New PC, little confusion with prices :]

[nbert]

Hello there,

It seems like novatech is a godsend, hope it is true.

I'm willing to buy a new PC from them, need a little advice, my budget will
be no more than £1000. If less, more welcome then.

so far i found these components:
(@ novatech of course)

Intel Quad Core Q6600 95Watt G0 Stepping £160
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB £169
Geil Black Dragon PC2-6400 800Mhz 2GB Kit (2x1GB) x 2 £83
Samsung Spin Point SATAII NCQ 400GB 16Mb £54
ThermalTake Toughpower Series Cable Management 750W £78
Thermaltake Soprano Silver Middle Tower Case £47

I still don't know what mobo to take. I'm considering SLi, but still many people think that it's still not worth that money. What I know, is that I don't want to spend more that £100 on the mobo. Any advice is very welcome. I guess that nVidia chipset would be better.

So far, the price for this with mobo worth £100 is around £691. Please note that I still need a decent monitor and little things (mouse, keyboard, DVD/RW),
what I want is working PC "straight from the box", after assembly.

So I have left around £300 to spend for monitor, DVD/RW, Win Vista 64-bit, keyboard and mouse. Maybe I'll take cheaper case for advantage of monitor.

So I would like you guys to advice for mobo and monitor, please. Your suggestions will be so much welcome. Many thanks. Also feel free to comment for the rest of my configuration.

The another thing is a little confusion about the prices @novatech. For example, they say that GF8800GT price is £169 with VAT, so as all the prices I entered above.

BUT, as they say on Terms & Conditions:

"All prices are exclusive of VAT and charges for packing, postage and carriage plus VAT which shall be paid in addition."

So, is it with VAT or not ? If I want to spend £1000, it will or won't be let's say £1300 in final ? This is an question for novatech customers/staff. It may look silly but I believe that my english not so bad, I just don't know what to think.


Many MANY thanks.

nbert

[djgandy]

All the prices on the old site used to be ex vat. Probably forgot to update. Inc vat prices are as shown on the site.

As for your mobo.

For £100 i'd take the DS4 gigabyte
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ?GIG-35DS4 (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GIG-35DS4)

You can spend less though. If you need extra pci slots you need to take that into consideration as some mobos only have 2.

I have the asus P5K-R
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... l?ASU-P5KR (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?ASU-P5KR)

I bought it since its the best value board novatech do which had all the slots I needed.

You are buying 4GB DDR2 in 4 modules so make sure you don't buy a hybrid DDR2/DDR3 board! That is exactly why I didn't buy the Gigabyte DS3R http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... GIG-5CDS3R (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GIG-5CDS3R)
This board comes in a DDR2 only version but novatech do not stock it.

It's between the DS4 and the P5K really.

[nbert]

thank you so much djgandy. So it will be better with the intel chipset I guess, so i will prefer these.

So I don't have to be afraid about the prices ? When I order system for £1000, the only extra will be the delivery fee ?

I am salso considering this monitor
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ?LG-L226WT (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?LG-L226WT)
by the reviews it seems it's great for the price, and 2ms response, wow man. Hope there will be no dead pixel.

I'm slowly getting excited. I'm working without day off for fifth week now, geez :] Just to get this system. I would like to order it just after new year, I hope that novatech will still have everything I need.

[djgandy]

If you are buying in the new year wait a little longer. The new Intel quad cores are coming out. Trust me they are worth the wait. They run cooler using a lot less power and have a clock for clock (mhz) performance increase meaning even at the same clock speed they are around 5-10% faster than current Core2 processors. They should be out by end of January (If you can wait that long). All those factors should contribute to more overclock though.

I really can't comment on the monitor. At the end of the day all the cheap panels are about the same. Sub £200 for a 22inch display is excellent value.

I think I can improve on some of your choices too. I'll see what i can draw up :)

[nbert]

thanks a lot again for your involvement, djgandy.

It seems you're right with waiting, as far as I know the new nVidia chipset
/780i I think/ should be out at that time. I also heard that this chipset will support 2x PCI Express 2.0, so it seems like the SLI will be finally reasonable, of course with at least G92 GPU.

Any idea what will be the cost of delivery with all this stuff ? I guess it will be quite big box ;)

[djgandy]

I wouldn't bother with the SLi.
2 cards = £400+
mobo = £100+

That's £500 of your budget gone already.

P35 + A Q9xxx cpu should get you going. If you want dual graphics I'd actually recommend ATI over nvidia.

Even better than that, save the money and when the new generation of cards come out spend it on those.

[system7]

I can chip in here. It's FREE delivery right now. :D

[nbert]

how abour late january ? ;p

system7, what do you think about this choices, anyway ?

cheers

[djgandy]

Dont large orders have free delivery anyway

[system7]

system7, what do you think about this choices, anyway ?
HeHe, I'm flattered you ask. But I'm strictly budget and mATX. dj knows more about it than me.

Here, apropos nothing, is a nice little mATX build I did in a £30 Jeantech Micro Titan case I located at the dreaded PC World...The 120MM fans are extra. Very cool running. 8)
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6296/jeantechmicrotitanho8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I do think a class 22" monitor like a Samsung Pebble is worth looking at if you like movies. And even £30 of logitech sound is a good investment.

[djgandy]

Well I'll post this in the right thread this time :P

These are the cpu ('http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a561x1y0z1p0s0n0m0')'s i'm on about.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Yorkfield ... 29809.html (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Yorkfield-overclocking-5ghz,review-29809.html)

We are talking 4ghz on air with ease :)


Also for monitor, I'd feel like I am wasting my money on a 22inch. The step up to 24inch offers 1080p resolution which is quite a lot more desktop space too. They are more expensive at novatech, but shop around and you can find 24inch monitors for under £200!

[nbert]

Looks like smart system you built.

Well I'm not sure if I want that strong high-eng system. I can take the new Yorkfield unly if it costs the same, and, first of all, I need to learn overclocking :) I think the core quad will do the job sufficiently, and as far as I know, it is the best one to overclock at this time.

As the monitor, the 24 inch is tempting, but that samsung you showed me, that looks wicked... I'll do a little research for the 24s but I 'm really not sure if there will be one with good responce time under £200. Well, we still have more than a month to go, so I hope the prices may go down little bit.

cheers, sorry i havent replied for a few days.

[djgandy]

Reponse times aren't a worry these days. Manufacturers can measure them in 100 different ways. 2ms response times usually use overdrive which is known to degrade picture quality.

Do you really think you'll notice the difference between 2ms and 5ms? I mean think of it in terms of Formula 1. 0.002 seconds. Response time was an issue back when screens had response times of 25ms. 2-5ms is smaller than your brain can imagine.