Prebuilt PC

Arch_23

hi,

I'm looking to purchase a custom built PC with the next month or so, I'm looking for something quite powerful ~4-8GB RAM and high end gfx and cpu.

Budget: ~£1500

The problem is I'm not really the most technical person in the world, I know the basics but I'd welcome any advice or insights you may be able to share.

I'm currently looking at a few different configurations at Cyberpowersystem.co.uk:

CASE: NZXT HUSH 420W Black Mid-Tower Case
CPU: (Socket AM2+) AMD Phenom™ X4 9850 Quad-Core
CPU FAN: Asetek Liquid AMD CPU Cooling System
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe 790FX CrossFire Chipset with Quad PCIE slot DDR2/1066 SATA RAID MB w/GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394, & 7.1Audio
MEMORY: Mushkin 4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel w/Heat Spreader
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI-E x16 512MB Video Card
Video Card 2: ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI-E x16 512MB Video Card
Monitor: NONE
Hard Drive: (RAID-1) with 2 Hard Drives (80GB (80GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
Hard Drive 2: SATA150 - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10, 000RPM 8MB Cache WD740GD
Optical Drive: SONY DUAL FORMAT 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER
SOUND: Creative Labs X-FI Xtreme Gamer 7.1 PCI Sound Card
SPEAKERS: NONE
KEYBOARD: NONE
MOUSE: NONE
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition
WARRANTY: Standard 3-YEAR Limited plus Life-Time Technical Support
Extras:
Silver Warranty including Collect & Return +£45
Maximum Case Cooling Fans +£10
Professional Wiring for All WIRINGs Inside The System Chasis with High Performance Thermal Compound on CPU +£10
1.44 MB FLOPPY DRIVE +£4

£1418.23 in. VAT

what do you think?

Marty_J

Those are pretty nice specs (though the HDs are a little bit on the small side IMHO). I fooled around on Dell though, and I could put together a similar system for a few hundred pounds less, so I would definitely shop around if I were you.

Do you mind me asking what you need it for?

[Deleted User]

To be honest it's overpriced for what you're getting. There's no conceivable reason why you would want to have two Radeon 3870's in a system as the expense doesn't justify the minute performance increase. The rest of the components don't seem overly good. I've priced this up quickly in five minutes, it comes with a monitor and speakers and it's £200 less:


Antec Performance P182 Miditower £85.00
Samsung DVD±RW burner £22.70
Gainward GeForce 9800GTX 512MB £199.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB £57.00
Asus P5K3 Deluxe £103.00
Crucial DDR2 BallistiX TRACER RED PC6400 4048MB £84.02
Samsung 22" LCD Syncmaster 226CW £229.00
Corsair Powersupply 650W Black £79.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 £175.00
Asus Xonar D2/PM £119.00
Harman Kardon Soundsticks II £99

Just add VU 64 OEM on for £100 and you've spent the same amount of money but you've got a much better system.

banger9365

be_alright there is one small problem with what you have come up with,when have you been able to us ddr2 ram on a board that only takes ddr3
Arch_23,the one you are showing is well dear for what it is, i would say rip off

i would go with asus P5Q DELUXE (p5k replacment)£138.56
and Geil 8GB PC2-6400 800Mhz Black Dragon Quad Channel Kit £126.56
and a WD VelociRaptor 300GB £196.18
and Samsung Pebble SM2232BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor £226.63

apart from that the rest is ok and vista 64 ultimate oem nothing less or 32bit
so using the bit's that be_alright says and changing the parts that i come up with it come to £1447.63 for a better pc my miles and a good gaming pc too (like mine )
and the liquide coling that come with the one you show is not work jack (no better than stock cooling) if you want H2O cooling it cost money about £200+ and different ball gamefor the right set up and if you do ask me and i will tell you what you need to look at so you do not get ripped of with it and most poeple do not need it !
on personal note i just realised how much my pc has cost i must be mad ,well over 2k

Arch_23

thanks all for your replies, you've given me food for thought.

Marty_J wrote: »

Do you mind me asking what you need it for?

I'm looking for a dedicated gaming system, something that can handle a game like Age of Conan.

be_alright wrote: »

I've priced this up quickly in five minutes, it comes with a monitor and speakers and it's £200 less:


Antec Performance P182 Miditower £85.00
Samsung DVD±RW burner £22.70
Gainward GeForce 9800GTX 512MB £199.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB £57.00
Asus P5K3 Deluxe £103.00
Crucial DDR2 BallistiX TRACER RED PC6400 4048MB £84.02
Samsung 22" LCD Syncmaster 226CW £229.00
Corsair Powersupply 650W Black £79.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 £175.00
Asus Xonar D2/PM £119.00
Harman Kardon Soundsticks II £99

Just add VU 64 OEM on for £100 and you've spent the same amount of money but you've got a much better system.

banger9365 wrote: »

i would go with asus P5Q DELUXE (p5k replacment)£138.56
and Geil 8GB PC2-6400 800Mhz Black Dragon Quad Channel Kit £126.56
and a WD VelociRaptor 300GB £196.18
and Samsung Pebble SM2232BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor £226.63

apart from that the rest is ok and vista 64 ultimate oem nothing less or 32bit
so using the bit's that be_alright says and changing the parts that i come up with it come to £1447.63 for a better pc my miles and a good gaming pc too (like mine )

would that be self assembled? I'm not very confident when it comes to assembling the system myself. That's why I've been looking at custom main/prebuilt systems.

[Deleted User]

banger9365 wrote: »

be_alright there is one small problem with what you have come up with,when have you been able to us ddr2 ram on a board that only takes ddr3
Arch_23,the one you are showing is well dear for what it is, i would say rip off

i would go with asus P5Q DELUXE (p5k replacment)£138.56
and Geil 8GB PC2-6400 800Mhz Black Dragon Quad Channel Kit £126.56
and a WD VelociRaptor 300GB £196.18
and Samsung Pebble SM2232BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor £226.63

apart from that the rest is ok and vista 64 ultimate oem nothing less or 32bit
so using the bit's that be_alright says and changing the parts that i come up with it come to £1447.63 for a better pc my miles and a good gaming pc too (like mine )
and the liquide coling that come with the one you show is not work jack (no better than stock cooling) if you want H2O cooling it cost money about £200+ and different ball gamefor the right set up and if you do ask me and i will tell you what you need to look at so you do not get ripped of with it and most poeple do not need it !
on personal note i just realised how much my pc has cost i must be mad ,well over 2k

Ah yeah, I'd missed that

Even if you're not comfortable building one for yourself, you could try and rope a friend into doing it or getting a local computer shop to do it for you for a fee, I wouldn't have thought it'd be more than £50-£75 to do it.

Marty_J

Arch_23 wrote: »

I'm looking for a dedicated gaming system, something that can handle a game like Age of Conan.

Have you considered just buying a PS3 and Xbox 360? With your budget, you'd have enough left over to get yourself a ton of games or a nice big HD TV to play them on.

banger9365

Arch_23 unfortunately it is build your self put i can recermend a place that will build to your spec if you do not have any one that can build it and fault find it for you and when you get to this sort of price i will alway say build your self
because you will alway build one better than you can buy for the same moneyish
or get some thing like this ,it still a custom built pc and a gamer pc put built for you and a very good spec too plus if you ring them they will built to your spec too
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=21215&category_id=683&manufacturer_id=0&tid=bun4014
plus a monitor has above in other posts and a lot cheaper more in keeping with this site!!
infact it's a very good gamers pc and you can upgrade too in the future
i would recermend some thing like this not like the one you came up with

gaming computers are my specialty

jonnyb

got to second what Banger says. I have used CCL for systems and accessories for years, for myself and family.

Conor_3

be_alright wrote: »

Ah yeah, I'd missed that

Even if you're not comfortable building one for yourself, you could try and rope a friend into doing it or getting a local computer shop to do it for you for a fee, I wouldn't have thought it'd be more than £50-£75 to do it.

£75 is what I charge but you end up with a fully updated system with all the patches and newest drivers and a tweaked installation of Windows which will be virtually bulletproof against everything except the user downloading and deliberately running a malware infected file that isn't picked up.

Marty J has a very good point though. I've been into PC gaming now for 15 years and with this round of consoles, I'm giving it up. 15 years of constantly upgrading just to play a new game is madness. I'm also getting sick of downloading 500MB "patches". 500MB is not a patch, it's an entire re-write of a game. Games not working with certain drivers etc etc and I've had enough.

What brought it home to me is my 7 year old PS2 plays the newest released games as well as it did the ones that first came out.

In 5 years time, your PC will be struggling with games. Hell, in 6 months it could be obsolete. You only need someone to release a game like Crysis which challenges the even the newest fastest stuff and your computer is already needing an upgrade. In 5 years time a PS3 or Xbox 360 will still be playing newly released games just as well as it does now. And it'll have cost you £200-£400 instead of £1500 plus another £500-1000 in hardware upgrades over the 5 years.

It's taken me 15 years and a lot of money to finally wake up to the fact that PC gaming has become a joke. The first thing you do nowadays with a PC game is go online to see if there's any patches or if you need to update your sound/graphic drivers. With a console, you shove the disc in and just play it. As soon as PS3 and Xbox 360 games support mouse and keyboard, PCs are dead as far as gaming is concerned as that'll convert the last die-hards.

Cerro

I'd disagree there Conor - you might have to upgrade certain parts now and then but not every 6 months. My last PC lasted 3 years and could happily run the newer games (although at the end I had to lower the graphics options). You don't get that option with consoles, it either runs well, has a default-reduced level of graphics or has patches of god-awful fps which ruin the experience. With my PC I only had to upgrade the graphics card but after 3 years I decided I wanted more disk space, so I build a whole new system.

Crysis is a bit of a one-off... nothing can run it at full power! PC gaming does not "depend" on the mouse and keyboard. Can you customise your game like you can on your PC (using you own content?) do you get to tweak the games performance? Are you held to ransom by MS/Sony to have a completely standard PC? You still get "patches" on Xbox live... ones you have pay for! 500Mb might sound like a lot but it only takes me a few mins to download, small price to pay for gaming freedom if you ask me.