New PC help...again

[ojm62]

Hey guys, a few months back I asked for advice on a new gaming pc on a budget. Well time has moved on and so has my finances, so I'm back again for more advice. For £530 I could get this rig:

Computer Case Black & Silver ATX Tower Case
CPU AMD Phenom II X2 550 (2 x 3.1GHz) 7MB Black Edition
Motherboard Asus M4N72-E 5200MT/s (NVIDIA 750a)
Memory 2GB PC-6400 800 MHZ (1 x 2 GB) (DDR2)
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 - 896 MB - 2xDVI/VGA (XFX) (Includes Batman Game & 3D Glasses)
Power Supply 650W PSU
Hard Drive 1 160 GB SATA-II HDD UDMA 300 7200 8MB
Optical Drive 1 Samsung (SH-D162D) 16x DVD-ROM Black (IDE)
CPU Heatsink AMD Heatsink & Fan - Low Noise

So...will it be enough? Any thing you think I should change?

 

[ojm62]

Cheers, I'm getting it from computerplanet.co.uk, so I pick the components and they put it together. The psu is a bog standard one...infact they don't even list a manufacturer.

 

[ojm62]

I've changed it to one from ocz, http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/power_management/ocz_gamexstream_power_supply-nvidia_sli_ready_ it's 700 watts, more than I should need, and I'm happy to replace the memory and harddrives etc later on. Is the cpu and gpu any good? Thanks a lot, youve already been a great help

 

[Aunel]

All hail great lord fluffybacon! for his expertise.

all that needed to be said has been said, you really need more RAM, the rest looks good to me. and maybe a bigger HD, 160 get´s full fast.

 

[Laughing Man]

Oh why not,

I just dropped £540 on a

Intel Core I5 750
Asus Maximus Formula III motherboard
4 gig of Patriot 16000Mhz DDR3 Ram
Samsung F3 1Tb
Zalman CNP 9900
Oh and a pair of green cold cathodes to match the green led on the Zalman.

Hmmm a few folk keep saying get 4gig of RAM but no one has asked what OS you plan on using. If you have the option of XP then you'll only need 2Gig if you opt for Vista then you'll need 4 and if you're getting 7 then you can get away with 3Gig but since it's a bit hard to get dual channel 3Gig kits you'll more likely end up with 4Gig.

The PSU is good but overkill you don't need anymore than a decent 540W. My Corsair 520W PSU could run that rig without any issue but I guess the 700W does allow for future expansion.

The Harddrive is a tad small and a tad slow by today's standards. I've got over 160 gig on just my primary drive that's before I even start to look at storage for music, pictures, videos and general nonsense. You'd be better with at least 500Gig and if possible 32Mb of cache would allow for quite a noticeable speed increase.

The Samsung DVD drive, dump it. I have a lightscribe Samsung DVD drive and whilst everything else I've owned with Samsung on it has been top notch the DVD drive is one recalcitrant bastard. Crysis refused to run and Left 4 Dead required a fist to the drive door to get it to run. Oh and if possible try for a Sata drive rather than an IDE one. It may not be noticeably faster but IDE cables are big and chunky and can block airflow. Sata cables are slim and easy to tidy out of the way.

Oh yeah and I was just showing off by listing the parts for my rig upgrade, but hey that's what this game is all about

 

[MrTub]

May I ask which game?

snip

 

[flaming_squirrel]

What's with the really small hdd? You could get something triple that size for very little more.
Are you planning on putting Win7 or XP on that? (Vista not counting as an actual OS)

Make sure to get a good name brand psu, you really don't want a shitty psu taking out your entire rig.

This.
You may find a 700w PSU for £50 and think "wow, what a bargain, I'll 'ave that" but then 3 months down the line it'll most likely die and in a blaze of glory take down every other component with it. There's also a chance of it giving you an unstable system / poor efficiency etc.

Oh and for branding, get an Enermax or Corsair, both good quality PSU makers.

 

[Laughing Man]

May I ask which game?

Turn of phrase man, not buying for any specific game it's just my Core 2 Duo is getting a bit long in the tooth, bought it a month or two after they first came out, Was going to upgrade to a quad core but the consensus over at another forum would be to move on to the Core I5 or I7 as this would offer a longer term upgrade route.

 

[Emphraim]

You need more more RAM and as some previous people have mentioned definitely need a bigger HDD.

I originally had a 250 gig harddrive and that was pure torture, having to delete older games and anime to install newer ones. Luckily I got a 1 TB harddrive this summer which helped a lot, especially with my blu-ray anime collection.

So if you keep alot of programs and stuff on your computer, get a bigger HDD, OP.

 

[Eternal_24]

Aside from the RAM and Hard Drive it's a very good system.

 

[Link Kadeshi]

I remember your last thread. I really like your setup there. The PSU doesn't need to be 700W, though I urge you to get name brand, OCZ is good. The video card is a good one, trust me on that. Definitely think about a bigger HDD. I actually recommend SimpleTech's reDrive [http://www.simpletech.com/products/storage/redrive] if you wish to go external. Other than that, nice pick.

Also, like it's been said before, get more RAM on your own and install it yourself, it'll be much cheaper that way.

 

[ojm62]

whew, cheers guys. Im going to stump up the cash for 2x 250 gb hdds, and whack in another 2gb for the ram. Looking forward to getting this all running

 

[Mr. Purple]

Ummm, first off, u dont need 4GB of RAM. As long as everything else is running, well, u definitely dont need the 4GB that other ppl are promoting. 2 is definitely enough. I would concentrate more on your hardrive. Your putting out all of that but only getting 160GB?
If its gonna be used for gaming, music etc then I would at least get 250GB.
I myself would much rather have a safe 500GB hardrive.
Other than that I think you are good.

 

[MrTub]

Ummm, first off, u dont need 4GB of RAM. As long as everything else is running, well, u definitely dont need the 4GB that other ppl are promoting. 2 is definitely enough.

That kinda depends on the OS

 

[Mr. Purple]

Ummm, first off, u dont need 4GB of RAM. As long as everything else is running, well, u definitely dont need the 4GB that other ppl are promoting. 2 is definitely enough.

That kinda depends on the OS

I suppose. 32-bit windows vista ultimate runs great with 2 gigs.