Yet another system rating thread

[Cassius106]

Hi,

Going to be ordering new rig this week and as usual gonna put the specs up here for review incase iv made any silly mistakes.

Thanks for any comments and advice

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Its a gaming PC, all sorts from strategy to FPS to MMO

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
<£1000

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
England

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
No preferance

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Keyboard, mouse(MX510), Dlink Wireless card (cant remember model off top of my head its fairly bog standard) and 19" iiyama CRT Monitor

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
I have

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Overclocking, not sure how much yet depends what I can get away with

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
ASAP

And here is the build

GFX Card: Radeon HD 4870 1GB
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=878477 £210

CPU: Core 2 Duo 8400 Wolfdale
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=736334 £115

RAM: 4GB 1066Mhz
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=864779 £76

Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Deluxe
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=818509 £129

Hard Drives: Seagate 500Gb 7200 RPM 32MB Cache x2
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=678208 £84(£42 Each)

Case: Antec 1200
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=828755 £109

PSU: Corsaire 650W TX
http://www.dabs.com/productvie...igationKey=11259,50113 £68


Main thing im not decided on is the cooler for the cpu since I havnt been keeping up with them lately

 

[rathsach]

Looks good.. A few comments

Get DDR2-800 if you don't plan to OC it much.. And get 8GB now you're at it .. (you are running a 64 bit OS right?)

I suppose you plan to raid 0 those drives? My suggestion - don't.. You get NO real life performance enhancements, but you get twice the risk of loosing all your data.. Raid 0 is nice in benchmarks, but in real life application for gaming etc. you won't notice a thing..

Get 1 bigger drive instead is what I'm saying..

Otherwise it looks good.. I personally don't like Asus mobo's, but that's just me..

Cooler.. Check out Xigmatec S1283 and S1284. SilenX Iextreme Pro. Thermalright Ultra-120. Arctic Cooling Extreme.. All nice..

 

[Cassius106]

Good point on the ram

Im not planning to raid the drives, the only reason for getting 2 really was so if one dies I only lose half the stuff (I do run backups but they are not daily or anything so if I had a hard drive crash id still lose stuff)

Gonna be using Windows XP so not 64 bit.

I know XP32 cant utilise the 4GB of ram but it is mainly there because im pretty certain at some point in the machines life span I will be forced to upgrade to windows 7 for something

 

[rathsach]

Originally posted by: Cassius106
Good point on the ram

Im not planning to raid the drives, the only reason for getting 2 really was so if one dies I only lose half the stuff (I do run backups but they are not daily or anything so if I had a hard drive crash id still lose stuff)

Gonna be using Windows XP so not 64 bit.

I know XP32 cant utilise the 4GB of ram but it is mainly there because im pretty certain at some point in the machines life span I will be forced to upgrade to windows 7 for something

There are MUCH better ways to secure your data.. You WILL loose important data if you loose one of your 500GB drives.. No matter how strict you are with where you put stuff.. I'd go for a mirroring setup if I were you..

Take two 750GB drives (very good price pr. GB) and run a Raid mirror on them..

 

[Roguestar]

Don't run a RAID mirror setup. RAID is not for proper backup, it is for reducing downtime. If you accidentally delete something, get a virus, or anything happens the data in software then it'll affect both drives. RAID-1 is for when you absolutely cannot deal with a single drive failure. They can still both get zapped, the RAID controller can still mess with them.

Get a single 640WD Caviar, it's a much better performing drive, and then get another to use as an external backup. Buy yourself an eSATA enclosure and an eSATA-SATA card for your PC and you'll be able to use it for backups and disconnect it when not using it. Consider using a scheduled program like Acronis to take periodic images of the internal drive.

The Gigabyte EP45-DS3L is cheaper than the P5Q on scan, if I recall correctly.

Get the Corsair DDR2-800 instead of the DDR2-1066, you'll still have a little room for overclocking while saving money.

 

[Twsmit]

Looks like a good build, however you need neither EPP memory as you have an Intel board nor PC1066. (unless you are doing serious OCing. DDR2-800 allows for a 400mhz FSB at 1:1 speeds)

Also like the others said, do a proper backup. I would buy a 500-750GB internal drive, and build a matching external SATA drive and do monthly backups.

Lastly, go Vista x64. You are buying 4GB of ram, with the possibility of buying 8GB, XP only sees ~3GB. For gaming we are quickly moving into the era of 4GB as a standard and I would advise against clinging to XP for a new powerful gaming build like this.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Cassius106
Yet another system rating thread

Thanks for any comments and advice

I give your rig a 3.5 out of 10, for lack of originality.
It's as generic as they come. :laugh:

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Blain
I give your rig a 3.5 out of 10, for lack of originality.
It's as generic as they come. :laugh:

Which on ATF means it's a solid build of recommended parts

I'll second advice to go for Vista64 - OP's video card takes up 1GB of memory allocation alone, leaving <3GB of available addresses for system RAM.

 

[Cassius106]

Cheers for advice guys, have decided to go down to 800Mhz, and stick with 1 HD rather than 2