"Budget" PC

[LT.Diablo]

Ok, so I'm gonna try and rebuild my sh*tty P4 PC, basically swapping everything out for new. Here's the basic outline, obviously I'll be getting some extra stuff but this is what I have so far.

 

DFI Infinity P965-S Dark (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

 

Intel Core 2 Dui E6320 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB)

 

OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

 

Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB DDR2 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-E)

 

Any other stuff that you think I might need (I'm probably going to keep my current 600W PSU) just say. Thanks .

[Loman]

The specs look good, It should be a nice gaming rig.

You'll need a good heatsink for the processor, and I highly recommend Arctic Silver thermal compound.

 

Also, A good case makes the PC. I like the look of some of Xclio's cases, Especially the ones with 25cm & 36cm Case Fans.

Edited August 2, 2007 by Loman

[matthew1g]

Pretty good PC there. Although I don't know what to say about the 2600. i think it should be good though.

 

 

Also, A good case makes the PC. I like the look of some of Xclio's cases,

 

Performance> beautiful case. He could get a better graphic card/CPU instead of buying a new case. it's not like an ugly case will degrade your performance unless is has heating issues which I believe his current case is free of.

 

My 8800GTS/C2D 6420/2g DDR2 is in this case:

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/1926/dsc03778wh9.jpg

[LT.Diablo]

Well, my current case has no heating issues, but it is a little cramped for my liking. Obviously, the 2600 will be bigger than the card I have now and the heatsink would probably be bigger. It wouldn't be an issue if I had to save an extra £70 for the case, I get around £30 per-month and I'm in no rush to finish this, so I could just wait a little longer.

 

My case is basically the same as matthew's, and because of how I bought this PC, I don't know any of the measurements such as the size of the fan, but I know this, it is pretty loud. If I don't have music on and I'm just on the PC without sound it can get pretty noisy. I love the look of that XClio case that you posted, Loman, and like I said if I save an extra £70 I could get all those specs and that case. Finally, I'd just need to get a new HDD, the only reason I haven't got one currently is because this mobo is IDE and I would prefer a SATA one.

 

Well, thanks so far, and if anyone has anything else they think I should consider, feel free to post .

[Spenc938]

If I were you I would just buy some cheap case, and mod it yourself. Sure the Xclio's are cool, but I like mine almost as much and it only cost me 20 bucks (US).

 

Edit: Here's mine.

 

Nothing too fancy, but alright for me.

Edited August 2, 2007 by Spenc938

[LT.Diablo]

If I were you I would just buy some cheap case, and mod it yourself. Sure the Xclio's are cool, but I like mine almost as much and it only cost me 20 bucks (US).

 

Edit: Here's mine.

 

Nothing too fancy, but alright for me.

Pretty sweet case, I guess it would help to do something like that, but this is the first PC I will have put together myself, and I'm trying to get everything over-perfect, if that makes sense, so I'll hopefully have the majority of possible problems covered. Although, keeping costs down is good .

[Loman]

Nice case, Spenc. I like case modding, too. I don't have any of the proper tools, though, so my mods look like crap. I bought the cheapest case I could find with a windowed door, and then I cut out the standard fan grills that were built in to it and replaced them with the round wire ones to promote more air flow.

I've got two red led 120mm fans, one red led 80mm fan, an 80mm cpu cooler, and a PSU with a fan bigger than 120mm.

I've got a black/red color scheme going on, it looks sweet in the dark. Here is a pic I found on google, the real lights don't look anywhere near as pink, they're dark red... plus mine has a lot more of them.

It was $40, and I've definitely got my money's worth. The most common reaction when non-computer people see it is "What the hell is that?" lol. It's kind of cheap metal and plastic, but it looks cool. My whole PC probably cost $5-600 (US), I've got an AGP Geforce 7600GT, 1.5GB RAM, 3.33Ghz Celeron D, and I can play Oblivion on the highest settings with a few graphical enhancement mods installed. That's good enough for me. I'm thinking of getting a dual core processor soon, though.

Buy now, upgrade later; that was my motto for a while. It took me probably 3-6 months to buy everything, swapping out parts from my old PC (the motherboard died).

 

 

 

[matthew1g]

Like I said before, You're on a budget, So specs are somewhat lower. It would be better to spend that extra $70 on getting better performance instead of getting a nice case, looks are not everything, a pretty case won't stop your pc from getting outdated.

 

that's my opinion when it comes to budget pc. I could have gotten an 8600GTS and a Sagitta case with the left over money, but I opted for a 320 8800 GTS, and I don't regret my choice one bit.

 

Yeah I do get bad comments about my ugly case at lan parties, but usually these guys Have a Ferrari of a case, only to find a Seicar's engine under the hood. They're like OmG l00k at that cr4ppy case d00d I wonder what he has under it... A Geforce 4 mx lolllolloll!!!11one.

 

It's nice to see that my crappy case does 100+ FPS in BF2 while theirs is lagging all the time because they opted for a nice case.. then put an FX5950 in it.

 

Get my point?

Edited August 2, 2007 by matthew1g

[LT.Diablo]

Like I said before, You're on a budget, So specs are somewhat lower. It would be better to spend that extra $70 on getting better performance instead of getting a nice case, looks are not everything, a pretty case won't stop your pc from getting outdated.

 

that's my opinion when it comes to budget pc. I could have gotten an 8600GTS and a Sagitta case with the left over money, but I opted for a 320 8800 GTS, and I don't regret my choice one bit.

 

Yeah I do get bad comments about my ugly case at lan parties, but usually these guys Have a Ferrari of a case, only to find a Seicar's engine under the hood. They're like OmG l00k at that cr4ppy case d00d I wonder what he has under it... A Geforce 4 mx lolllolloll!!!11one.

 

It's nice to see that my crappy case does 100+ FPS in BF2 while theirs is lagging all the time because they opted for a nice case.. then put an FX5950 in it.

 

Get my point?

Hah, yeah point well taken. For an extra £70, what could I get that would increase the performance that much though?

[Loman]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

[Primer43]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

And what the hell is 8 gigs of RAM gonna do in a 32bit system?

[GTA3Freak-2001]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

And what the hell is 8 gigs of RAM gonna do in a 32bit system?

He did say eventually meaning sometime down the road when he has a OS capable of using more then 4GB of ram I guess. A reason why my new PC has a mobo that can support up to 8GB.

[K^2]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

And what the hell is 8 gigs of RAM gonna do in a 32bit system?

I wonder, what if you switch the CPU into a 64bit mode while in the boot selector. It should still run 32bit OS, right? Then as long as you can trick it into using larger segments, it can address 8GB from 32bit OS. Sort of like 86 addressed 1MB from a 16bit system.

[Primer43]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

And what the hell is 8 gigs of RAM gonna do in a 32bit system?

I wonder, what if you switch the CPU into a 64bit mode while in the boot selector. It should still run 32bit OS, right? Then as long as you can trick it into using larger segments, it can address 8GB from 32bit OS. Sort of like 86 addressed 1MB from a 16bit system.

I don't think it works like that. I'm not sure though.

 

Even if 64 bit systems become the norm in the next decade. Why waste the money on a 2gig stick waiting for it? 2, 1gig sticks will give you better performance and are probably cheaper.

 

My motherboard support 8gigs of RAM too, but I doubt I'll keep it that long to use it.

[matthew1g]

4+ Gigs would only be recommended if you like run 4 monitors with photoshop, rendering stuff,editing videos, encoding at the same time, or you are running multiple game/whatever servers, which I highly doubt LT here is gonna do that.

 

Right now 2-4 is recommended (4 if you run games like Supreme commander on everything high )

[Primer43]

4+ Gigs would only be recommended if you like run 4 monitors with photoshop, rendering stuff,editing videos, encoding at the same time, or you are running multiple game/whatever servers, which I highly doubt LT here is gonna do that.

 

Right now 2-4 is recommended (4 if you run games like Supreme commander on everything high )

http://www.realtime-vista.com/installation...limitations.htm

 

You wouldn't want to recommend something that isn't possible.

 

Unless you have a 64bit OS the PC will only see about 3.12 gigs of RAM.

 

If you do use a 64bit OS, then yeah get more than 3 gigs of RAM, but its stupid, really, to get more than 3gigs today, seeing as most people are not running 64bit systems, and only about 1/4 of that last gig is being used.

[SIP YEK NOD]

rumor has it, windows viena in 09 will be 64 bit only, and its about time.

 

if the change is never forced, it will never happen, and we will never move forward.

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I looked up some info on your motherboard, and I think it supports up to 8GB RAM, so you might want to get 2GB in one stick, so you could eventually buy four 2GB sticks to have the max amount of RAM.

And what the hell is 8 gigs of RAM gonna do in a 32bit system?

I wonder, what if you switch the CPU into a 64bit mode while in the boot selector. It should still run 32bit OS, right? Then as long as you can trick it into using larger segments, it can address 8GB from 32bit OS. Sort of like 86 addressed 1MB from a 16bit system.

I don't think it works like that either.

 

Even if it did, then any programs running on the OS would also run in 32bit I believe and you'd still have the 2gb per process limit.

[LT.Diablo]

From my point of view, the best thing to do, cost wise, would be to keep the current ram, then in '09 (if SIP's post is correct) upgrade, as for now 2gig seems to be good enough, then I could always upgrade to 4 if need be. Thanks, and keep the suggestions coming .

[Primer43]

They should of did it already. Software developers would adjust quick enough.

 

I mean if Apple can do it...

[Brutuz]

Kill that HD2600XT, Apparently the X1950Pro is faster (See here) so I'd get a 8800GTS, or if you wanna save money, get a X1950Pro or something, Its just that the HD2600XT is limited by its memory Bus, and the money you save on the case can cover the extra costs involved.

[Fozzy Fozborne]

Keep in mind that the 2600 and 8800 support Directx 10 (although, how well, no one knows) while the 1950 only supports Directx 9.

[LT.Diablo]

@Brutuz: I was thinking about an x1950 Pro, but of course they don't support DX10

 

@Fozzy: Yeah, that was my main thought, although I would like to get a 8800GTS I don't know if it would be worth it. I'm not too knowledgeable on the 8800 series, so would running a 8800GTS be better performance wise than the 2600?

[Loman]

I like this site for comparing graphics cards by specs. I would prefer the 8800, but the 2600 doesn't look bad to me either considering the price.

[Fozzy Fozborne]

Just to give you an example of how they stack up, here is how many FPS you get with each card on Battlefield 2142 at 1024x768, 32 bit color, no AA, trilinear filtering, max quality settings.

 

8800GTS 320MB - 102.2 FPS

2600XT - 47.7 FPS

1950PRO - 61.9 FPS

 

source

 

That's going back to the question of whether or not a card that's slower than a high-end directx 9 card could power the (much more demanding) directx 10 games.

Edited August 5, 2007 by Fozzy Fozborne

[matthew1g]

 

so would running a 8800GTS be better performance wise than the 2600?

 

It's WAAAAAAY better. Even the 320mb version. I have lots of friends dissing the 320mb Version because of the usual "not enough Video ram" sh*t. I haven't got a game so far that slowed that Beast down. I'd consider the 640mb version if you're like playing at resolutions of 1600x1200 and bigger. Anything lower than 1280x1024 is not a burden for the card.

 

The GTS version is basically a GTX with less ram, and 320 bits instead of 37something bit Bus. Plus if you overclock it, you could get it to speeds comparable to that of the GTX, not that it's really needed but it give better performance. Mine's at 575/1800 Stock . took it all the way up to 650/2100, and it's a ferrari to say the least

[Brutuz]

@Brutuz: I was thinking about an x1950 Pro, but of course they don't support DX10

The 2600 won't be able to play DX10 games at much more than 20fps either, if You want to get DX10 now, it would be best to wait for the nVidia 9x00 Series, although the 8800s are good.

[Primer43]

nvidia has DX10 demos on their website, but they don't suggest downloading them unless you have an 8800 gtx (or Ultra).

 

Like Brutuz said, there is no point in getting a DX10 card, unless it is a fairly high end one.

 

 

My opinion would be getting a higher end DX9 card.