Help with my build

[Brad Gamma]

Hey, I thought I'd post my entire build on this forum to get some help. Its the first PC ive built from scratch. I have taken a pc to pieces and put them back together again and I felt it was time to build my own.

I thought I could get more help posting the whole thing in one thread rather than posting for each part in different forums. I'm from the UK, so I'm gonna list the price of things in pounds (bear in mind that things could be priced quite differently here)

So far its gonna be
e4800 3ghz CPU - £130
Antec 900 case - £60
Corsair 550 VX psu - £50
Gigabyte S775 Intel P35 Express ATX mobo - £70
4gb of RAM that I haven't yet chosen - up to £90
x-fi extreme gamer - £40
8800gts 512mb - £190 to £220
500gb 32mb cache seagate barracuda - £60
DVD drive - £20

around £800ish

This is going to be pretty much for gaming, I have a 24" 1920x1200 monitor. I know thats a high resolution, but I decided NOT to build this PC for crysis. My original plans were much more expensive because of that damn game. I'm also gonna overclock the e8400 to 3.6, and overlcock the 8800gts some. I plan to upgrade in about a year, so I don't want quad core yet, I'll wait for nehalem or some 32nm one.

Please could anyone help me with:
1) Whether I can get away a 450w corsair psu?
2) Any recommendations for RAM or specific 8800gts to get? (Just if you want to, I'm gonna look these up in more detail)
3) Ive seen people recommend the motherboard, but I'm no expert on them, any help would be great.
4) Recommend some after market coolers for the cpu and graphics card.

Thanks in advance
Chris

 

[HardwareGuru]

The Corsair 450VX is a good power supply and should handle that current setup. However, not sure on how far you intend on overclocking the cpu and graphics. The 550VX from Corsair is little more in price but has more power than that 450VX. You might as well as it gives you more headroom to upgrade.

 

[engiNURD]

1) Yes, you could, but as HardwareGuru said, if you can afford the higher wattage, it will provide you with more headroom. Also, the less you stress a PSU, the longer it will last.

2) Any brand RAM should do fine. You won't notice a difference between CL4 and CL5, unless you're running benchmarks (and even then, the difference is negligible), so don't pay a huge price premium for lower latency.

As far as NVIDIA vidcards, I'd suggest eVGA, XFX, or BFG, since those three have the best warranty/support. eVGA also has the step-up program. XFX has double lifetime warranty.

3) What features do you need in a mobo? If you don't need Crossfire/SLI, stick with a P35 board. If you don't need anything fancy, the Abit IP35-E and Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (if you need legacy ports) are your good-but-cheap options (they can OC great w/ better chipset cooling). If you need RAID, the GA-P35-DS3R is good and has 8 SATA ports, but the MSI Neo2-FR has better cooling for the chipset/mosfets (though you're sacrificing 3 SATA ports). If you need Firewire, the Asus P5K fits the bill. If you want/need both RAID and Firewire, check out the Abit IP35 non-pro, if you can find it in stock. The higher end boards are the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P, DS4, Asus P5K-E, and the crowd favorite, Abit IP35 Pro. The DFI boards are great for people who want to tweak a million BIOS settings.

4) I know these links are for US stores, but just use them as a reference:
$35 - Scythe SCNJ-1100P Ninja Plus Rev.B CPU HSF (optional $7 Thermalright LGA775 Bolt-Thru-Kit; recommended if using w/ quadcore)
$45 - Tuniq Tower 120 CPU HSF
$46 - Thermalright Ultima 90 CPU HS + FBA09A12M - Z ($3)
$50 - ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 120mm 2-ball UFO Bearing / Transparent CPU Cooler ($10 MIR)
$55 - Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme CPU HS + Scythe S-Flex Fan SFF21E ($15)

 

[Brad Gamma]

Thanks for the answers guys

I think I will shell out for the 550w psu. I might look at that MSI mobo too since I don't really need many SATA ports. I am going for an evga vid card as well.

Probably gonna order my stuff tomorrow. Thanks again