Hi chaps, just spec’d up my new PC and wondering if anybody can see any areas for improvement within my budget before I purchase I am recycling my keyboard/mouse , dvd/cd drives from my old computer and have a WinXP Pro installation disc. The budget is £550 and I am buying from www.ebuyer.co.uk as they are a site I have used before. I have given the product references in brackets. Mobo (113965) £66.00 Asus P5B skt 775, Intel 965 Express chipset FSB 1066Mhz DDR2 PC2-4300/5400/6400 SATA 2 / PCI-E(16) Processor (112708) £120.00 Intel Core Duo 2 E6400 2.3GZ , 2Mb cache Ram (105971) £60.00 (£15each) OCZ 2Gb (4x512mb) DDR2 667Mhz, PC2-5400 Harddrive (112227) £35.00 Seagate Barracuda 160Gb 7200RPM SATA2 Power Supply (90613) £41.00 Antec SmartPower 400W ATX , Dual 12v rails Graphics Card (119962) £68.00 Sapphire X1650XT PCI-E LG 19” Widescreen LCD (124897) £118.00 XION Solaris Case (107993) £33.0 Total £541.00 I use my computer for general purpose internet/mp3/dvd and am hoping to start playing some of the newer PC games. Battlefield 2 / UT2004 / C&C3 etc I am hoping for this PC to last another 4 years and for it to be able to take Vista in the future. (At the moment, the software I use for work is not Vista compatible as it is custom built for the company) Currently, I have not filled my current 60Gb of harddrive space so a ‘small’ 160Gb hard disc will suffice meantime. Not looking for a hardcore gaming rig as I am on a budget, but hopefully the processor / RAM /power supply mean that if I wanted hardcore gaming all I would have to purchase is a new graphics card. Wish I could stretch to a Sapphire x1950Pro !!! Any advice on areas on improvement is much appreciated. Cheers David

Get the E4300 for £73 & overclock the crap out of it. Check the following site, click "show results" & you'll see that almost 50% got their CPU "over 3.8GHz": http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/foru... There are cheaper cases too. With the money you save on the case & CPU, invest in a better video card. For the RAM, get 2 x 1GB rather than 4 x 512MB, & if you can afford it, get DDR2-800 rather than DDR2-667.

www.scan.co.uk AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5000+ Dual Core 2.6GHz, 2x512KB Cache, OEM. Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra TC AC-SIL64U-TC Sempron, Athlon 64 4000+, FX-55 Opteron. 2 x 512MB Elixir, DDR2 PC5300 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5. 2 x Xclio Xtreme Copper Memory Cooler/Spreader for DDR/DDR2 - with 3M Thermal Bonding. Foxconn N570SM2AA-8EKRS2H NF570 SLI, S AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX. 320 Gb Maxtor STM3320820AS DiamondMax 21, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 11 ms. 500W FSP Blue Storm AX500-A, 12cm Fan ATX2.0 (20+4Pin) SATA/PCI-E. 256MB Leadtek 8600GTS, PCI-E (x16), Mem 2000 MHz, GDDR3, GPU 675 MHz, 2x DL DVI-I/HDTV, HDCP. 19" Asus VW192S Black LCD, 1440x900, 5 ms, 800:1, 330 cd/m2, Widescreen, Speakers. Antec NSK4000/Mini Tower case without PSU, Black/Silver. Net Total £464.66 Carriage £15.17 V.A.T. £83.97 TOTAL £563.80

You might want to look for a board with 2 IDE controllers if you plan on moving all your existing IDE devices. I'm not up to speed on all the latest Intel chipsets but I THINK they only support one IDE channel. An add- in controller card would also be an option.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback ! Jam: Is there much of a performance difference between the Core 2 Duo E4300 & E6400 when run as stock without overclocking ? Overclocking is something i dont know anything about, but if the stock performance is minimal, i will purchase the E4300 and can always learn the overclocking stuff later. This is cash i can invest in a really good graphics card as suggested. Following your advice on RAM i'l go for this instead http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/11... 1GB (2x512) Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800Mhz/Pc2-6400 As it costs £43 for the pair of 512mb sticks, i'l upgrade to 2GB by the end of the year. possibly when i get Vista. The case (although expensive)I have chosen as i think it looks good but also because it has stealthed drive doors so i can re-use the beige drives! Sabretooth - thanks for receomending another uk site. I really like the look (as well as the price) of the Antec case you recomended so i may indeed switch to this dependant on if i can obtain matching dvd/cd drives for it.unfortunately the rest of the kit you spec'd is over my already stretched butget. I'm also sticking with Intel dual core processors rather than AMD as i recon AMD will probably release new technology to rival the Core Duo 2 (if not beat it) over the coming year - i wont bea able to upgrade for another couple of years after this. OtheHill: Yes, the motherboard only has 1 IDE socket, but as i am only bringing over 1 dvd/rw combi drive i reconed this would be ok. Thanks again for the advice. I will keep you posted on the final spec Regards David

Overclocking is relatively simple. One thing that's important to know in regards to the Core 2 Duo system is that for best performance, the CPU & RAM should run at the same bus speed (aka 1:1 ratio). The default speed of the E4300 is 1.8GHz (9 x 200MHz). DDR2-667 RAM has a default speed of 333MHz, so it will allow quite a bit of headroom. I know I suggested DDR2-800, but for just £10 more than the 1GB (2 x 512MB) you have listed above, you could get 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-667: http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/91124 If you were to overclock conservatively, you could jump the CPU bus up to 266MHz & drop the RAM bus down to 266MHz to match. That would put the CPU speed at 2.4GHz, which is faster than the default speed of the E6400. I doubt you'd have any problem pulling that off. And by running the RAM underclocked, it *should* allow you to tighten up on the timings a bit rather than running the default CL5. Doing that will also give a performance boost.

Hi Jam & Sabretooth Don't know if you following this but thought i would post the final specs. got delivered last week. MOBO - Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3P CPU Core 2 Duo 6420 (6400 with 4mb cache) 2x1Gig sticks Corsair XMS DDR2-800Mhz Sapphire X1950Pro Sagate Baraccuda 160gig and dual-layer dvd-rw drive and finally the Antec case and the blue FSP Power supply recommended by Sabretooth. All purchased from scan.co.uk for £530 including delivery. Changed the motherboard as ebuyer didn't quite have one that suited my needs and scan.co.uk turned up trumps. didn't read a single bad review about this motherboard. VERY,VERY impressed with scan.co.uk Ordered at midnight on holiday monday, order confirmation tues, received finance deal wed, finance confirmation thurs and delivered friday. brilliant! I'm VERY chuffed so thanks alot for your advice.