PC Building

[GuiltBlade]

Long story short, my desktop is 6-7 years old and so being replaced.
Building a new machine using some salvage and some new.
Please can you advice on necessary components to invest in.

Will be used for graphic design work and gaming.

Thoughts?

 

[superbleeder12]

1. Go to local book store
2. Go to the computer book section
3. Find a book about building your own pc
4. Thumb through it
5. ???
6. new computer

 

[SquirrelPants]

There's a nice guide here on some parts and whatnot: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.85390
I used this to help out with putting my computer together, hope it helps.

 

[GuiltBlade]

looking around £800 budget.
Salvaging small things such as wireless card, keeping old hard drive as a backup, if possible will also be holding onto old ATI X680 graphics card as a secondary (I think it was, been a while since i got it). aside from that its mother board, and graphics card i eed the most advise on.

 

[Calobi]

If it's 6-7 years old, are there any parts you can salvage? There's the power supply, hard-drive and case, probably, but then again new ones of each would probably be better (save for the case, upgrading those always seemed weird to me unless the other parts wouldn't fit).

Edit: And you say what you're keeping as soon as I post this. Now I look foolish.

 

[johnman]

looking around £800 budget.
Salvaging small things such as wireless card, keeping old hard drive as a backup, if possible will also be holding onto old ATI X680 graphics card as a secondary (I think it was, been a while since i got it). aside from that its mother board, and graphics card i eed the most advise on.

I recently built an awesome machine for a friend for £650, not including moniter. It had a GTX 260 and a core i5 processor, they are hihg end parts and can eaily be scaled back on. I get all my parts off www.scan.co.uk, they always have good prices.
I would recommend a: Core i5 processor
Nvidia GTx 260
An Asus Motherboard around the £90-£100, area
a 750 watt Power supply least
The rest is upto you, remeber to get the right type of RAM for your motherboard, DDR 3 is becoming more common and is the same price as DDR 2.
Also get SATA disk and Hard Drive's, the speed boost over IDE is very useful.

I dont how much sense that makes too you, but any questions your welcome to message me, I love Pc building.

 

[GuiltBlade]

Many thanks. I will muse over this after the wine has stopped befuddling me.

Fortunately have a tech in the family to help out. So mostly its deciphering the parts.

Edit: continued apologies for spelling, I swear my laptop takes great joy in watching my fingers squirm.

 

[Caligulove]

If its that old, pretty much the only thing I could imagine you could salvage would be the wireless card (if applicable) and the OS. Maybe some USB ports if you have them.

But youre gonna have to get a more powerful power supply most likely, then the tricky part of it is making sure that all the parts you get comply with the motherboard youre going to get.

Start with the motherboard and then look for processors, graphics cards and harddrives. Then you can get all the info from the mobo specs to look for when shopping around. That and to make sure that you understand the RAM config for the board. Because thats usually the problem that happens to me the most when I am building a rig and something goes wrong when all set up.

I also would just go against any flashing LEDs or other lights in the front- theyre a hassle and just arent worth it most of the time. Spend the least amount of money on the case I would say. Its essential but you never have to shell out very much for them.

 

[D-Cypher]

For £800 you can easily build a mid/high end machine. If it were me and 3D design and gaming were the objectives i'd go for something like this:

MSI P55-GD65 £130 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-P55-GD65-Intel-P55-Motherboard-LGA1156]

Core i5 750 £150 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel-Core-i5-750-Quad-Core-266Ghz-%28Lynnfield%29-8M-Cache-LGA1156-CPU-Retail]

500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500-GB-Samsung-HD502IJ-Spinpoint-F1-SATA-300-7200-rpm-16MB-Cache-89-ms-NCQ]

4GB Corsair TwinX 1333Mhz DDR3 £100 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%282x2GB%29-CorsairTwinX-XMS3-DDR3-PC3-10666-%281333MHz%29-240-Pin-Unbuffered-CAS-9-9-9-24-DHX]

Asus GTX260 £125 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB-Asus-GTX-260-Glaciatorplus-55nm-1998MHz-GDDR3-GPU-576MHz-Shader-1242MHz-216-Cores-plus-3D-Batm]

750W Modular Corsair PSU £110 [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/750W-Corsair-CMPSU-750HXUK-ATX-EPS12V-Modular-UK-Version-7-Year-Warranty]


Add to that a case of your choice and an OS you got a machine that'll rip through pretty much everything. If you wanted to add a new 22"+ monitor to that you could build a cheaper and only slightly lower performance AM3/Phenom II machine.

 

[Indecizion]

1 gig pci gfx card 2 ports so u can run 2 monitors off (just to be cool) quad core just so you dont have to update any time soon and yeah, go AMD imo generaly has more cache and as such is better for games etc.

 

[x0ny]

How do you know what power rating your PSU needs when building a computer from scratch?

 

[D-Cypher]

http://www.coolermaster.com/support/psu_calculator.php

Then add on another 150w for every year you want to be future proof.

 

[the_dancy_vagrant]

looking around £800 budget.
Salvaging small things such as wireless card, keeping old hard drive as a backup, if possible will also be holding onto old ATI X680 graphics card as a secondary (I think it was, been a while since i got it). aside from that its mother board, and graphics card i eed the most advise on.

With that much of a budget the world is your oyster unless the cost of parts is ridiculous in the UK.

My 2 cents:

-Check out AMD processors before you look at Intel. You get more bang for the buck with AMD but at the high end the Intel I5/I7 are insanely powerful.

-Motherboards, you'll probably want to go with DDR3 memory. It's kind of a crap shoot when it comes to performance and reliability so make sure you can RMA the sucker if it goes bad or is outright broken when you get it.

-Memory is pretty cheap right now. Pretty much the same as motherboards, high performance RAM isn't really necessary but if the price isn't too far out of line then it may be a good investment.

-Graphics is probably going to hurt quite a bit. I can't find any info on the card in your current rig so I have no idea what I should compare it to. If your desktop is as old as you say, it's probably not a bad idea to go ahead and upgrade, especially if the games you want to play are newer than the past 3 years or so. ATI is a good choice, the 5850 is currently about $300 here in the USA and it's a beast. The 5770 is not as good but it's $100 cheaper. Shop around on these, prices will only get better on them as time goes by.