Pc building help.

[notsoscary]

Okay, so i'm moving out of the family house soon and will no longer be able to use the family p.c, so i need to get my own.

 

I figure building the p.c myself would be much cheaper and i already know how to do it all.

 

What i need help with is what hardware i should get to build a gaming p.c for a budget of £700.

 

I mostly need help with the motherboard/cpu, theres so many different kinds and i'm a little clueless as to what which ones is good for gaming and which aren't, also i'd like to find a nice medium to high graphics card thats easy on the purse strings that can handle wow and c&c 3 smoothly as i play those games the most and i am thinking about a soundcard, don't need anything fancy, but any cheap suggestions would be appreciated. Finally, i'd like to know what kind power source i'd need to run it all.

 

As for the rest of the things i need to build my own p.c, such as the memory and whatnot, i think i can handle myself.

 

Well, any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Notsoscary

[danzil]

i qiute often buy from http://www.eclipsecomputers.com

they are cheap and reliable.

for a gaming machine my spec would be (just mobo n cpun gcard)

a pentium 4d 820 or 920 -940 the 820 is a 2.8ghz cpu socket 775..

i have used this chip on a mass of pc's i have built works extremely well.but its slightly bigger brother is better running a 3ghz....i believe you can get them for around the £65 mark.........as for the motherboard.....i usually go with gigabyte or asus....asrock are ok......eclipse has a good selection...

as fore the graphics card do you prefer pci/e or agp....agp are being fazed out qiute a lot so pci/e may be your best bet.

 

they have a deal on at the moment for the 256Mb nVidia GeForce 8600 GT PCI-Express VGA Card costing £75 all round good card obviously isnt the best.but a good card none the least......

£700 will built you something qiute nice i reckon......does this cost include the monitor.......

regards

danzil

 

i did write this quickly so sorry for any typos etc

[notsoscary]

Yeah, the £700 includes a monitor, although i have a mass of old monitors lying around the house, i thought i'd get myself a new tft to go with the new p.c (any links to dirt cheap 21" Tft monitors would be greatly appreciated).

 

Thanks for that website by the way, checking out stuff on it at the moment, another question though i should probably buy my own copy of xp, i don't think microsoft would be too happy at me using my parents copy, so should i stick with xp home or is it worth forking out a few more pounds for xp pro or even vista?

 

Thanks again.

 

Notsoscary

[danzil]

well in my opinion vista might be your best bet.at least it will be future proof...

be aware of vista minimum spec though...not too much different to xp though really.

as for monitors i am sure of a decent site unless you are a registered company..

try

savastore

or microdirect

regards

danzil

oh yeh vista home isnt much more expensive then xp now,,,,any other help needed just ask mate

[notsoscary]

My only worry about vista is backwards compatibility, would i have to download endless amounts of patches to get my older games and software to work? Like i have to do for alot of my old dos and win95 games on xp?

 

Anyway, checked out those sites and thanks again for all the help.

 

notsoscary

[notsoscary]

Okay, before i actually pay for anything, here is what i've picked out just wanna make sure there is nothing i have missed out or have made some really bad choices.

 

Motherboard: GigaByte 965P-DS3 LGA-775, DDR2, PCI-E, SATA2, GBLan, ATX

CPU: Intel Pentium D 935 3.2Ghz Dual Core LGA Processor

Graphics Card: Sapphire 512Mb Radeon X1950 Pro PCI-Express VGA Card

Hard Drive: 200GB W. Digital Caviar SE 7200RPM 8Mb Cache IDE Hard Drive

Case: Duke Silver Case Black Front with 500W ATX2 24pin PSU

Memory : 2x2gb DDR2 PC2 5300

Monitor : GNR TS902D 19" LCD Black Silver DVI 8ms Monitor

Sound devices: Trust SC-5250 5.1 Surround Sound Card w/Digital &Optical

Logitech X-530 - PC Multimedia Home Theatre Speaker System

DVD RW : HP DVD1040i 20x DVD+/-RW,DL,RAM & Lightscribe v2

 

Oh, and a mouse and keyboard, don't think i could have gone wrong with those so i won't bother listing them.

It all comes to about £658.66 (+p&p and vat).

[maynardvdm]

And a pair of speakers :-) (or 5.1 surround sound :-) )

[danzil]

Sound devices: Trust SC-5250 5.1 Surround Sound Card w/Digital &Optical

Logitech X-530 - PC Multimedia Home Theatre Speaker System i believe there the speakers...

 

and may i say a very nice set up indeed.....

regards

danzil