few incompatibility issues and returns can occasionally be nightmarish experiences, although I'm open to exploring other options. I've had a look at a couple of guides, notably Ars Technica's latest Budget Box guide. At first I was going to go for almost exactly what they recommended, but now I've taken various recommendations from several relatively recent sources and I've come up with this build.

Case - AnTEC - NSK 4480B
Motherboard - Asus P5QL PRO
Processer - Intel-Dual Core E5200
Hard Drive - Caviar SE/160GB SATA II 7200rpm 8MB
Graphics Card - Radeon HD4670
Optical Drive - Sony DVD+-R/RW
RAM - Corsair PC6400 DDR2 4GB

Comes to about €412, Ars Technica's comes to about €450 (minus monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers). I plan on using it for TF2, and I wouldn't mind the option of L4D or a few other more demanding games, and a bit of general student usage (Word, Onenote etc...). The vast majority of essays and study get done on my fantastic little NC10. I never find myself using much HD space so I'm just trying to keep the cost down with a 160GB, and cost really is the most important factor for this build. So have I made any huge, motherboard melting mistakes? Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is totally uncharted territory for me.

Solitaire

You shouldn't face compatibility issues if you listen to us. There is always the risk of getting a DoA (Dead on Arrival) part but its not that high...

Staying local you'd probably get a better deal from Komplett

Good build overall but the HDD is a little small...

Throw up a Komplett build a bit later

mercury127

Hardwareversand was strongly recommended to me by a friend, and a lot of people here seem to have bought from them. Although after designing a system I was really happy with...



...I discovered they don't accept Paypal that poses a pretty big problem for me. There only seems to be one available payment method but I'm not too sure what it is, another concern I have is additional VAT. If I were to buy something pretty sizable, like a computer, would I have to pay additional VAT on top of the total HWVS has given? Here's a Komplett build pretty similar to the original one:

Case - Gigabyte GZ-X1
Motherboard - Asus P5QL PRO
Processor - Intel Dual Core E5200
Hard Drive - Samsung 160GB SATA-300
Graphics Card - Sapphire RADEON HD 4670
Optical Drive - Pioneer DVDRW Burner
RAM - Corsair PC6400 DDR2 4GB
PSU - Corsair CX400W 400W
Total price is €413.22

I've worked out a rough budget of €460 so I could improve on that by €50, might put that toward a beefier processor or GPU. After the performance from my last PC I'd really like a decent gaming machine this time round.

AlmightyCushion

For hardwareversand you have to pay using a bank transfer. And you will not get charged any extra vat as you are buying from a company in another EU country. You only pay things like import duty when you are importing something into the EU.

Solitaire

You may need to find a different mobo as that's been out of stock a while now... And there are HD4850s for about €1 more than that 9800GT. HD4850>>9800GT>>HD4670!

mercury127

Bank transfer may be an option now. I changed a couple of things to ensure everything is in stock, motherboard changed to an ASUS P5Ql Pro, processor changed from an E5200 to an E5300, powersupply has gone up to 550W, dvd writer changed to a slighter cheaper, more in stock model and the graphics card changed to a HD4850. Although when I searched 4850 quite a few models came up, so naturally I went for the cheapest one Would that new powersupply be alright? Does it have right wattage/connectors? Or would I be better off with something with a lower wattage?