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Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 9:50 am

OCUK
Case - CA-001-SV - Silverstone Temjin TJ01B - £46.95
PSU - CA-030-AN - Antec True Power II - £44.95
Motherboard - MB-032-GI - Gigabit nForce4 - £57.95
CPU - CP-118-AM - AMD (Venice) Athlon 64bit 3200+ - £91.95
Graphics - GX-056-XF - XFX GeForce 6800GS - £119.95
Memory - MY-062-CS - Corsair 1024MB - £46.95
Soundcard - SC-034-CL - Creative XFi Music Experience - £64.95 - Check name
TV Card - GX-024-HA - Haupauge Nova-T - £33.95
Hard Drive 1 - HD-069-MD - Maxtor 80GB - £29.95
Hard Drive 2 - HD-040-MD - Maxtor 300GB - £63.95
DVD-RW - CD-033-LG - LG Black - £22.95
Floppy Drive - HD-002-MI - Mitsumi 7 in 1 card reader - £12.95
Operating System - SW-008-MS - Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre Edition - £64.95

Total OCUK = £825.26 incl. VAT

eBuyer
Monitor - 52511 - AG Neovo 17" TFT - £121.91
Keyboard - 88418 - Labtech Standard Black - £3.15
Mouse - 45463 - Microsoft Optical Black - £10.69
Remote - 77109 - Remote for MS Windows XP MCE - £18.49
Fan Guard - 43058 - eBuyer value Fan Guard - £0.22

Total eBuyer = £181.49 incl. VAT

______________________________________________

Grand Total = £1006.75 incl. VAT
+ approx. £20 p&p
~ £1030 incl. VAT

Well what do people think? Good/Bad/Down right ugly?

I plan on modifying the fan guards on the case so don't comment on how bad the stamped grill is

Thanks in advance.

derFunkenstein · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:02 am

I rather like that build. Some will complain about Antec PSU's, but it's all based on your experience.

080119-deactivated · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:05 am

Ehm, please give some more details about the goal of the system :wink:

. What do you want to do with it? It looks like it's gonna have a little Home Theathre things. Do you have any other plans with it?

I heard some 'things' about the case, just some 'stupidies'. Pay some more and get a real nice case or just buy a budget case, but dont buy budget 'nice' cases :lol:

. Silverstone's TJ06 is 30 cheaper and already very nice, thats just an example :wink:

. (cant do the Pound sign!?)

If its really only HTPC this PC is good enough, you could even save some from the VGA card :wink:

.

But please tell first what your goals are :wink:

.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:12 am

Yep mostly home cinema type things - movies, etc.

Gaming also, but not overly much I will be a Uni student!

Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:12 am

Is that your budget? Can you afford more or less?

Don't know too much about that LCD, and the Antec PSU issue has already been mentioned.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:17 am

£1000 is my budget, so that is already a little over but I'm pretty happy with it. I just wanted some other peoples views.

I like the TJ01 case because it hides the front and has plenty of room, the TJ06 just doesn't appeal to me as much.

Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:19 am

You can use onboard sound for now to get below your budget.

Just checked out your 17" LCD. You may want to spend a bit more to get one with DVI input. Also the Gigabyte motherboard, is it the one with SLI? May be you can get one without to save a bit more.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:24 am

I don't mind analogue input, I don't think I loose a great deal from it. So the screen stays, I've seen them in action and they're pretty good.

I'm not worried about saving anymore, so the graphics and motherboard can stay. That way when I want to upgrade using SLi it's still an option.

80GB+300GB was to have one small HD for windows files and a large for media. As I don't really want to pay for partitioning software. The only Samsung 250GB drives I can find at OCUK or EBuyer are SATA-II does this matter?

Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:46 am

Melchett wrote:
I'm not worried about saving anymore, so the graphics and motherboard can stay. That way when I want to upgrade using SLi it's still an option.

80GB+300GB was to have one small HD for windows files and a large for media. As I don't really want to pay for partitioning software. The only Samsung 250GB drives I can find at OCUK or EBuyer are SATA-II does this matter?

To me SLI is not an upgrade option at all, but that's just me.

SATA-II shouldn't matter. If anything you may need to set a jumper to force it back down to SATA-I. Speedwise there is almost no difference since no physical drive can transfer data even at SATA-I speeds yet.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:49 am

Set a jumper? Is that a physical thing? Sorry slightly new to all this

Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:03 am

Melchett wrote:
Set a jumper? Is that a physical thing? Sorry slightly new to all this

Some motherboard chipset won't work nice with SATA2 drives, even the drives are supposed to be backwards compatible to run at SATA1. So the drive manufacturers have a jumper on the drive to force it to run at SATA1. Yes it is a physical thing.

080119-deactivated · Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:08 am

AS Flying Fox said, I wouldnt count SLI as an upgrade option. You buy it or not. And you buy it mostly for games/benchmarks, but thats not for you. Get a good solid VGA :wink:

.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:31 am

I am going to be gaming though, during the holidays and a bit during term time.

Do you buy a jumper? Or is it included?

Voldenuit · Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:40 am

Piping in here:

You're buying a *Microsoft Mouse*? (shudder). The general consensus is that MS have really fallen behind on mouse technology, and that their rodents are no better than, well, rodents.

Get a Logitech, or if you're into gaming, a Logitech MX5/7 or Razer Diamondback (my personal weapon of choice).

If you're going to overclock, a Gigabyte board won't cut it. Also, unless you're planning to go SLI from the get-go/near future, there's no real point. Nex gen is usually faster than today's SLI, unless games are fillrate limited. ASUS or DFI are the kings of nf4 overclocking at present.

Also, you don't need partition software to set up a boot partition. You can do that when you install Windows, or from Computer Management in Administrative Tools later. I recommend you partition anyway, and store all your documents/data in a different partition from Windows - that way, you won't lose your data when you have to do a clean reinstall.

Hope this helps,
V.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:45 am

Yes it does help, thanks.

So I'll change the mouse and possibly the MoBo.

Can anyone advise on this jumper business :-?

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:52 am

Actually, just checking that MoBo doesn't have SLi, does that please you all?

leor · Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:40 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
To me SLI is not an upgrade option at all, but that's just me.

people are really down on SLI, but has anyone considered that the 7900GT is half the price of many 7900GTX cards, and 2 of those in SLI outperform the GTX in many scenarios?

for someone like me with 3 screens, it's a perfect solution, just toggle back and forth from SLI when i want to fire up a game.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:43 pm

It doesn't matter anymore as my card isn't actually SLi.

Can anyone help me with the jumper stuff? What actually happens?

080119-deactivated · Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:01 pm

Melchett wrote:
Actually, just checking that MoBo doesn't have SLi, does that please you all?

Its not about SLI option or not, its about good mobo or not :wink:

. For example the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe and the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe are both dual graphic motherboards, but also one of the best boards available :wink:

. But I guess they're a bit too expensive in this story :roll:

.

But ARE you going to overclock or not?

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:04 pm

I doubt I'll be overclocking, seems a little daunting to me so no I won't be.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:12 pm

OK I've changed the monitor to an AG Neovo 19" TFT with DVI and the Hard Drives to 2 Samsung 250GB ones.

Just need someone to explain the jumper.

Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:25 pm

Get the drives and plug them in. If they don't work by default, then you can look up the jumper stuff. They should work anyway.

If you don't know what a jumper is, then you can look it up.

Basically if you have an SATA2 drive, it should work even with chipset that can only do SATA1, but sometimes the chipset is a bit quirky, you need to "force" the drive into SATA1 mode in order to work. Then you just put a jumper over some pins. There should be instructions from the hard drive manufacturer. I doubt you will need this because your motherboard is recent enough I think.

DreadCthulhu · Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:25 pm

This Wikipedia Article on jumpers should explain it.

satchmobob · Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:29 pm

Ok to explain jumpers...

On the rear of the hdd you will find a series of small metal pins. Linking these pins together in different ways changes the drives behavior. To link two pins you use a small ('bout 3x5 mm) connector called a JUMPER. Different options to select are master/slave/cable select and cap limit on PATA drives and sata i and ii on SATA. ignore the first 4 optiona as you'll be using sata hdds.
Dont worry 'bout buying a jumper they come with the drive. You'll also find any number of them on your mobo. Here used for anything from resetting the bios to defaults, changing fsb multipliers enabling SLI blahh, blahh....

brainchild786 · Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:31 pm

Instead of getting separate TV card, vid card and remote maybe get the All in Wonder X800 GT from OCUK for £160?

Other than that the only problem is the mouse which sucks a bit. If you can stretch to one of the Logitech MS models i guarantee you will love it all the more.

Melchett · Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:33 pm

Thanks guys, I did do a quick search but didn't even think of looking on Wiki.

Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:27 pm

brainchild786 wrote:
Instead of getting separate TV card, vid card and remote maybe get the All in Wonder X800 GT from OCUK for £160?

The idea is that if and when you upgrade your video card, you don't have to get yet another AIW.

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