18 replies to this topic

[Bencrest]

Just thought I'd let you know about the PC I'm building at the minute, should be fun, thanks to the Taxman and Laptop sale [managed to get £400 in the end, excellent eBayer [not the scamming one!] deposited the money into my bank account 9am this morning!]...

Anyway, heres the spec of it. So far it has cost about £580, and theres only some tiny little stuff left [like a UV tube, which I'll probably get on eBay ]

So far I already have :

17" Ag Neovo TFT in Black / Silver [12ms response],
Antec Plusview 1000AMG Tower case, and
Eye-T 550W dual fan and semi transparent PSU.

This morning I've ordered :

1 x AMD Athlon XP 3200 (400MHz) oem Barton Core @ £(75.27) each.
1 x Geil® 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz with Aluminium heat spreader @ £(35.54)
each.
1 x Abit AN7 Guru nForce2 Ultra 400FSB USB2 +A133 SATA Raid 8xAGP +Dual ch.
DDR400 @ £(51.00) each.
1 x 80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD with NCQ (Manufacturer's
5yr Warranty) @ £(43.00) each.
1 x Akasa SATA Blue UV Cable @ £(2.47) each.
1 x Sony Black 1.44MB 3.5" FDD @ £(7.05) each.
1 x NEC ND-3540 16x16 Dual Layer Black DVD +/- R/RW oem @ £(31.71) each.
1 x Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop V2.1 Keyboard & Mouse USB @
£(22.31) each.
1 x Sharkoon 45cm Floppy Round Cable in Flourescent Green @ £(2.70) each.
1 x CoolerMaster Cathode Aurora Blue Light for case (universal fitting) @
£(3.53) each.
1 x Serial ATA power converter cable @ £(2.35) each.
1 x Thermal Compound Silver based high performance AK450 @ £(4.35) each.
1 x Sharkoon Blue CCFL 8cm System Fan @ £(5.88) each.
1 x Asus Star Ice 4 in 1 CPU fan (for S775, S939, 478, K7, K8) @ £(33.84)
each.
1 x 40Pin IDE Luminous round cable 45cm ATA133 @ £(4.23) each. Which comes to £332.84 inc VAT & Delivery.

I also ordered an HIS Radeon 9800 PRO from www.overclockers.co.uk - can't fault the current price of £69.95 without VAT - it has a huge heatsink and fan assembly which I used to have on my overclocked/softmodded Radeon 9500, so I know how quiet it is

All in all thats cost about £410 today, and about £220 last time, so at the moment it is about £630, and won't go above £650 unless I've made some glaring omissions. I may well double the RAM up soon, seeing as how it is a Dual Channel motherboard... don't know if 1gb of RAM would be overkill though

[Dr DX]

sounds nice hope it works ok for u ben

[decaff]

I wouldn't say that 1Gb is overkill at all but I suppose it depends just what you use the computer for.

If it's computer imaging with multiple undo levels then it's worth its weight in gold. I use Corel Photopaint with 15 undo levels; with 512MB ram it didn't like it much on large images but now that I added the extra 512MB it runs beautifully!

Decaff

[johnblack_uk]

alidi do pretty good pcs mine is from their and had no prob at all with it the one they are selling next week would it compete with yours for power and price?

Intel Pentium 3.06 Ghz
250 gb HHD
512 Mb ddr Memory
PCI EXPRESS NVIDIA 6200TC graphics card
16X Dual layer dvd writer/Dvd rom
win XP
USUAL SOFTWARE PACKAGE
DVB-T digital tv card
many more features check out the site http://uk.aldi.com/

[dtrmad2004]

looking good Ben.


where are you getting the dvdrw from i could do with one and it sounds like a good price.

ive just recently upgraded my mums mobo (not new parts) used to be a nasty celeron cpu @ 1.1 ghz very slow and annoying now its running quite nicely on its athlon xp 2800+ @ 2.08 ghz. why do they list it as a 2800 if its 2.08 mm might try a bit of oc. need to add more memory though.

maybe you could put a pic on here in all its lit up glory when its all finished.

Andy

[Dr DX]

mplex sell very cheap parts and they ship worldwide i think

they also have a 17"" tft monitor for £160

[shaun2097]

noticed that ur going for the 3200xp barton chip? (good chip!) did u know that the production of 32bit chip and mobos is about to cease? for the money ur spending you could build a 64bit 3200 xp socket 939? i built the following for less than £750 4 months ago.

amd 64bit 3200 cpu
gigabyte mobo (a £91 jobbie)
1 gig kingston hyper x ram (cl 2)
x2 120 gb 7200rpm western digital hdd
radeon x800 pci express graphics
sony cd/rw
pioneer dvd rw
thermalite tusami case (nice cool case)
antec 550watt psu
coolermaster aquagate water cooling system (very good, and easy to fit)
sound blaster audigy 2
samsung 21in monitor (crt for gaming)
logitech cordless keyboard
logitech mx 1000 cordless laser mouse
netgear adsl router
4 in 1 card reader

im a bit of an unreal tournament 2004 nut (love those onslaughters) so i buit it for this purpose in mind. i got most of the parts from www.ebuyer.com inculding the 21in monitor which was only £70+ vat as it was boxed damaged with full warranty, so as soon as i got it i logged onto samsungs web site and said it was faulty (which it was not) and 3 days later a brand new replacement was delivered. all the other parts came from the net as well (all new)

if i may be so bold as to offer some advice bencrest, its just as cheep to buy 64 bit now.

oh yes, and its goes like shit off a shovel. well quick.

also u can clock the tits out of this chip. i have it running at the same speed as an fx55 (totally stable) but for obvious reasons not the same fsb as an fx55. you only need to increase the core and mem voltage by around .1 to make it stable. with water cooling my temp at stock speed is around 10 degs, overclocked 15 deg. with the standard h/s fan, unclocked 41 deg, clocked 46 deg (ish)

[shaun2097]

c90nutter wrote..

ive just recently upgraded my mums mobo (not new parts) used to be a nasty celeron cpu @ 1.1 ghz very slow and annoying now its running quite nicely on its athlon xp 2800+ @ 2.08 ghz. why do they list it as a 2800 if its 2.08 mm might try a bit of oc. need to add more memory though.


reply.. its listed as a 2800 because this is the specified rating for the chip,(compared to others) not the speed of it.

[shaun2097]

sorry to post again lads,

if u have problems getting the xp3200 (barton) to install windoze (ie errors on install) will almost cert be your mem. i found that the 333 fsb vers worked fine with almost any brand mem, but the 400mhz fsb ver is a bit picky about the memory. the type youve orderd bencrest is pretty good so you should have no probs, but if u do drop the fsb to 333 and if it works fine then then change ur mem.

[djcr]

Make sure u have a good cooling solution on the Seagate Barracuda - I have one and the bugger overheats too easy for my liking. It died within a month of me buying it and I had to send it back to seagate in sweden or somewhere round that area to get it replaced.
I now have a heatsink + fan thing screwed to it which I presume has done the job but it sounds like a bloody aeroplane takin off.
Nice lookin system tho, good luck!

[Bencrest]

alidi do pretty good pcs mine is from their and had no prob at all with it the one they are selling next week would it compete with yours for power and price?

Intel Pentium 3.06 Ghz
250 gb HHD
512 Mb ddr Memory
PCI EXPRESS NVIDIA 6200TC graphics card
16X Dual layer dvd writer/Dvd rom
win XP
USUAL SOFTWARE PACKAGE
DVB-T digital tv card
many more features check out the site http://uk.aldi.com/

Aldi PCs don't come with screens do they?

TBH I could have knocked £150 off the price of mine by using a new 17" CRT monitor and a cheap case, but then I thought I may as well go a little OTT on it.

As for GeForce6200TC, that sounds to me much like the old FX5200, a 'reasonable' card but about £40 new and not up to a great deal.

All the prices [other than the Graphics Card, which was from www.overclockers.co.uk] are prices from Micro Direct at www.microdirect.co.uk .

Never had a problem with them so happy to recommend them, though you are aware that if you had a problem with them you can't whinge at me for mentioning them

[Bencrest]

Big pile of bits arrived today [well, yesterday, about 10 mins after I left for work, but was redelivered today], and heres a pic from earlier on.

Shows the slightly insane 880g 100% Copper** HSF I used with the heatpipes, it took an hour just to fit that [had to brace the back of the motherboard ].

It looks a lot tidier now, but as my camera battery went flat as I was transferring the pics I don't have anything more up to date.

Should be more than insane enough to make a couple of FME layouts

** The heatsink and heatpipes are all copper including the base, but theres loads of plastic on the outside

Attached Files

•  insidePC.jpg   121.09KB   23 downloads

[dtrmad2004]

looking nice ben let's just hope it dosent go bang when you turn it on.


Andy

[Bencrest]

I've flicked it on without a monitor, get a short beep and the floppy light stays on - I'm guessing thats a fairly good sign, suggests it is trying to boot from floppy as theres no cd/dvd in or operating system on the HDD.

I'll rig it up in a second with a monitor and I'll keep an eye on the temperature of the CPU - it should stay fairly low but then with something that mental I'm never convinced it is seated proplerly

[Bencrest]

Heres what it looks like so far with the side off [which will house either a replacement Blue CCFL fan, or another colour LED probably - lucky that the only item that I can't get working so far is worth a fiver ]... and the lights off.

So it'll look different to this once all put together but gives you some idea what it'll look like.

Attached Files

•  pc2.jpg   197.36KB   20 downloads

[dave1de]

ooo looks a spooky colour

[dtrmad2004]

Ben if you want some leds to retrofit into it give me a shout ive got loads red and blue also the resistors for 12v use.

Andy

[Dr DX]

woooooooo wooooooooooooooo very nice lol

[dtrmad2004]

less of the train sound effects judo:D .
Andy