[jrm20]

Hi Guys
Thank you very much for all your replys what sort of Motherboard would i start with and sort of memory would i need for gaming is it like 1MB OR 2MB or more and is Compatible with these motherboards and pentium 4 or equivalent which of theses is better. I was looking at computer shops online that sell these sort of parts and a few motherboards here are around £100.00 or just over would someone help me build this rig with step by step help as i would appreciate all the help i can get Thanks again you guys.Please let me know if these motherboards are the right sort to start with or can you recommend one Thank you


NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset, ATX, Socket LGA775, FSB: 1066 MHz, Max RAM: 16 GB, DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2, Serial ATA x 6, Dual Netwo... Read more ...

$223 - $235


From 5 storesASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (610839139712) Motherboard

NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Chipset, ATX, Socket AM2, FSB: 1000 MHz, Max RAM: 8 GB, DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 1, Serial ATA II x 8, Dual Net... Read more ...

$209 - $215


pharaoh

First off what is your budget??


I wouldnt buy an Intel pentium 4 or an amd cpu right now, I would get the new INTEL Conroe Core 2 Duo its alot better than the Intel Pentium 4's were and it is totally redesigned not using the pentium 4 core aswell. The conroe core 2 duo is alot faster than PENTIUM 4 and the Conroe E6600 is $315.00 us dollars and it outperforms the AMD FX-62 which is amd's top end processor right now. The AMD fx-62 has went down but its still too pricy for the performance they run $695.00 now.

As you can see the Intel Conroe e6600 is less than half or about half the price and you get greater performance and the conroe e6600 beats the fx-62 in almost every benchmark including gaming.


The intel conroe e6700 is $500 us dollars and is even faster but I would rather get the e6700 because it is a great deal and you still get the 4mb cache like the e6700 has.. Yes they are dual core aswell.. You could even overclock the e6600 if you wanted to the e6700 speeds or even the conroe x6800 speeds.

Now the intel X6800 conroe is expensive running $949.50 us dollars on newegg right now. You dont need that processor as the e6600 or e6700 would be more than enough.

You should get 2gb of ram aswell and no lower.. 1gb of ram isnt quite sufficient on all of the current 3d games at full eye candy settings. ** FOR Example** I know bf2 uses alittle over 1gb of ram if you run that game on full graphic settings. Bf2 will run on full graphic settings with 1.5 gb of ram for example but 1gb of ram is just shy under the mark.

For a harddrive all you really need is one sata2 200gb -300gb harddrive with 7200rpm.

For a video card I wouldnt go all out on it because directx10 is coming out shortly and you can only use directx10 on the video cards that havnt even came out yet. None of the current video cards will support directx10 so there is no need to waste $400 on a video card. In order to use directx10 you will also need the new Microsoft Vista operating system when it is released. Directx10 will be 8 to 10 times faster they say..
This means even a MID end directx10 video card will out perform a current directx9 High end video card.

You decide what you want to do on the video card issue but personally I wouldnt spend over $250 on a video card so you can upgrade to microsoft vista and a newer directx10 video card alittle bit down the road.

If directx10 wasnt Coming out my opinion would be different and I would definately say to go for a $400 video card.

For a motherboard look at one that has good reviews on it because on alot of the INTEL CONROE SUPPORTED motherboards some are having issues from being first gen conroe boards. Gigabyte has quite a few motherboards and on 2 of there boards they generally have the best reviews for the Conroe supported boards. Some are good boards and others are not. Thats why im not listing alot of brands for the conroe because some are good while others arent so good even on the same brand. Abit has 1or 2 good boards on newegg just look at reviews!

On a powersupply go for a good brand name like ANTEC,OCZ,Enermax,Thermaltake,corsair etc... all of those are TRUEPOWER power supplies meaning they give what they say or darn close to it. Dont get a cheapo powersupply as you will run into trouble and you will not be getting the true WATTS. Look for something in the 500-600W range which will be enough.

On memory its going to be DDR2 because all conroe boards (core 2 duo) have DDR2 slots. Look at Corsair,OCZ,mushkin,Crucial..

The rest is up to you.

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Just because a system doesnt output the maximum number of effects a game can actually use doesnt mean its rubbish its better than what a console can do for a start even at $1000, needing to spend a fortune on a gaming PC is elitist bull you dont need to spend a fortune to get a great gaming system you just need to pick the right parts and have reasonable expectations games when they come out can rarely run well on anything like reasonable hardware at full settings.

Looks fine apart from the asus mobo go with same spec but another brand, personally im not to biased with intel or AMD at lower prices AMD is better but if you have a bit of cash then go with the core2s but really i might not do that with Quadros(core 4) coming out in november. Nice thing about AMD is mobos and CPUs are cheap so not to bad to replace and good on a budget. Memory is DDR2 as well for AMD so no hassles their, you get slower DDR2 really cheap its not the best for gaming but it aint bad you can get alot of memory for not alot of money so it balances out.

[warriorscot]

Just because a system doesnt output the maximum number of effects a game can actually use doesnt mean its rubbish its better than what a console can do for a start even at $1000, needing to spend a fortune on a gaming PC is elitist bull you dont need to spend a fortune to get a great gaming system you just need to pick the right parts and have reasonable expectations games when they come out can rarely run well on anything like reasonable hardware at full settings.

Looks fine apart from the asus mobo go with same spec but another brand, personally im not to biased with intel or AMD at lower prices AMD is better but if you have a bit of cash then go with the core2s but really i might not do that with Quadros(core 4) coming out in november. Nice thing about AMD is mobos and CPUs are cheap so not to bad to replace and good on a budget. Memory is DDR2 as well for AMD so no hassles their, you get slower DDR2 really cheap its not the best for gaming but it aint bad you can get alot of memory for not alot of money so it balances out.

[monkeymedia]

Hi pharoah,

I'm in the market for the same sort of setup that you are looking to build and the system that i came up with is very much along the lines of that which jrm20 has suggested.

Here is a post of the system specs i am looking at:

http://www.geekstogo...mp;#entry755182

Some of the items i have chosen here are probably higher spec'd than absolutely necessary however i will be putting the majority of my money into the main components which really matter:

Motherboard - dont go too over the top, high end boards command much higher prices, you probably wont use all of the fuctions they can offer

CPU - again i recomment the core2duo, excellent reviews all over the net and the e6600 seems to be the best priced (i wouldnt bother going to the e6700 - the price increase is too large)

RAM - DDR2 and 2GB, get the fastest speed that your budget allows

GPU - dont go top end due the reasons jrm20 has given

PSU - branded is better here, the system will be drawing a lot of juice - you need a stable supply

As members have discussed earlier, you do not need to go for all the expensive accessories such as coolers, keyboards etc. you can get good products for very little cash.

The main thing i would say is that it takes a lot of research to build a PC so put the time and effort in then you will end up with a system that will do what you want.

Good Luck

Monkey

p.s. Warriorscot has some really good points in the above post, my new system probably needs some more tweaking!!

Edited by monkeymedia, 10 October 2006 - 04:59 PM.

[warriorscot]

Quad core is coming out next month and from early reviews they anhilate the core2s.

[jrm20]

Quad core is coming out next month and from early reviews they anhilate the core2s.

LOL what is the starting to top prices going to be on the quad cores?

[jrm20]

Besides the Price is going to be rediculous for the quad cores. LOL a normal person wont be able to afford a quad core complete machine at release date, yet the processors alone will more than likely be the price of a high end complete system..

***Quoted by PCWORLD.com***


Test Results

As our previous tests have shown, the Core 2 Extreme chip is plenty fast. In fact, when running single-threaded applications, or any apps that can't take advantage of lots of CPU cores, it's likely to remain the faster chip. On the general application benchmark PCMark 05 shown in the chart below, for example, the Core 2 Extreme actually beat the preproduction quad-core chip by a little bit, thanks presumably to its slightly higher clock speed. Standard 3D-accelerated gaming, as tested by 3DMark 05, wasn't much faster with the new chip either, though the CPU scores of both PCMark and 3DMark showed significant gains.

Kentsfield really starts to shine, however, once you hand it a complex video-encoding or 3D-rendering task. Both 3D rendering apps, POV-Ray and 3DS Max 8, ran considerably faster with four cores; in particular, POV-Ray rendered 83 percent more pixels per second running on the Kentsfield chip than on the Core 2 Extreme. Video editing and encoding ran about 30 percent faster in Sony's Vegas app and in the DivX converter.

They are going to be expensive so you might as well settle down with a core 2 duo because you are never going to stay up with technology.

Yeah those processors are nice but what they are trying to say is more processors are infact not better for gaming atleast for the current games. You will get just as good gaming with the Core 2 duo processors. Now when you start talking about major multi-tasking or 3d rendering / video editing stuff then the quad cores really come alive.



EDIT here is the link:

http://www.netscape..../...&frame=true

Edited by jrm20, 10 October 2006 - 08:15 PM.

[kidnova]

They are going to be expensive so you might as well settle down with a core 2 duo because you are never going to stay up with technology.

JRM makes the most important point of all. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO STAY ON THE BLEEDING EDGE OF TECHNOLOGY. Unless you're Bill Gates, you will never be able to keep up with each and every emerging trend in technology. Moore's law states this and has yet to be proven wrong. Just buy the best you can afford for now, and understand that technology will progress and you will have to upgrade later.

[warriorscot]

We said the same about core 2s as well before the pricing came out, intel have said they wont be to expensive they are trying to finish off AMD by making it more worthwhile to switch to them than upgrading existing AMD systems. Prices should be on par with E6600 for lower clocked quads with any luck.

More and more games are multi core compliant especially now with the consoles being multi core and the software used in the APIs and OS is slowly as well as on the chips is being slowly modified to use multiple threads for single thread computing more efficeintly.

But you are right about games, but the core2s have the same fault in some games AMD still beats them but no one looks at those particular results.

[pharaoh]

Hi There
I was out with my parents and they have said i can have about £1000.00 for the Games Machine give or take so what should i do first. I also saw memory for £30.00 512 MB is this good so any help to get me started as it's for around Christmas Time Thanks everyone for all the advice.


Pharaoh Please help me

Edited by pharaoh, 16 February 2007 - 12:52 PM.