Opinions wanted on this overclockers.co.uk system please

ElNino

I have been considering building my own system but I saw this system on www.overclockers.co.uk

Ultima AMD Athlon XP 1800+ System
If you are looking for the ultimate AMD box then look no further than the Ultima AMD Athlon XP 1800+. Supplied pre-built it has an impressive specification to say the least :-
» AMD Athlon XP 1800+
» Thermalright SK6 Heatsink
» MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU KT266A Motherboard
» 512MB (2x256MB) Crucial PC2100 DDR-SDRAM
» 80GB Maxtor UDMA133 Hard Drive
» Asus V8200 Ti500 Geforce III Deluxe 64MB DDR
» Creative SB Audigy Player
» Pioneer DVD-106 Region Free DVD Drive
» Teac Floppy Drive
» Coolermaster ATCS-210 Azure Aluminium Case
» Enermax 431W Pentium IV Compatible ATX Power Supply
» An OcUK Case badge!

Price: STG £1,243.00 (STG £1,460.53 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Windows XP Home edition is £69 + VAT extra.

Total including VAT and shipping STG £1,612.10.

I would appreciate any opinions on price, quality etc. I have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers already.

Fidelis

You're not even getting a monitor or a CD-RW and you're paying £1,600 ? That's in Stg of course.

The 3dcard is nice but the hdd is overkill in my opinion.

If you're willing to pay £1,600 for a system, then get all the knobs on.

Praetorian

If your loaded go for it!

But....

The MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU KT266A Motherboard doesnt perform aswell as other KT266A boards. The ABIT KR7A should be out in about a week..it is worth waiting for. If you dont need Raid go for the Epox 8kHA+, it also performs better than the MSI.

All of the other components are top of the range, but do you really need a Sound Blaster Audigy?? Most motherboards now provide more than adequate sound on board. Saying that I do have a Sound blast Platinum....but thats only because Ive friends in Creative

Also Fidelis is right. Dont bother going for the ATA133 Maxtor hard drive. ATA133 is just a marketing gimmick that wont give you any extra speed in real life situations & that MSI board only has ATA100 anyway!

Finally....

Try and get the vat off. After all I presume your not british....why pay vat to the crown!! Works for me all the time

JustHalf

Change the board to the EPoX 8KHA+

Change the hard drive to a 60GB 60GXP IBM Deskstar.

Boston

He cant, its one of those package deals.

Your better building your own. get what you can from dabs and the rest from overclockers.

gandalf

Also thats a very expensive case your getting. Brushed Aluminium, very nice but expensive. If they have a bundle with the Globalwin 802 go for it, its a lovely case my system here is enclosed in it

Gandalf.

Red Moose

Do you really *need* an 1800+ Athlon XP? The price on that is really premium grade, around double a 1500+.

It would have given you bragging rights around a week ago, but the 1900+ is out now........

Also the card really *is* overkill as someone already mentioned. That must be costing at least £300+, and getting 200fps in Quake 3 instead of 150fps is meaningless.

Better off finding something that games out now or in the next 6 months will use. When RtCW comes out the fancy gfx will be used by a GF3, but by then the price will be a lot less. I can't think of one game right now or due out in the next half year that will use a GF3. Heck, it's hard enough to find some decent games, or any games that use even DirectX 8 which has been out for ages.

Lump

SOunds like a bit of a rip off, but hey what do I know.


John

Boston

not a bad price for what you get, if thats really what you want

yop

total rip off, build it urself a lot cheaper

koneko

Not a good price, really. I would definitely build my own system (which, erm, I did).

HD might be overkill, depending on what ur using it for. I've only managed to fill a HD that big with lots of divx/dvd and a crapload of games.

The gfx is okay, though if you're building a system, get a Ti500 instead, or better still a Radeon 8500 (seems to be doing really well and is cheaper).

CPU? I'd say the 1800+ is a good choice (have it myself), though the 1900+ will be out, and if you don't want to spend much money a 1600+ isn't that much less in spec.

Overclocking wise you won't want 2 RAM sticks in there, if you're not overclocking it's a fine choice. Mobo I'd definitely change. Have the Abit KG7 myself, which is swank (espesh if you do the voltage mod). Get the new Abit one when it's out, or the Epox 8kHA+.

Case is a good (but Lian Liu = best). Onboard sound, definitely do not go for that. Onboard sound is far from good. I've tested a kazillion different soundcards, including chips on mobos, and there is a massive difference.

Like someone else said, if you're going to spend that much on a system (and can), then get everything right.

astrofool

that brushed aluminium case will own the boll0cks off any Lian Li Case, want a REALLY good case, get a supermicro server case

onboard sound can be ok, but nothing to get excited about, remember it will depend on the speakers to a large extent how good sound is, but onbard sound eat's cpu cycles, 1800+ and a gef3 deserve better.

Check again this week the 1800+ price will have dropped alot, but what are we talking about here? £40 more?? why the F not get it if you can.

the MSI KT266A is just as fast as any of the other KT266A boards out there, it was the KT266 that suffered horrible performance as an MSI, which they fixed in later bios releases.

The Radeon 8500 theoretically is better than the gef3 Ti 500, just hope u don't mind waiting a while for the drivers to mature, tho they are tempting, mmm, gef3 Ti200 or Radeon 8500.....

Hard Disks are another area where cutting down saves u pittance, the price difference for 100% more space is not too great, have 120gb here, and am using 50gb of it so far, and that will grow exponentially as time goes and and when/if broadband gets here.

Audigy sound cards are nyom tho.

Get XP along with it, can get the parts yourself seperately and build it yourself if you want to really learn about it, otherwise is alot handier to get something like that pre built (not suffering the usual OEM fate of crap components

Gerry

If you are going to be overclocking, I'd probably swap the board for an abit kr7a or epox 8kha+. Otherwise its fine, the performance issues can be worked around by disabling cpu temperature control, and I'm sure this bug will be fixed soon.

I'd agree with astrofool on the hard drive issue, you don't save much by cutting down on hd space.

However I think the case is overkill, and the gfx card, unless you can easily afford them. I'd much rather get a 19" trinitron screen instead, maybe you already have one...

The 1800+ chip will not carry as much of a premium now, but do not be tempted to get a 1900+ instead, they do carry a high premium, and you could overclock an 1800+ to the same speed easily.

JustHalf

Gah.

Radeon 8500 is pants. Really. GeForce 3's rock.

Koneko, the list includes a Ti500

Astrofool, the KT266 problems cannot be fixed with a BIOS update. I'd also advise against XP... it's a backwards step from Microsoft: making themselves a great OS with 2000 and throwing loads of crud onto it (like the Luna interface).

astrofool

the Radeon 8500 could easily overtake the Ti 500 in future driver releases, which ATI knows will make or break the company, ATI are just as big as Nvidia remember (not stock market value wise atm tho)

alot more horsepower in the 8500, 25mhz faster both core and memory, and triple textures per TMU, it's already scoring close to the Ti 500 in alot of benchmarks (bar q3a where it cheats), on a first driver release, nvidia have had good drivers for months.

It's also alot cheaper, when it's XP troubles are fixed it will be a good buy.

XP is a better OS to win2k. 2k has so many non-multimedia aspects to it it's silly.