Advice for buying a new PC (gaming, high performance)

[Mr Tumble]

Hello all,

Apologies, but I couldn't think of a catchy new thread title so I appreciate those who pop to view this and comment.

I've been hanging on to my Dell Dimension 8300 for some time, and the last 12 months have been spent watching and saving. I had always planned on buying another Dell with the intention of buying one for gaming primarily.

Now that Alienware have been bought by Dell, and XPS no longer covering the higher end, gaming area, I have spent more time saving more money. But the more I read, the less impressed I was with Alienware. Some reviews are excellent. But when I looked at it in detail, I couldn't help but think I would be handing over a lot of money for something I could get for a better price and local too!

For the novice who really doesn't want to build the system from scratch himself, could I have some pointers please. I intend playing games, some basic home media stuff (photos, music etc).

First of all, retailer. Despite glowing magazine reviews, I am not touching Mesh because of comments from friends and customer reviews on forums such as these. Novatech, Cyberpower and UK Gaming systems look promising. But any helpful pointers would be useful.

Spec, well the intention is for a machine that will last me the next 6 years like my Dell has. Other than the graphics card dying on me (twice), it's been reliable. So I'm looking at i7 processers, decent RAM (I'd say 6GB plus, 1600MHz), a good decent sized HDD (10000 rpm). I'm not sold on the dual SLI / crossfire argument yet.

The budget. Well with the saving, I'm able to spend up to £3k. I don't want to spend that but it's there.

Cheers.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Novatech are good.

Alienware are greatly overpriced.

Dell don't make gaming machines, whatever their claims may be.

Have heard bad things about Cyberpower.

Mesh are bad. Very bad.

Have never heard of UK Gaming Systems.

sli/Crossfire imo a waste of money, one good card, possibly a dual GPU, a better bet.

You have an ample budget for a very respectable gaming machine.

i7 is the way to go.

6Gb memory is the sweet spot.

Do you already have peripherals? Monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers?

I would assume so.

Take a look at this: Gaming Machine

That will give you an idea what OCUK provide.

You can order a machine from them to your own design. With your budget you could use an Nvidia 295 series card Link.

The ideal would be to use an SSD hard drive to take the operating system Link with a 1Tb SATA hard disk to take your games and storage.

Blisteringly fast.

Novatech also offer good gaming machines.

I don't honestly know of any other suppliers to recommend cos I always build my own.

The above links are just examples, suggestions.

Note that Nvidia high end cards are a little thin on the ground at this moment in time but suppliers, hopefully, will get fresh stock soon.

Also budget for Win 7, Home Premium costs on average about eighty quid.

Oh, and welcome to the forum btw.

 

[V_R]

3K? Too much tbh, half that is fine....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-064-OE&groupid=43&catid=1270&subcat=1443

ATI 5870 is the card of the moment, they are huge too.

....Plus a few other bits, display etc.

OcUK are good and if you call them they will help you spec the machine over the phone and custom build it for you.

I too build my own but all my bits came from them.

Welcome.

 

[Mr Tumble]

Thanks for the welcome and for the helpful comments. Really useful and I'm so glad I held off buying that Alienware.

Lots of positive reviews of OCUK. A family friend recommended Novatech, but when I put the spec together, and look at what OCUK and some others offer, I get the same feeling I did with Alienware. A lot of money spent on a system with non premium essentials. I don't mind spending money on something if I'm paying for premium items rather than a brand name.


Okay, sorry for the omission but I will be looking at a new monitor, keyboard and mouse. I don't use my speaker system and use headphones so a simple sound system at most. Gone are my days of a mammoth subwoofer waking up the dead. The current Dell will move to the kids.



Questions beget more questions for the ignorant I'm afraid.



Overclocking always made me feel uncomfortable and I have avoided it. That second spec sends the PCU to 4GHz! Sorry to be unknowledgable about this, but is that healthy for the PCU?

I read HDD should be around 10000Hz otherwise it's another bottleneck in the system. Also, can you go through why use a solid state HD for OS and the SATA for the rest please?

Graphics cards. With NVIDIA's fermi still not here, I see the current choices are GTX 295 or the latest ATi/AMD cards. Somewhere I read 'don't mix intel with ATi' which sounded like a NVIDIA scam. My old ATi got on fine with my Intel. Can't imagine ATi shooting themselves in the foot. So 295 gets top reviews but then the ATi 5870 offers me Direct X 11 which makes sense to me. Especially for longevity. However, the 5890 looks tasty hehe. To me it makes sense to get a 5870.

What's a dual GPU by the way? ie, how does that differ from a SLi/crossfire config?

The system will be going into the dining room, tucked in a corner. The Dell was in a computer cabinet, but these beasts wont fit I don't think. Plus it was too hot in there. But from what I can tell, the above specced systems should run quiet. Any comments on noise?

Thanks again for the comments.

 

[V_R]

Lots of positive reviews of OCUK. A family friend recommended Novatech, but when I put the spec together, and look at what OCUK and some others offer, I get the same feeling I did with Alienware. A lot of money spent on a system with non premium essentials. I don't mind spending money on something if I'm paying for premium items rather than a brand name.

Well you will get quality parts from OcUK, they dont use or sell crap if i am honest.

Okay, sorry for the omission but I will be looking at a new monitor, keyboard and mouse. I don't use my speaker system and use headphones so a simple sound system at most. Gone are my days of a mammoth subwoofer waking up the dead. The current Dell will move to the kids.

KB and mouse are personal, me i love logitech, as you probs noticed if you read my sig.
This is the speaker package i have, They can be nice and subtle, but will thump if you ant them to, mix with a decent sound card and your on a winner.

Overclocking always made me feel uncomfortable and I have avoided it. That second spec sends the PCU to 4GHz! Sorry to be unknowledgable about this, but is that healthy for the PCU?

Obviously it will shorten the life a little, but mine has been stable at 4ghz since the day i built it and its been fine. Good cooling is what is needed.
EDIT: Just to add, the performance difference between 2.6 (stock) and 4ghz imo is great by the way.

I read HDD should be around 10000Hz otherwise it's another bottleneck in the system. Also, can you go through why use a solid state HD for OS and the SATA for the rest please?

'Old' Mechanical HDD's will always be the slowest part or bottleneck of any high spec machine atm, until SSD's get cheaper and bigger this will be the case. That said SSD's still have issues with a few things, their firmware etc. If running a SSD you need win 7 too, to take advantage of the TRIM command. Windows on an SSD does needa little setting up too, like disabling Defrag, Superfetch, search etc. But we can worry about that later.

Graphics cards. With NVIDIA's fermi still not here, I see the current choices are GTX 295 or the latest ATi/AMD cards. Somewhere I read 'don't mix intel with ATi' which sounded like a NVIDIA scam. My old ATi got on fine with my Intel. Can't imagine ATi shooting themselves in the foot. So 295 gets top reviews but then the ATi 5870 offers me Direct X 11 which makes sense to me. Especially for longevity. However, the 5890 looks tasty hehe. To me it makes sense to get a 5870.

Yes. If i was looking for a new card i'd have a 58** over anything NV at the mo. Last i looked the 295 wins in some games and the 5870 wins in others, its swings and roundabouts tbh.

What's a dual GPU by the way? ie, how does that differ from a SLi/crossfire config?

the 295 is a dual GPU card, as was the 4870 x2

The system will be going into the dining room, tucked in a corner. The Dell was in a computer cabinet, but these beasts wont fit I don't think. Plus it was too hot in there. But from what I can tell, the above specced systems should run quiet. Any comments on noise?

yeah it should be reasonably quiet, that will depend on the fans and case used though.

Added: Also if your getting an OS, make sure its Windows 7 64 Bit. There is no reason anymore to get a 32Bit OS in this day and age.

 

[floppybootstomp]

V_R is on the money

A few things.

Why SSD? They're fast.

If you're not keen on overclocking and OCUK build you a system, just ask them to set the CPU at stock speed.

Dual GPU is simply Dual Graphics Processing Unit. benchmarks show two on one card work faster than an sli/crossfire arrangement.

Antec gamer cases are good, but set all the case fans at low speed otherwise they're noisy. At slow they're quiet and work well.

Like V_R, I also prefer Logitech for speakers, keyboards and especially mice.

For monitors I'd recommend Samsung, Dell & Philips.