hey guys. i know you guys know what your doing, so i would like your advise if you dont mind! i am ok with computers, know the parts and stuff. altough, i am not the best at choosing the best parts! my pc died yesterday, its been on its way out for years now, ive got a good 5-6years out of it, its purely outdated now! this is what i require... (atleast the spec of my laptop) ATLEAST (laptop) 1.83 ghz (Dual Core) - Intel (R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU " T5550 @ 1.83ghz " 3gb ram 500GB - wether it be 2 hard drives or whatever, whatever you think best!! (not sure about the RPM and stuff, maybe you can help?) 512mb gfx - nvidea preferebly, had a bad experience with ATI in the past - want it to play games smoothly. altough i dont play that many, when i do, i expect my games to run nicely.. which they never do so this time i want them to! windows vista (ok, ill proberly download it.. got a few disks with it on, not going to buy an OS ever..) PSU - i do not understand all this power supply stuff, i want it to be a quiet PC thats all i know really.. and enough to run the computer sweet.. CASE - not bothered, not too big, not too small, good ventilation if possible, nothing over the top, but not too plain.. maybe a metal one instead of a crappy plastic one? Cooling - as i said i want my system to me as quiet as possible.. i am unsure about all the "water cooling stuff" i know it cost a bit, but if you could just show me what its all about ? i will proberly go for the fans as its cheaper and i am not afer spendin a fortune on this system! budget? not sure... depending on what its going to produce for me to be honest.... i only want the tower, so an "ok" computer £300.. but if its going to be very interesting computer.. then £400.. anything more than that and i proberly woudlnt bother, dont really use the PC anymore, just for downloads and the odd game, but i would like it to run smoothly if i ever decide to download a high performance game? i play the likes of CS:S, CS 1.6, Quake3, etc.. i like online games, i may even decide to play more powerful games. unsure what they are at the moment as havnt bothered looking, but you get what i mean i hope!! any help appreciated! i just want a smooth running pc for once pleaseeeeee !! mike
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148715 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150880 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130429 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158995 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150985 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151999 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144339 Something like that would do nicely.
hi mate thank you for your reply. would that system to fairly quick? ive heard of the that gfx card b4 (i do not search in proper detail) bt do u 100% recommend it? as i have had bad experience with the only 1 gfx ive ever bought which was years ago, ATI Radeon 256mb, it wudnt even run CS 1.6 nevermind anything else!! haha... plus i thought the catalyst app was pretty crap! as for everthing else, these seem pretty much the aryt equipment for the job although i do have a question or 3? the psu - 400watts, i know u guys know what ur talking about, but is that enuf? i see its a quiet psu so thats all good.. the cpu - is that a fast reliable cpu? i know it will be compared to my crappy old computer, but i would like to keep this computer for a few year without having to upgrade (maybe the odd thing ere n there, which i dubt it will need for my requirements..) also does that come with a cooler on top of the CPU? if so is that also a quiet one? as having the quiet PSU, wudnt it make sense to buy a quiet one on top of the CPU too? (or not??) the case - thats a nice case, that is the one i was looking at my self, altough, i was going to put 2 big blue fans on the front, quiet ones if i could get them... would this produce too much noise? are they neccessary? (i was just interested in the nice lit up front behind the mesh thats all) thats again sam, your advise is good, sorry to remable on, but i want to make sure i get the right system and advise that i looking for, if you could clear up the above it would be great!! mike
It would very quick for a system on that budget. I ca't say it competes with the best of the gaming rigs out there, but you're unlikely to find a system that powerful pre-built. I do 100% recommend that graphics card, it is the most powerful and energy-efficient card in its price range. There have been a fair few changes since cards that couldn't run CS 1.6 (I highly dubt it was 256MB if it couldn't run counter-strike, the oldest 256MB card I know of was the 9200, and that can even run CS:Source, albeit not very well) The PSU may only say it's 400 Watts, but unlike a lot of units, it tells the truth, there are a lot of PSUs out there from terrible brands that aren't even half as powerful as they say they are. It is units like those that cause component manufacturers to say 'at least a xxx W power supply' The CPU comes with a cooler. By most standards it is not at all loud, but it does not come under the ultra low noise category. On your budget, that's going to be difficult to achieve. If you have the extra, buy a Freezer 7 Pro cooler for it. At full speed they make a racket, but since they're much better coolers than the one the CPU comes with, you can turn the fan speed right down and it'll still do the job fine. The case works best when you add two front fans. Be advised though, the front fans are the ones that will seem the loudest as they are the closest to you as you use the PC, so if you do buy LED fans, buy quiet ones (i.e. not Thermaltake). Rather than have LED fans you could of course buy normal plain 'RealSilent' fans like I use, and then buy a blue cold cathode light set to use instead, they don't really make any noise.
hi mate thanks again for the replies. perfect reply at that. as for my old gfx card, it was 256 definately, it ran CS 1.6, although, the ping was rubbish, fps was rubbish, and dropped significantly with smoke and alot going on, enough to make my fps lower than 10 at times!! but saying that, my cpu was only 2.4ghz, i had 2gb ram, and it was a pretty rubbish pc tbh. i am planning to just spend £400, as i am not that much into gaming any more but i do want a decent pc as i do have my spells, especially in the winter! although, i would spend abit more after the build of the pc, not straight away, after a few weeks, ie. for the quiet fan on the cpu and otherb its and bobs such as fans at the front. i would rather have the quiet fans at the front rather than blue, so as you said, maybe a light would be the better option. i am not too fussed about having a light tbh, its just a nice little touch to finish it off realy. i am more bothered about keeping the computer cool, and quiet. i noticed on your pc builds, you have a smaller 40gb (slightly smaller), is that for your OS with a higher RPM on the disks? (10,000 is it ?) just wondering.. as if it would make the system quicker for me to buy one of those first.. then in a few weeks upgrade to the bigger hard drive and add a second drive for storage of photos, games, downloads, videos etc? what you think about that? or wouldnt it make a difference, as if i put games for example onto the slower 7,200 rpm drive, would it run slower? altough i can imagine the OS running smoother as its on the 10,000 rpm drive?? your the man with the knowledge, is that right above or wrong? ide rather know how it is than just guess.. thanks again mate, i appreciate it
I'm not sure what went on then, as any 256MB card and 2.4Ghz CPU would have been enough. I do use a 37GB Raptor for the OS, but only because I found one cheap. They're quite noisy, and no longer very good value for money. Generally I recommend the Velociraptors now, which are much better, but cost over £100 for the drive, which isn't in your budget. The OS does run much better if on a 10k drive, but it's expensive for what gain you do get.
ok mate thank you for your time, ill come back to this thread when i decide to buy these parts, i think i will go ahead with what you have suggested, as its alot better than what i could come up with! also, just before i go, are there any specific fans i should use on the front? as i might aswell buy them too from the same website! thanks agaim sam, you been a star
These will do the whole works, Blue LEDs and quietness (when on Low) but are clearly quite pricey: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/82247 While not my #1 brand of fan, these are probably the best you will get from ebuyer, and do a quite a good job: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151390 Plug these into a motherboard fan header and you can control the speed automatically in the BIOS (temperature based), or you can adjust them manually in Windows via a program like SpeedFan.
hey man thanks, i have noticed on some computers they have a thing on the front of the computer that controlls fans on that. i know its not within my budget, but i will be looking into other things after a few weeks, once i had my use out of it. do u recommend them? or are they rubbish? it just saves using programs i guess? ive used speedfan in the past to try and cool my old pc, didnt really work much
I use them all the time. The only downside is the good ones tend to have crazy bright LEDs that blind you. Bear in mind Speedfan is used to slow down fan speeds to preserve noise. It can't boost their speed beyond usual for extra cooling.
The HD4670 is a card and a half don't doubt it my 4850 doesn't offer that much of performance boost over it and its twice the price and needs a PCI-e power lead (although that PSU has one). Also from my understanding Pentium dual cores are re-branded D's a dual-core which has proven (in a mates computer) to be slower then a straight P4. The extra cash for a Core 2 would be well worth it. If you can be bothered to try a cheap PSU then sometimes they can be well worth it take this £20 unit as an example http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129422 more often then not one or 2 need to be sent back before you get a working unit but they are a fraction of the price (I've put a 500w unit as as sammorris says there not always as powerful as they say). Finally if you decide XP (32-bit) instead of Vista 4GB RAM can in rare cases cause all sorts of performance problems and you'll need to cap the amount windows uses to as much as it see's (its not a hard fix but I'm just giving you a heads up).
The HD4850 is a lot more powerful than the HD4670, by about 85-90%. The new Pentium Dual Cores are nothing like the old ones. The Pentium D800 and D900 were two P4s slapped together. The E2000 series is a Core 2 Duo with less cache, and as a result even the basic 1.8Ghz one flattens all but the fastest Pentium Ds. Considering the Pentium Es go all the way to 2.4Ghz, they're admirable CPUs for the price. The E5200 chip (forget if it's a Pentium or Core 2) even beats AMD's fastest dual cores, the 6000+ and 7750 Black Edition. I'm frankly amazed you trust dangerous PSUs like the Ebuyer ones, as they usually destroy PC systems when overloaded. I always make a habit of forcing people out of them to save them losing hundreds of pounds of gear due to a faulty PSU. You rarely experience issues with running out of memory in XP unless you run very high end games. I switched to Vista for the Quad crossfire support, not the extra memory. Only one games really breaches 3.5GB, which is GTA4.
I got my ass owned lol. On the RAM point it isn't that XP isn't running out of RAM its that it can't understand it as I said in RARE cases having that 4GB can cause stability problems. e.g. if your running CoD 4 scraps of game data can end up in the 800MBish section XP can't see and it'll crash and won't close until you reboot. You need to cap your RAM in the BOOT.ini so XP doesn't see the extra room at all.
I ran XP with 4GB for a long time (11 months), with a 2GB graphics card as well, and had no issues at all that I would attribute to anything other than when I was playing with overclocks. When I had a stable system, I had a stable PC, that was that. I played COD4 a lot with said system and never encountered a game crash.
