New System, fist ever build, advice?

[nfoundg]

Hi everyone, I have been browsing these forums for a few weeks now.

After doing research I have come up with the following system and was wondering if any1 could advise me of any compatable issues with the hardware or suggestions which are better. My budget for this build is £750-£800.

I will be purchasing the components from www.ebuyer.co.uk and www.overclockers.co.uk

Case - Antec P160 ATX Tower Case With USB/1394/Audio No psu £70.00

Processor - AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k
L2cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor £124.00

Motherboard - Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express motherboard (MB-088-AS) £76.00

Memory - Corsair (VS1GBKIT400C3) 1024MB (2 x 512MB Matched Pair), DDR400 / PC3200, non-ECC, Unbuffered, CL3, Lifetime Warranty £65.00

Harddrive - Seagate Barracuda ST3200822AS 200Gb 8Mb Cache 7200RPM - OEM £70.00

Graphics Card - XFX Geforce 6600gt PCI-E 128mb DDR3 £130.00 TV+Dual DVI *Extreme PVT43GNDD7

DVD-RW - LG GSA4163 16x DVD R/RW/RAM Internal Dual Layer IDE
OEM Black Drive £31.00

Floppy Drive - Mitsumi OEM Black Internal Floppy Drive £4.00

Heatsink - ThermalRight XP-90 (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-018-TR) £32.00

Operating System - Microsoft OEM Windows Xp Professional Edition SP2 - 1Pk £90.00

Thermal Paste - Artic Silver 5 £4.00

Power Supply - Enermax Noisetaker 535W EG565AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU (CA-023-EN) £70
Total £766.00

I am aware that the case comes with a fan but should I buy any additional fans? and also do i need a fan for the heatsink?

Thanks in advance, Stuart

 

[dicecca112]

personally I would get a smaller HD in order to get some better ram, and if you can find it in the UK get a Fortron or OCZ Psu. Also, the Xp-90C cools a little better if you can find it. Overall its a fine build, no need to change anything like I say unless you want to.

As a suggestion, when you build take your time and double check everything before you power it up for the first time and good luck

 

[Flip-Mode]

I agree with dicecca112, that memory is just awful. CAS 3..... not good. Try this one, its Gskill and its 2-3-3 timings and with that A64 CPU it will give you a performance of DDR500 at 2.5-4-4 (approximately, don't take it as granted) and its cheaper!
If you can get another 30 quid getting this card will give you much better results and longer system life.

I've taken a look at your PSU selection and that one will work just fine, I'll give it another go and edit this post but I don't think I can find something better.

 

[Yuriman]

I am not a fan of high speed ram, mainly because the gains you get per $ spent is so small. I will agree though that you need better ram than that, to give you a little headroom when overclocking.

Motherboard: The DFI nForce4 is a better overclocker, but Asus does make solid boards. Either way.

Processor: All venice cpu's generaly overclock the same, you can go with a 3000+ and save some cash.

Case: That case is pretty expensive considering the parts you are getting, but if thats what you want then get it, no sense in getting a new pc and not being happy with how it looks.

Ram: I'd suggest 2x1024mb sticks, rather than 512's. I recently upgraded to 2gb and it was worth it.

Hard drive: Maxtor Diamondmax 10 or Maxline III for raw speed, or a Hitachi Sata II drive for silence and near-maxtor perforamnce.

Graphics card: Isn't that a bit expensive? I don't know the conversion rate though, but I think you can find a better deal?

Floppy drive: Why? I havn't used a floppy in years.

Heatsink: I'd prefer to have a Freezer64 or Scythe heatsink, but the Scythe's are out of your price range. Also, the Freezer64 comes with MX-1 thermal paste, which is on par with AS5, so you don't need to buy any.

Power supply: You would probably be happy with a Fortron Bluestorm 500w and save a few dollars, either way you want to go. The enermax is fine though.

EDIT: That video card MUST be overly expensive, if you can get an X800np for £30 cheaper.

 

[nfoundg]

The links you posted take me to the top of the page, so not sure exactly what components you are talkin about but I think it is this ram: G.Skill 1GB DDR ZX PC3200 (2x512MB) CAS2 Dual Channel Kit (F1-3200PHU2-1GBZX) (MY-002-GS)?

which is £80, due to Tax, however I would be prepaired to pay the extra.

I changed the Hard drive to:

Seagate 120gb Barracuda 7200 - Sata Ncq 3.5lp 7200rpm 8mb £53

and heat sink to the:

ThermalRight XP-90C (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-022-TR) £40

I was wondering if this power supply would be better even though it is a little more expensive:

OCZ ModStream 520w ATX2.2 Power Supply (CA-017-OC) £88

Do I still need to buy a heatsink fan? If so wat do you recomend?

Thank very much for your input, Stuart

Edit - Im am not sure if you noticed this but most uk websites have a price in bold and a price in small print. The price in bold is excluding Vat at 17.5% and the prices in small print are including this Vat. All my prices are including this Vat.

 

[Flip-Mode]

Yeah that was the memory I was talking about.
As for the Video card, it is more expensive then in the US but buying hardware outside of the US sucks.

If this is your first build then the Asus board is fine, DFI are for some more experienced users as you will have to troubleshoot some problems in most cases. As for a fan it depends on what you want, noise or performance.

 

[Yuriman]

I can recomend the Scythe Shogun over the XP-90c.