Pyxis Posted June 15, 2008 Share Posted June 15, 2008 Hi Guys, My current PC's case fan hasn't been working for a good 6 months now and my old X1600 graphics card has finally given up after the fan got clogged up with dust and stopped working.:awesome: 512mb of my RAM failed over a year ago and my PC has been running on 512mb of 667mhx ever since... It's time to build a new PC! I've already got a 160GB SATA HDD that I want to keep and my motherboard supports up to 800mhz DDR2 and X2 AM2 processors, so I want to keep those 2 components. I've flashed my BIOS yesterday, so it should be up to date. This is what I am currently thinking of: AMD Athlon X2 5000+ Energy Efficient 2.6Ghz (I will overclock to 2.8Ghz) @ £53.20 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135663# Kingston 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory @ £29.99 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129954 PowerColor HD 3650 512MB DDR2 Dual DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card @ £40.99 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140261 Pioneer BDC-202 Blu-Ray Reader 12X DVD±RWDL/RAM SATA Black @ £78.74 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130747 I-Cute Black UL01 Mid Tower Case With Side Window and 12cm Blue LED Fan @ £20.97 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/121074# Extra Value All in 1 Internal Card Reader Plus One USB2.0 Port (Black) @ £5.75 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/108453# Microsoft OEM Windows Vista Home Premium x64Bit Edition @ £59.06 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123067 Total = £282.70 Is that a good mix? Is the graphics card overkill or should I even get a better one? I'm not too fussed about games, but I want this PC to last for a good 2 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raining_again Posted June 15, 2008 Share Posted June 15, 2008 Seems pretty fair. You don't want to go particularly overboard on one component and the rest struggle to keep up with it. Blu-ray dvd reader, not bad! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McPhee Posted June 15, 2008 Share Posted June 15, 2008 all ati 3 series cards decode Blu-ray on board, you can pair em with any processor and it'll do the job Other than that 1gb of ram and the rest doesn't really matter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCK Posted June 15, 2008 Share Posted June 15, 2008 Looks pretty good. For overclocking potential, you might want to prefer the AMD Athlon 4850e. It's clocked at 2.5 GHz out of the box, but it sucks less power at that speed (45w compared to the 65w of the one you're buying now), which means it should scale better. It's probably a wee bit cheaper too. And ATI's around the corner with Radeon 4650 in that price category, which'll be much of an improvement hopefully. I guess you can't wait for that though, as your PC is broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyxis Posted June 16, 2008 Author Share Posted June 16, 2008 Wow, it looks as if that version of the 4800+ is actually a few pence more expensive than the 5000+. If it eats less power and runs cooler, then that's great. I got an extra .2 ghz from my AMD Athlon 3500+ 2.2ghz really easily with stock cooling, so if I did go for the 4850+ hopefully 2.8ghz wont be a problem. I could drop the memory card reader and get a better fan I suppose. Then I could try overclocking it a bit more (..errr, maybe not...) It's a shame that ATI are releasing a new series of graphics cards soon.. Technology is so annoying at times! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McPhee Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 2.8GHz won't be a problem, my processor is only 1.8GHz lol. Think i might have to OC mine again tbh, can hit 2.5GHz without problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyxis Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Cool, thanks. 1.8Ghz! Is that a 3000+? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McPhee Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 BE-2300, AMD's first 45nm Dual Core chip. Bought it because when it first came out there was a lot of buzz about people O/Cing it to 3GHz and above on air. Mine caps out at 2.5GHz, which at first was a little disappointing but tbh i barely miss the 1.8 - 2.5 jump so it's not the end of the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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