[Slide]

Originally Posted by Holymoly

OK, things have moved on a pace and it looks like I'm going to be forced into buying sooner rather than later as I seem to be experiencing HDD drop outs. Might be the drive, might be the controller, might be the mobo. On top of that I had to replace the PSU last month. Fortunately the problem is with my data drive rather than my work or C: drive but I'd rather move now rather than leave it too long.

I'm looking at ordering from ComputerPlanet in the UK and have the following build in mind at the moment:

ANTEC Midi 300 case
AMD Phenom II X4 940 (4 x 3.0 GHz) 6MB Black
Asus M4A78T-E (AMD 790GX) AM3 DDR3
Corsair 4GB XMS3 PC3 - 10666 1333MHz
ATI Radeon HD 4870 XXX - 1GB
OCZ 600W Stealth XStream PSU
Vista Home Premium SP1 64-BIT + Win7 upgrade voucher
2 x 250GB SATA II HDD UDMA 300 7200 8MB (non raid)
Onboard sound

Am I going over the top for a gaming rig? Should I maybe be looking at the FX mobo rather than the GX and would the half gig GPU be just as effective? The cost as is amounts to £775 delivered.

When I say gaming I am talking online MMOs, no FPS, mainly EQ2 and EVE.

Thanks for the input.

Seems a decent build. FX is more gamer orientated, GX is a bit more desktop. Might as well take 1GB GPU - lots of games use the extra ram for textures. Not much difference in price.

Put this together at scan.co.uk, slightly faster cpu, better motherboard, better hard disks (why 2*250GB?) - £40 cheaper.

650W TX Corsair PSU, single 12V rail, energy efficient, quiet & cool, fully compatible, 5yr warranty £63.65 £73.20
1TB Samsung HD103UJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ £53.69 £61.74
Antec Three Hundred Black Midi Tower Case w/o PSU £39.97 £45.97
1GB XFX HD 4870 XXX, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 3800MHz GDDR5, GPU 775MHz, 800 Cores, 2x DL DVI-I/ HDTV £98.48 £113.25
Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, AMD 790FX, AM3, PCI-E 2.0(x16), DDR3 1666(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX £114.58 £131.77
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BlackEdition, Sok AM3, 3.2GHz, 8MB Total Cache, 125W, Retail £127.69 £146.84
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24 £49.10 £56.47
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit English 1pk OEM + Windows 7 Offer Form £79.40 £91.31


Net Total
Carriage
VAT
£626.56
£11.25
£95.67
Total£733.48

[Holymoly]

Originally Posted by Slide

(why 2*250GB?)

I put my work stuff on one and the gaming stuff on the other. That approach has worked for me this time as it is the gaming HDD that had gone bang leaving me with my work intact. In case this is the beginning of a more insidious problem I'm looking at a new system before the whole thing falls over.

Quick question. As the rest of my home "network" runs on XP (32bit) will having my main print sharer using Vista64 cause problems? (It's not really a network rather connected via the router so that they print through my pc.)

Thanks for the input btw. Useful as ever.

[Slide]

Originally Posted by Holymoly

I put my work stuff on one and the gaming stuff on the other. That approach has worked for me this time as it is the gaming HDD that had gone bang leaving me with my work intact. In case this is the beginning of a more insidious problem I'm looking at a new system before the whole thing falls over.

Quick question. As the rest of my home "network" runs on XP (32bit) will having my main print sharer using Vista64 cause problems? (It's not really a network rather connected via the router so that they print through my pc.)

Thanks for the input btw. Useful as ever.

Get an external drive and back stuff up onto it regularly, the bigger drives are faster for general use. That's what i'd do anyway. Don't know about print sharing. Quick google seems to indicate it's doable