chhang7 Posted February 1, 2008 Posted February 1, 2008 im looking to get a new pc got £2500 to spend but i dont want to spend all of that. its mainly gonna be a gaming machine but im kinda stumped on whether or not i should get a desktop or a laptop. i just want something thats future proof for all those new pc games and something that can run crysis (im just using crysis as a benchmark reference)properly its gotta be intel and have at least 2 sli/crossfire graphic cards. so im asking u guys to find me a great (not good) machine. thanks: peace:
Caris Posted February 1, 2008 Posted February 1, 2008 I take it your not building it yourself go to overclockers.co.uk and customize a desktop on there. You can spend £1200ish and get the best there is.
Apple_NdiB Posted February 1, 2008 Posted February 1, 2008 That's a serious budget, I couldn't bring myself to blow so much money on a PC no matter how good it is. For you however I recommend 2 ATI HD3870 X2s in Crossfire and an Intel QX6950, or if you're willing to wait for a bit an Intel Penryn CPU with two 9800 GX2s.
McPhee Posted February 1, 2008 Posted February 1, 2008 First thing i'd recommend is to forget spending £2500 on a desktop computer. Gaming laptop maybe, but for a desktop it's just throwing money at the problem! Theres also no such thing as future proof. Basically the more money you spend the less benefit each pound gives you. By the time you pass the £1k barrier (for the base computer) you're looking at overpriced "extreme" kit. This is the stuff that will be re-released for half the price in a couple of months time. Case point; it costs an extra £150 for 170Mhz clock speed on the new Intel Quad Cores. You wouldn't even notice that! For laptops look at this one: http://www.rockdirect.com/viewNotebook.php?pName=XTREME%20770 Desktop-wise i'd recommend building it yourself. If you take gaming and computers seriously enough to spend that sort of cash then you'll benefit from understanding how they work a bit more. Go for something down these lines: Intel Core2Duo E8400 Processor - £130 Scythe Ninja Extreme CPU Cooler - £30 Abit IP-35 Pro - £110 ATi 3870X2 Graphics Card - £260 Creative Soundblaster Xtreme Gamer - £60 2x2GB PC2-6400 RAM - £65 500GB Western Digital AAKS Hard Drive - £65 Samsung DVD-RW - £18 Corsair HX-650W - £85 Antec P182 - £90 24" Dell 2407 Monitor - £430 Logitech DiNovo Edge Keyboard - £110 Logitech MXRevolution - £55 Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Surround Speakers - £200 That lot should total up to about £1700 without shopping about too much. The components are all great build quality and you'll be able to play Crysis pretty much max'd out on a 24" monitor! For upgrades you could add an SSD drive (very fast and silent hard drives) at the end of the year and a Blu Ray writer when they fall in price. Theres also room for another 4GB of RAM, PhysX card, network card (wifi etc.) and TV tuners. Forget about Crossfire and SLI, they're expensive, bad value for money and offer comparatively small gains. When you need the extra power just sell the 3870X2 and buy a new graphics card, games will never rely on SLI/Crossfire to be played.
Problematique Posted February 2, 2008 Posted February 2, 2008 Good point on Crossfire/SLi. It's very overrated...unless you're going for very high resolutions it's better just to buy the single best card you can. Plus there are a multitude of problems associated with both. Also take into account that if you want SLi you will have to go for an nForce board...and they're quite a way behind Intel's series. Crossfired 3870s get decent performance (~ 8800 GTX/Ultra) but there are problems associated with it (not to mention that the 8800 performance will be superceded in the next few months). Are you planning to do any O/Cing by the way? That's something to take into consideration. Anyways, I'm also building a rig now so here are my tips: 1. Cooling cooling cooling. Make sure you get decent airflow over the PC if you're aircooling, especially if you have higher end components. 2. There's not really a future proof processor. I'd say go for the E8500 if you're gaming...it's got a lot going for it in the OC department and it's 45nm (hence cooler than the other C2Ds). 3. Graphics cards. This is a major problem. With ATi somewhat struggling at the high end (although the 3870X2 may be a step in the right direction) the market's slowed down a bit. You could either wait for the Nvidia 9 series/ATi R700 or you can just plump now for something. I'd advise the former although they may not be out until August. This has been the biggest problem from my point of view, I can't wait til then to build a rig and I have no stopgap. You could try and pick up a card for ~£100 which will do until the "next gen" GPUs come out. But it's not easy at all. Be careful with the 3870X2/9800GX2, there could be more issues than a "normal", single GPU card. Check through the reviews! 4. The PSU is the most underrated piece of kit ever. You need to be able to trust it not to fry your comp. Buy a branded PSU. They may be 100-150 quid but by god are they worth it. They output pretty much what they say they do, they deliver stable power to your PC, they're generally quieter, run at 80-85% efficiency, have decent warranties and when they blow they take out themselves and not the rest of the PC plus most high end PSUs are modular so you don't have to stash away a bunch of cables in the case when you've finished your build. My recommendations would be Enermax and Corsair...I've gone for a Galaxy 850W (probably a little overkill but I plan to commission it for 6 years/2 high end builds). The Corsair 620W should be more than enough power...but if you do go for SLi you may want to go with a little more headroom as two Nvidia cards will easily be able to consume 400W. 5. Buy DDR2 Ram and a DDR2 motherboard. DDR3 comes at a premium (200 quid more than 6400 DDR2! And the motherboards are generally more expensive) with not many noticeable performance gains. We won't see DDR3 coming into its own until the Intel Nehalem line comes out. In the end there's no real way of future proofing. My current build (Athlon 64 3200+, Socket 754 ) has gotten through 4 years and it was definitely high end for about 2 1/2 of those. The Intel Penryn line are probably the way to go. Bear in mind that they are the last Socket 775 Processors from Intel, the next bunch will be running from a different socket so you won't be able to upgrade without going for the MB/CPU/RAM replacement. You should be able to squeeze 3 years out of it no problem though (at the high/mid-high end)
Raining_again Posted February 2, 2008 Posted February 2, 2008 4. The PSU is the most underrated piece of kit ever. You need to be able to trust it not to fry your comp. Buy a branded PSU. They may be 100-150 quid but by god are they worth it. They output pretty much what they say they do, they deliver stable power to your PC, they're generally quieter, run at 80-85% efficiency, have decent warranties and when they blow they take out themselves and not the rest of the PC plus most high end PSUs are modular so you don't have to stash away a bunch of cables in the case when you've finished your build. My recommendations would be Enermax and Corsair...I've gone for a Galaxy 850W (probably a little overkill but I plan to commission it for 6 years/2 high end builds). The Corsair 620W should be more than enough power...but if you do go for SLi you may want to go with a little more headroom as two Nvidia cards will easily be able to consume 400W. This guy couldn't be more right. IMO.. the psu and motherboard are probably the most important things to consider. Also little point in spending over 1000 as mcphee said, your just totally wasting your money.
Caris Posted February 2, 2008 Posted February 2, 2008 Crossfire and SLI are terrible. Loads of bloody games don't even have support for multiple GPU's yet. Yeah i agree with people above aswell, if you go SLI it means you will have a crap motherboard.
chhang7 Posted February 14, 2008 Author Posted February 14, 2008 actually i was looking at the new mac pro, is that any good. i thought i could use the bootcamp thing to play all my games and stuff and mac to do all my work, seeing as the software we use only works on a mac. and it is possible to buy it from the american apple site and for them to ship it over here in the UK, cus it looks alot cheaper on there site
Guest Jordan Posted February 14, 2008 Posted February 14, 2008 and it is possible to buy it from the american apple site and for them to ship it over here in the UK, cus it looks alot cheaper on there site Afaik, No.
Esequiel Posted February 14, 2008 Posted February 14, 2008 You can pick up a quad core PC atm on Ebay with a 19" HD moniter for £500. Comes with 4gb of ram all you need to do is spend another £250 ish on a better graphics card. Ebay PC
Problematique Posted February 14, 2008 Posted February 14, 2008 You can pick up a quad core PC atm on Ebay with a 19" HD moniter for £500. Comes with 4gb of ram all you need to do is spend another £250 ish on a better graphics card. Ebay PC I wouldn't recommend it, not a lot of branded stuff (which in general is much higher quality than no-name stuff). IMO it's much better to spend a little more on individual quality components.
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