Building a new system

computerwoman

Hi guys can you recommend what to put in a new system I want to build my son a new system for his 21st in march he's an advanced gamer, so it needs to be good enough to play the latest games, star wars galaxies/ battle to middle earth the rise of the witch-king and huxley when it finally comes out, also dawn of war dark crusade.
what would you use and where would you get it from, from scatch, thats CPU/memory/graphics card/HD/DVD-RW/floppy/sound card/lan10/100/ motherboard/etc etc etc can you help
please.......................................

Blacksheep1979

how much do you want to spend?

A:I

get a kick-!!! case haha
liquid cooling!
http://www.crazypc.com/products/8005BK.html

computerwoman

anywhere between £300-£400 and he's already got a case so don't worry about that and I'm also getting him a 19" widescreen tft monitor from ebuyer at around £123.00 so this is just for the system it self.

patwa_2

OK, your main components that you're going to want to focus on are the graphics, cpu, RAM and possibly sound.

I'd go Nvidia 7600, and 2GB of RAM if you can squeeze it, Intel or AMD it's up to you. Dual core is becoming pretty big now, what with quad core having just been released, so I'd personally say AMD AM2 X2 3800+ for value for money.

You're about £60 for the graphics card, 256MB, £90 if you want something with a bit more kick (GT version).

You're £85 for the CPU, although you could always go lower than 3800+. You're about £50 for 1GB DDR2 RAM, although the arguement is still raging over whether it's better than DDR RAM. However, newermotherboards are taking DDR2 increasingly.

For the motherboard, say Asus M2N-E. £50 for that, but it has everything on board that you would want, including 7.1 sound and it also comes with very good overclocking features, which your son will love to tweak the gaming performance.

Obviously with this rig you'll want good cooling, Akasa and Zalman both make good products, and don't forget Thermaltake. A 600W PSU should be good to go to power this, although the 750W models are slightly cheaper. Then, just pick up a 250GB SATA or SATA2 hard drive, £50, and you're set. £20 for a DVD-RW/CD-RW combo. Obviously this are rounded prices, using Quidco or others will net you some cashback on it. Also keep an eye out for Processor/RAM bundles.

Hope this helps.

Hussein.

rygon

Hussein seems to hae it cleared up...not being a too much of a techie myself though i heard theres a new motherboard/processor config coming out in the very near future (4mnths or so) is it worth waiting for this as i guess everything is gonna be obsolete b4 it...or is getting whats available now worth it???

Blacksheep1979

spend a few quid more and go for an intel E6300 chip, overclocked they can give a £450 amd chip a run for its money but it'll be aprox £110 for that chip. Also 2gb ram will make a difference, but this is something that could be added later.

The only thing I'd say is don't do this as a surprise for him as tbh top end graphics cards will take up 90% of your budget and with directX 10 coming out soon (you should def aim for a compatible card) he may want to chip in a bit more himself and get a better graphics card as for a gaming PC I'd be looking at cards around the £150 mark.

patwa_2

True, and it's my AMD bias that made me rec it, but also to say that whereas DX10 is coming out soon, it will probably not be made available to WinXP users (unless MS have stated to the contrary later than the end of November), which leaves you to upgrade to Vista. Then, there's the fact that at the present time, not many games are going to rely fully on DX10, so it's your call as to whether you go future-proof (for a lot more money - there's only one DX10 compliant card that is fully certified at the moment and that is £350) or go high-end DX9.

Hussein.

EDIT: Also, you probably knew this already but remember that the motherboard socket must match the processor. If you go the AMD X2 route, you'll need a socket AM2 motherboard, for the Intel Core 2 Due E6300 you'll need socket £775. Asus do motherboards in both flavours and they both have the same features.