Friend looking to buy a decent games computer that represents good value.

I have specced up the following

Advising a friend on a new PC. He wants it for games, but he wants good value.
I have specced the following.

AMD Athlon 64 3000-3200 £100
Asus AN8 MB 512 or do I need 1GB PC3200 RAM minor brand. £28-56
6600GT or X800XL Graphics card £120- 210
200GB Maxtor Diamond Max 10 SATA £65
Pioneer DVR 109 DVD recorder £38

Obviously a case. I was thinking of using the onboard sound.
Don't need a monitor.

1. Any comments on that spec?
2.What's the best DVD recorder?
2. Does branded memory like Corsair really make a difference in performance or is the reason reliability?
3. Please can I have any suggestions of good computers along a similar spec that are ready made. He isn't fussed about a monitor.
4. What's the computer shop down Hillsborough called? Opposite the barracks? Next to Maplin.

Thanks for your advice and comments

Sounds like a fair spec.
Onboard sound will suffice on most modern boards.

Very-pc is the shop opposite Morrisons, seem like a freindly bunch, quick to answer any stock/tech questions I have sent them. Not too happy with tech advice I have been given by then tho.

Fancy expensive memory may prove more reliable and (very) slightly quicker. The gaming/overclocking growd certainly rate Corsair (one reason I went for it in my setup).

Dont know of any particular DVD-RW drive, I just plumped for one that did all the formats I wanted and wrote quickly.

Originally posted by 999tigger
1. Any comments on that spec? - looks pretty good to me. What I would say is that the graphics card makes the most difference in games, so go for an X800 or a 6800GT, rather than a 6600 or an X700 2.What's the best DVD recorder? - Pioneers are supposed to be the best, but because of consistently low price and good performance, the NEC drives are becoming ubiquitous. 2. Does branded memory like Corsair really make a difference in performance or is the reason reliability? - a bit of both. You can get standard speed high quality memory, which should be more reliable (look at the feedback on ebuyers own brand memory to see the problems with cheap memory), but you can also get faster speeds and lower latency, if you pay more.

Looks similar to my spec except my graphics card isn't as good and I'm happy with the performance.

Unless you're on a tight budget I'd go with a proper sound card over using onboard sound though. Those things give you a performance hit which even a fairly cheap sound card can alleviate.

Few comments:

Processor = Make sure it's a 'Venice'.

Motherboard = Good choice

Memory = If you're not overclocking get Corsair Value Select, Geil Value, Crucial, Kingston - any of those brands will see you good.

Videocard = The X800XL is better, but for a 3000+ CPU I'd opt for the 6600GT. I recommend this (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=164948) It's the best 6600GT out there - completely silent, overclocks a fair amount, very fair price.

Hard Drive = Do yourself a favour and buy a Samsung/Seagate (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=74108) 200Gb SATA instead. They're more reliable, quiet and generally considered the best brand.

Cd Rom = I've heard good things about Pioneer drives - the 'modding' community is apparently very active so there's patches to make it play and record all types of DVD format.


A few other piitns when setting up the PC - you may need to 'flash' the BIOS for the motherboard - that being the case I'd recommending buying it from a shop on the street and requesting them to do it for you. Flashing a BIOS updates the motherboards memory so it recognises the latest processors when they're fitted to it. If you sat a 3000+ Venice without flashing it the motherboard might not recognise the CPU.

When installing winodws because you have a SATA driver you will need to install a SCSI/Raid driver when the install screen first appear = pay attention to the writing at the bottom, you will need to press F6 when it asks you the question and you only have about a 5 second window to acknowledge it.

Hard Drive = Do yourself a favour and buy a Samsung/Seagate 200Gb SATA instead. They're more reliable, quiet and generally considered the best brand.

Agreed. I only buy seagate's. You also get a 5 year warranty with Seagates whilst you only get 3 years with maxtors. For a while maxtor dropped the warranty on thier drives to a year which doesn't say much about their confidence in them lasting longer than that if you ask me :)

Seagates are most definatly quieter than Maxtor.

If you really want to turbo charge it you can't really do better than the Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors. Definatly not cheap at about £130(ish) for 74GB though.

you may need to 'flash' the BIOS ...

A lot of motherboards have a backup bios these days. So even if you flash it and it goes wrong you *should* still be able to boot. Besides, even if you do knacker it just do what everybody else does and send it back as DOA. :)

Only thing I'd add to the above is I'd definatly go for a gig or ram. Remember to get 2x 512mb rather than 1 stick of 1gb because they will run dual channel.

Agreed with punk, good points I missed. Also if you can get 2 single sticks of RAM for cheaper than a 'Twin pick, dual channle pack' etc. Do it. These packs are just a marketing gimmick - just ensure you buy the same brand and type of RAM.

If for gaming, maybe look at some nforce boards.

Supposed to be a little more for gaming.

dual ram/graphics card wasnt mentioned :>

Originally posted by 999tigger
2.What's the best DVD recorder?

Pioneers by far are the best around, DVD writers are dirt cheap now, definitly go for a Pioneer, I've had a 106 and now a 107 and they both kick ass, the RPC1 patched bios's allow for region free watching and remove the limiting on the read speeds :)

Originally posted by 999tigger
2. Does branded memory like Corsair really make a difference in performance or is the reason reliability?[/B]

Indeed, the biggest single most difference after its bus speed is its CAS latency... if you get 2ns its a LOT better than dirt cheap generic 3ns memory, don't bother thinking going in the middle with 2.5ns is a middle option 2.5ns is basically as slow as 3ns.

I would also reccomend only building a gaming machine if your going to spec it out to the max, building half a gaming machine will only lead to lots of expensive upgrading in the near future instead of in a year+...

I would reccomend the fastest AMD 64 processor you can afford, an Nvidia 4 chipset mobo... a gig or gig and half of good quality 2ns RAM, a nice Pioneer DVD-RW ANNNNNNNNND make sure you get a DVD reader... Toshiba and NEC 16x readers are very good and reliable and fast... again, don't be fooled, just because all the drives say 16x speed doesn't mean they're all the same speed!

Also, go for a nice 6800 Ultra graphics card, and make it a PCI-E one! maybe go for a motherboard that supports SLI so in the future you can get another 6800 Ultra when one isn't cutting the slack with games in 12 - 18 months time!

Gaming PC's aren't for the poor, or the computer illiterate, they take a LOT of work to get them running at their optimum speed... I've spent insane amounts of hours tweaking my CPU speeds, memory settings and finding the nicest drivers for all my components...

if you want some real computer gaming advice check out a specialist site such as www.guru3d.com (of which I've been a member for a long time!)

also try www.hexus.net - great forums their too - it's an english site too, not sure if guru3d is?

xafier we're talking about a gaming PC on a budget! Your recommendations would tip the scale to £800+ for the base unit alone. And anyway go for a 6800GT and overclock to ultra...save yourself £100...if you wanted to go that way.

Performance difference on 3ns and 2ns RAM is no more than 5%. Price difference is about £50-80. You'd be better getting some good branded value range RAM and spending the extra money on a better processor/graphics card.

Originally posted by cptwhite
also try www.hexus.net - great forums their too - it's an english site too, not sure if guru3d is?

xafier we're talking about a gaming PC on a budget! Your recommendations would tip the scale to £800+ for the base unit alone. And anyway go for a 6800GT and overclock to ultra...save yourself £100...if you wanted to go that way.

Performance difference on 3ns and 2ns RAM is no more than 5%. Price difference is about £50-80. You'd be better getting some good branded value range RAM and spending the extra money on a better processor/graphics card.

Guru3d is english... and the words gaming PC and budget do not go in the same sentence... a gaming PC is top of the range... if your not aiming for a ball splittingly good system then its just a high-end computer...

£800 for a base unit isn't a lot of money... I think my system comprimises of over £1200 worth of parts... well when they was originally bought... you can take my advice or not, but I know how to build a gaming system, I know how to build PC's and I've been helping people build and set-up and overclock their gaming systems for a couple of years :P

yes he could go for a 6800 GT, there isn't much in difference in the GT and ultra anyways, I was just using it as its the top of the line card... but I whole heartedly dissagree with theres not much difference in 3ns and 2ns ram when it comes to gaming, it can make a huge difference when your talking about building a fast system... sure it makes no difference loading MS Word, but when your transfering megs and megs of information in and out of memory for something like Doom 3, Half Life 2, Chronicles Of Riddick etc it makes a whole heap of difference because your costing 1ns (probably more realistically due to the TAS settings being higher too) for every time information is sent or retrieved from the RAM... doesn't sound a lot but it does when your processor is doing 3,000,000,000 calculations per second!

I appreciate your advice isn't without merit but he's obivously not looking at a high end system. Lots of people having gaming PCs with less than top range technology - I just feel your advice isn't suitable and a tad misleading in this instance, I'm trying to give pointers to stuff that wont cost more than £500 to put a decent base unit together.

And by the way Guru3d give prices in USD ...I'm guessing it's an American site, not that the advice is any less valid but when it comes to stuff like where to buy and that type of advice hexus is probably going to be more useful.

I'm sorry but the latency of the RAM doesn't have a significant affect on framerates in games. I stand by my advice that the money is better spent on other areas of the system, it's better if you can afford it, but when we're talking about budget, top range RAM (whether it's high FSB or tight latency) and overclocking are the first things to go out of the window.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice Core £89.25
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum skt 939 1G FSB nforce3 +7.1 ch.audio +USB2 +F/Wire +SATA RAID +Gigabit LAN £74.99
Chenbro Copper front panel for Gaming Bomb £10.00
Tagan 420W whisper quiet 21dB TG420-U01+dual fan supports12v EPS SATA/XEON ATX/BTX (3 Year Warranty) £44.99
2 x Geil® 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz with Aluminium heat spreader £56.50
Pioneer DVR-109 £32.49
200 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA lead free UDMA150 8MB Cache £58.00

Total Price Excluding VAT
£366.22
VAT @ 17.5%
£64.09
Total Price Including VAT
£430.31

from www.microdirect.co.uk all you gotta do is decide on a graphics card :) if you go for a 6800, make sure it's a 256mb one, a 6800 deserves 256mb of graphics RAM, the 128mb versions are just their basically to con people!

not bad... here's my shot :P

AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k L2cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor
Sapphire ATI Radeon Xpress 200P SKT939 mATX w/LAN 6Channel Audio USB2.0 SATA
Seagate Barracuda ST3200822AS 200Gb 8Mb Cache 7200RPM - OEM
Pioneer DVR-109 16x Multiple Format DVD Writer in Black - OEM
PNY Verto GeForce 6 6600GT PCI-E 128MB GDDR3 (G66600GN1F12XPB) Retail Box
Antec SLK1650/mt 350w Smart ATX Black Case
2x Samsung Original 512mb PC3200 DDR400 184pin Memory Module

= £524.48 delivered

This includes

A graphics card (£120), a case (case + Power supply combo - but a good brand that's good great reviews), a better processor (extra 200Mhz faster) and an arguably better hard drive all for an extra £95.

for ultra high spec www.alienware.co.uk do amazing computers

be prepared to pay a bomb though

cptwhite: one minor point to your setup, I dont believe the lower wattage Antec PSU's have SATA power socket support... also 350w might be a bit low if he decides to start adding another HD and other bits and bobs, although Antec are very good PSU's

also I made the assumption he wanted a SATA drive and Seagates SATA drives are a fair bit more expensive than Maxtor's, and I personally have never had any problems with the 5 maxtor drives in my house? of which 3 are in this PC i'm using...

its all swings and round-a-bouts with what brands to go for, they all have advantages and dis-advantages...

True enough about the power supply. But it's a bargain case (good ventilation with direct air to CPU and 120mm fans, and dampening rubber mounts for hard drives, and a 350w antec for less than £45!)

Having owned both Maxtor and Seagate drives I can confirm seagate are a better quality though...the internet techies don't recommend them without reason.

the nicest case I've come accross is the Chieftec Dragons from ebuyer, thats what I have... picked one up for £20... damn great for a big PC with plenty of room for 4 DVD drives, 6 HD's... plenty of room for fans...

can't really comment on seagate vs maxtor... the last seagate I had was about 15gb... in my oppinion if it reads and writes and doesn't pack in within the first 5 years its fine in my eyes

Wow thanks for all the great advice.

I’m still doing my research at the moment and it might be I am buying two PC’s. The one for me I intend to put together myself and the one for my friend I’m letting him look at the options of pre bought +warranty from the likes of Evesham and Mesh or to put it together himself. Sometimes you cant win in these situations as although advising him the best value route, if things go wrong then he’ on a bit of a limb because he wouldn’t know what to do.

Ok dealing with my questions in turn , but out of order:

1.Name of shop in Hillsborough thanks for that. My friend lives close by.

2.Ready made ones, then I’m suggesting he look at deals by Mesh and Evesham. As he really just wants a base unit then bought ones still work out quite expensive and he can easily go over £1,000. It’s his choice, but I’m pushing at assembling his own.

3.The memory questions. I’ve done some research. I don’t think he’s really an overclocker, but Ive looked at pricing and will be getting 1GB on 2x 512mb sticks of Corsair Value Select, which is about £55. I hadn’t realised memory and overclocking had gotten so complicated. I think that should help him on the reliability front.

4. I have been on CDRinfo and am a bit overawed at how complicated DVD burning has become. From my research on the forums there is no one overall outstanding best buy, but a few come out as favourites. The three interesting ones to note are:
4.1 BenQ1620pro.BenQ1640 this seems to be the professionals choice and its rated repeatedly as the best.I always thought BenQ were pretty much lower order, but they seem to have come uo trumps with the 1620. It gets consistent praise from the cd addicts on CDRinfo and CDFReaks. The 1620 is about £34 from overclockers.com, the 1640 has just been released and is not available in many shops yet. They seem to be a tweakers dream.
4.2 The Asus 1608P appears to be very fast and has moved Dual Layer up to 6 speed. It’s a very fast writer and is starting to win a fair few awards. It’s about £45. It’s actually a rebadged DVR109 with new firmware.
4.3 The LG 4163B is truly multiformat and offers DVD Ram support as well. It’s a very fast DVD recorder, but less fast when copying CDs. Its about £33 from Microdirect and so am probably opting for this at the moment until the 1640 is out or just buy a 109 as a second drive. I think Drives are that cheap these days anyway.

5. I chose the Maxtor as the new 10 series is a winner again and a big improvement. The SATA version is A listed by PC Pro . It’s more than big enough plus it was the quietest on test. They are about £65 on Microdirect. Thanks for the advice on installing a SATA drive. I always used to use IBM Deskstars and have had no problems with them. Bit noisy though. I’ll definitely look into the Seagate. I think the Raptor is beyond my needs.

6.Processor: Yes the Venice Core and an AMD 64. I’m always sceptical about paying twice as much for a processor for 20% more power. Especially if I don’t need it. I think the 3000 represents best value at the moment at about £100. I might go 3200. Seen an article showing the new Venice core ones are very overclockable.

7..Motherboard Asus A8n SLI as irrespective of the SLI it’s got great reviews as a good board. I thought I’d make the jump to PC Express. Its available at the bargain price of £99 from lowestonweb and you get free postage. Evesham tend to be pretty good about having the latest bios on the MBoards.
Andyod the A8N SLI Dleuxe is a gamers board with NForce 4

8. Finally Graphics card.
The recent reviews of the 800XL show that it’s a pretty amazing good value card. It outpaces a 6800GT when at higher detail levels, but costs about £70 less.they are about £200 and Gigabyte do one of those with just a heatsink on. Bit hard to get hold of at the moment, but it looks like its ATIs strike back at Nvidia. It also takes up less power. To save money I might make both of us get identical 6600Gts, which should be adequate fro something like World of Warcraft. I have managed to play it ok on something with a fraction of that power. He doesn’t need Doom3 etc. After a bit if he needs more power then we can take advantage of the SLI and put the two 6600GTs together and then maybe buy an 800XL. I am thinking the balance of value for money and performance.

From all the reports I have seen the ultras produce negligible increased gaming power for a lot more money.

9.Obviously he will need a decent power supply and case. Im taking notice of your suggestions below. I already have my case which is an antec Aria, because I want silence and the black was nice. Obviously Ill need to get something like a Tagan or even an Antec Truepower about 480w-550W later.

10.Soundcard,people have been pausing Audigy 2’s at me. I have a soundcard I’m happy enough with at the moent and frined can add one in later.


I’ve looked at your specs CPT and Xafier. I think what I will be building as against your suggestions are very similar machines. I just read an interesting article in CustomPC about building a machine for £500. They spent £70 on the watercooling! www.custompc.co.uk

So thanks for all your replies (Da Foot, Squirrelz , CPTwhite, Punk, Xafier and Carl Malibu) they were really helpful. I will let you know how I get on. BTW gaming system means to me something to play games on, but I don’t need the extra 3fps. I tend to get a new computer every 30 months. I can always add stuff later, so am just as interested in hitting the performance/ value for money sweet spot.

I used to live in sheffield a while ago, I started going to the computer fairs in Manchester, Bowlers if anyones heard of it ?, Anyway cheap place for computer bits is ctidirect.co.uk, i would post a link but it wont let me anyway have fun with thew new computer

pcspecialist.co.uk

This site looks to be one of the best for getting a PC built up to your own specifications, they seem very flexible about the setups and have reasonable prices too! Has anybody on here ever used them?

Originally posted by dafoot

Very-pc is the shop opposite Morrisons, seem like a freindly bunch, quick to answer any stock/tech questions I have sent them. Not too happy with tech advice I have been given by then tho.

Continuing the trend of freindly help - I recently had a message from very-pc about the above message. To enquire about the advice I was given and put it right.
Goes to show they really do seem to care for the (potential) customer, which can only be good!

Just a quick note about dvd writers.. I agree it can get very complicated, but these days the drives are so much better than they used to be. If you buy something like either a Pioneer or NEC (my personal choice, can't go wrong for £35!) then you should be fine. I'm on my fourth model of dvd writer since my first A03, so I know all about drive reliability! (and hour-long burns at a fiver a disc for something that didn't work 3 months later, you youngsters now don't know how easy it is! ;))

Much more important is your choice of dvd media. Go to somewhere like SVP (http://www.svp.co.uk) and stick to a good dye type - Ritek or TY (expensive but the best) and you'll be much better off than someone who just buys the cheapest discs they can find.

A question to throw back - what do you have to do to notice dual-channel memory increases? I usually buy a single stick through cheapness and then put in another one later, and I've never noticed any difference - but then I don't think I ever bother running any gaming benchmarks.

Originally posted by rich951
Just a quick note about dvd writers.. I agree it can get very complicated, but these days the drives are so much better than they used to be. If you buy something like either a Pioneer or NEC (my personal choice, can't go wrong for £35!) then you should be fine. I'm on my fourth model of dvd writer since my first A03, so I know all about drive reliability! (and hour-long burns at a fiver a disc for something that didn't work 3 months later, you youngsters now don't know how easy it is! ;))

Much more important is your choice of dvd media. Go to somewhere like SVP (http://www.svp.co.uk) and stick to a good dye type - Ritek or TY (expensive but the best) and you'll be much better off than someone who just buys the cheapest discs they can find.

A question to throw back - what do you have to do to notice dual-channel memory increases? I usually buy a single stick through cheapness and then put in another one later, and I've never noticed any difference - but then I don't think I ever bother running any gaming benchmarks.

you have to have a motherboard that can do dual channel and you normally need to enable it in the bios (not on by default).
Not using matched memory (at least same brand and model) means that the timing probably won't be accurate enough and it will corrupt, thus being very unstable.

Regarding that 800xl, is it worth the extra £100 compared to a 6600GT?

Originally posted by rich951
A question to throw back - what do you have to do to notice dual-channel memory increases? I usually buy a single stick through cheapness and then put in another one later, and I've never noticed any difference - but then I don't think I ever bother running any gaming benchmarks.

you mean dual-channel on Athlon mobo's? it really only gives an improvement with memory with good latency's and even then you'll be lucky to get more than 5% boost... they did a load of benchmarking and testing on www.guru3d.com a year or so back and came to the conclusion that buying these expensive matched pairs was pointless because the improvement was hardly worth it...

Didnt realise this thread was still going.

Update is as follows.

1. We tried pc specialist but they seemed a bit slow. Eventually bought friends computer from Watford?Aries.They have a configurator, but it was limited. I asked if I could substitute the exact parts and they said that was fine.PC build was £30,delivery £40 (ouch), but they gave friend a vat receipt and deliverd within a week.

2.Thanks about the DVD media I know how important that is.

I'm finding its hard to beat prices by lowest, Microdirect or savastore.