New Comp

[SexuallyAbusedPanda]

As i am sure some of you are aware the SEXUALLY ABUSED PANDA will be returning to his native soils and will thus be requiring a new PC.

Now i think i have managed to drum up enough money out here to afford upto ~500-700 quid depending on what i get in between now and flying home.

From this i will need everything but monitor, keyboard, mouse and headphones.

Just sort of want to know what i can get and if possible wanting it to be quiet as a mouse would be a major bonus as my previous one was rather noisy

[Zeus]

will you be overclocking it ?

[frymaster]

you needing a legit OS?

should be able to spec something up (though it'll be easier nearer the time & with a definite budget)

[DevilsRefugee]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VIBOX-D-315-QUAD-CORE-3-4GHz-HD-5770-1GB-GAMING-PC_W0QQitemZ190378067873QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_DesktopPCs?hash=item2c536ac7a1

ebay has some decent stuff on, but obviously probably be cheaper self building but if your like me, and dont have the patience/know how, then for under 600 quid thats ntb imo.

will you be getting bad company 2?

[ErnieCool]

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition    € 137,-    
Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B    € 31,95    
Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3    € 77,85    
Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9K2/4G    € 89,20
Sapphire HD5850 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E    € 232,-    
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Zwart    € 77,94
be quiet! L7 530W    € 49,99    
Sony AD-7240S    € 18,33    
Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ, 1TB    € 69,-    

This is what they recommend in a dutch best buy guide, probably a bit over your budget with ~790 euro, but i guess you could shave some off with a cheaper videocard and using the stock cooler nad getting a different case that already comes with a PSU.

Allthough no clue what these parts cost in uk.

[SexuallyAbusedPanda]

cheers guys, was just wondering what I could expect from my money. I can self build and I have XP and other software just not the hardware >_<

Will let you all know how much exactly I have in a month. Lets hope i get a bit more money so I can go for a bit of a higher spec

[lifeless]

if you can afford it, i'd defo recommend going to win7. its soo much better than xp/vista and can take advantage of the 4gig ram (instead of the 3ish you'll get on xp).  also as you have xp, you can get an upgrade license which will be cheaper.

[frymaster]

I second this, it makes a huge difference:

- Can use SATA drives in native (AHCI) mode without needing to load drivers at setup
- Can use all the memory if you go 64-bit (and you should)
- Better multitasking, especially on hyperthreaded processors
- Multithreaded GUI - a lot of the UI in XP/Vista is dependent on a single-threaded process which is why sometimes when one program freezes everything does
- More productive UI - the vista/7 start menu saves me oodles of time
- direct10+ capable - there are a few dx10-exclusive games out now, and many more than claim to have higher quality and/or higher-speed dx10 modes

It depends on what end of your budget you're at, but at the lower end you can easily get a core2quad with win7, and at the high end probably an i5, for your money, and a good gfx card in either case

[DevilsRefugee]

slight OT, but if i was to upgrade my cpu, what could i have..i currently have an E8400 @ 3ghz..and im thinking of going with a new graphic card AND CPU by may (for my birthday).

Thanks.

[frymaster]

would need your exact motherboard make & model (which cpu-z can tell you) but that's one of the most modern core2s, so anything from the desktop lists here would probably fit

Only upgrade from there would be a quadcore (and it would have to be a pretty beefy one too, that's a very fast dualcore chip you have).  Realisitcally the fastest chip that's not overpriced is the q9400 at 2.66 GHz, about 10%-15% slower per core than what you have, but it has twice the cores. (£150)

what OS are you on and how much RAM do you have? There might be cheaper speed improvements to be made there

[DrKagon]

slight OT, but if i was to upgrade my cpu, what could i have..i currently have an E8400 @ 3ghz..and im thinking of going with a new graphic card AND CPU by may (for my birthday).

Thanks.

As Fry has already alluded to Rocky I wouldn't upgrade that CPU at all. Especially not to one of the Intel platforms (i3, i5, i7) that have very little upgrade future. Unless of course you want to go whole hog and buy a completely new machine.

[DevilsRefugee]

slight OT, but if i was to upgrade my cpu, what could i have..i currently have an E8400 @ 3ghz..and im thinking of going with a new graphic card AND CPU by may (for my birthday).

Thanks.

As Fry has already alluded to Rocky I wouldn't upgrade that CPU at all. Especially not to one of the Intel platforms (i3, i5, i7) that have very little upgrade future. Unless of course you want to go whole hog and buy a completely new machine.

no i dont, but iam slightly concerned that if i get a new gpu, my cpu will cause bottle necking.

[Brettthefirst]

Hey Panda, I wonder if this is any help: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2010/03/09/pc-hardware-buyers-guide-march-2010/2

Those guys (or more accurately, the magazine they produce, pretty much built this PC.)

The 'Affordable all-rounder' on page 2 is £450 I believe. Something like that as a start would give you leeway to play with too

[lifeless]

tbh i wouldn't be looking at anything that isn't a quad core these days (for a gamer anyway) cheapest quad is £95 just now and well worth it.

[frymaster]

slight OT, but if i was to upgrade my cpu, what could i have..i currently have an E8400 @ 3ghz..and im thinking of going with a new graphic card AND CPU by may (for my birthday).

Thanks.

As Fry has already alluded to Rocky I wouldn't upgrade that CPU at all. Especially not to one of the Intel platforms (i3, i5, i7) that have very little upgrade future. Unless of course you want to go whole hog and buy a completely new machine.

no i dont, but iam slightly concerned that if i get a new gpu, my cpu will cause bottle necking.

unless you have infinity frames per second there's always going to be a bottleneck somewhere, probably in either the motherboard or the processor... it's only a problem if it's really holding you back, and we're not sure it will be.  As lifeless is saying, on a new build you definately want quadcore, but you already have a pretty sweet dual core... what OS are you on and how much RAM do you have?