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Hi,
I am intending to purchase the following items around christmas time.
Asus A8V-VM 939 DDR400 On Board VGA PCI-E LAN ATX - £37.72
Novatech Panacea ATX PC Tower Case w/350W PSU - £22.91
Retail Boxed AMD Athlon 64 3200 Venice Core 512k Skt939 - £53.43
Infineon Original 400Mhz 194Pin 1Gb PC3200 DDR RAM - £61.10
Novatech GeForce 7600GS 256Mb DDR2 SLI, DVI, VGA, PCI-E - £69.98
Novatech Internal DVD-ROM - £12.87
Western Digital Caviar 160Gb 8mb cache SATAII 7200rpm HDD - £41.33
Is all that compatible, and do I need anything additional to provide me with a reasonable gaming experience?
Regards,
George
Taxation
23-09-2006, 05:47 PM
194 pin, i presume that is a typo :D
Power supply could be reconsidered, to a slightly higher model, seeing that most power supplies that come with cases arent up to the proverbrial "scratch".
apart from that, enjoy your gaming experience
Yeah, must have been a typo!!
What's this like?
Thermaltake TR2 Value 500W PSU - £42.30
It pushes the PC a bit out of my budgetary boundaries, but I suppose I could wait a short while before getting the graphics card.
Taxation
23-09-2006, 07:28 PM
What is your budget and what do you need??
maybe we can help you
The max I would like to spend is £300 (might be able to go a bit higher) for a machine that will play games reasonably well. I need 1GB RAM and I've got my heart set on that card though!
Taxation
23-09-2006, 08:54 PM
What about one of the motherboard bundles
Novatech Motherboard Bundle Athlon 64 3200, Heatsink and Fan, 512MB 400DDR RAM, 939 Soc Motherboard £139.82 Inc VAT
I think that it could save you some money.IE. a few bob
You only have to buy another 512mb module and you will have 1Gb total.
What about one of the motherboard bundles
Novatech Motherboard Bundle Athlon 64 3200, Heatsink and Fan, 512MB 400DDR RAM, 939 Soc Motherboard £139.82 Inc VAT
I think that it could save you some money.IE. a few bob
You only have to buy another 512mb module and you will have 1Gb total.
Just checked that out, and it's actually more expensive than buying the components seperately!
How about this then?
Athlon 64 3800, nForce 410, 512mb DDR400 RAM, Geforce 6100, 400W PSU - £175.07
Novatech GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 SLI - £69.98
Western Digital Caviar 160Gb 8Mb cache SATAII 7200rpm HDD - £41.33
LiteOn DRW-6S160P-05C DVD Burner - £19.99
Novatech 400Mhz 184Pin 512Mb PC3200 DDR RAM - £36.42
TOTAL COST: £342.79
It's pretty much the same price as what I came up with before but uses a barebones bundle (line 1), with a faster CPU. The question is, will the included PSU hold out, and does it have those SATA and PCI-E connectors?
Cheers,
George
Taxation
23-09-2006, 11:03 PM
really, hmm, never mind then.
Go with your first spec, but might i suggest something,
Do you have an old case u could use.
And do you need a 160bg hdd, why not get a slightly smaller cheaper 120gb hdd
The cheapest 120gb SATA HDD is £41.71. Which is more than the 160! I might go with an 80gb, but it's much cheaper just to get a 160, as an 80 can get filled up easily...
No, unfortunately not, I don't have an old case... I've always used Macs until now. I've got hooked on several games which I play on my laptop, but that just isn't upto it any more...
Taxation
23-09-2006, 11:40 PM
tear the mac stuff out and put pc stuff in :D
Do the cases come with fans supplied, or is that something else to add to the list?
Taxation
24-09-2006, 11:32 AM
What is the absolute maximum that you can go to??
Because why not try and stretch to this
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ?BB-C2D635 (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-C2D635)
newer technology and faster.It will end up costing you even more than planned but if you could stretch to this then it would be a system that could take on any game with ease.
What is the absolute maximum that you can go to??
Because why not try and stretch to this
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/spec ... ?BB-C2D635 (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-C2D635)
newer technology and faster.It will end up costing you even more than planned but if you could stretch to this then it would be a system that could take on any game with ease.
No way! That's double the cost of the what I am getting, and I bet there wouldn't be double the performance!
Taxation
24-09-2006, 07:30 PM
probably, go for the first set-up but get a 3500, trust me, it will be worth it
Just checked that out, and it's actually more expensive than buying the components seperately!
They often are - when I went to buy a machine for a mate, the bundle worked out about £15 more expensive - I think its because if there is a large price drop on a single component it takes a while to filter to the bundles.
Nox
I've bought the case! Just got to save up for the rest of the bits!
Just a more serious question. What are the returns policies like here at Novatech? I'm going to buy the components in batches over the next three months, so I obviously won't be able to test them until I have all the bits, so if one turns out to be faulty, would I be able to return it after so long?
buy all the internal bits at once
you can't use them, you waste your warranty and they devalue, ie buy the cpu today, by the time you've assembled the system its £25 cheaper, and that £25 could of made your complete working purchase a week earlier, esp by the time you take all components into consideration.
but re their returns, i've had a couple of annoyances, both worked out though but the amount of things i've ordered from them... Their returns dept is good, though not as good as it was 7/8 years ago when I worked there, obviously :D Policies are better than most too.
Nox
I've just noticed that the case is Full ATX and the mobo is MicroATX. Are they still compatible?
Taxation
27-09-2006, 10:19 PM
Most likely, yes
I would highly think that it will take micro ATX boards aswell.
Because on basically any case, there are various amounts of holes, to mount the board on, and they are all labeled, so there will be little confusion about what goes where.
Will I see much of a performance increase/decrease by using SATA over IDE HDDs? It would appear that you have to load drivers onto a floppy disk, and considering I don't even own a floppy drive, that's easier said than done! :shock:
Taxation
03-10-2006, 06:40 PM
There isnt a huge gain in performance between IDE and S/ata, you wouldnt even notice it.
I would stay IDE and keep to what you know will work on your system
Does this mean that it has three fronts (black, beige and silver)?
http://www.novatech.co.uk:80/novatech/s ... NOV-DVD168 (http://www.novatech.co.uk:80/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-DVD168)
Cheers,
George
Taxation
03-10-2006, 07:41 PM
It means that there will be parts that fit on the front (which are different colours.
Not sure how many colours but a black one and a beige one will do for basically any case
It says that there are three; beige, silver and black. My case would suit a silver one best, which is why I am interested in it...
I've got an A8V-XE motherboard now as well, although not from Novatech...
takin a bezel of a cd drive is pretty easy, and so is buying a can of spray paint for the perfect match :)
Nox
Taxation
04-10-2006, 03:26 PM
i use crayons :D , but it is covered by the case door, so not much to see :D
I have got a case door - I'm just not too keen on them!
beardyman
07-10-2006, 12:24 PM
There isnt a huge gain in performance between IDE and S/ata, you wouldnt even notice it.
I would stay IDE and keep to what you know will work on your system
As the beauty of forums allows...I am inclined to disagree. If you're buying a new system, I wouldn't be inclined to suggest going with IDE and bottlenecking your performance anywhere where it can be avoided.
Unless you're really old school and want to stick with 'tried and tested', there's no advantage of going IDE, but even then its not really as if SATA hasn't been knocking around for a while now.
In all honesty, its horses for courses really, and it depends what you want from it. something thats just gonna chug away in the corner chatting on msn and browsing **** (ie my PC), won't benefit from SATA anyway, but games etc...certainly should. I'd go for SATA if i was buying now. Not 'cos I need it, just 'cos its flash. lol.
Taxation
07-10-2006, 05:40 PM
I have an older gaming pc, and it is still IDE and performs very well
You wont see a massive increase in the performance, unless you were comparing it to a 10,000 raptor.
If you have an IDE drive then keep it, or sell it on ebay :D
one bad thing i have against sata drives is the data cable is rigid and feels like it is going to come out of the socket sometimes
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