new system help

[didi]

Hi all
Being new to computers any help would be greatly apprecciated.
Im having a computer built mainly for gaming , Nothing too serious ill post the system specs any advice on improvements etc would be a great help.
Thanks in advance.
Dianne
Case: CoolerMaster Mystique 632 Tower Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA 24P (ALL IN ONE) SLI Supports 600Watt Power Supply
CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core? 2 Duo E6750 CPU @ 2.66GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit
Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard
Memory: (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Memory w/ Heat Spreader)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB 16X PCI Express
Hard Drive: Single Hard Drive (74GB Gaming Western Digital Rapter 10, 000RPM SATA150 16MB Cache
Data Hard Drive: 200GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8M Cache 7200RPM
Optical Drive: SONY DUAL FORMAT 18X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER
operating system:Microsoft® Windows Vista? Home Premium(32-bit Edition).

 

[DSF]

You say you're having this built for you - how much are they charging?

When you say gaming, but nothing too serious, what do you mean? If you're predominantly playing games like WoW, this setup would be overkill. If you don't care about running the newest games at the highest settings, this is overkill. First off, I personally would do without SLI, especially since you're only buying one video card. Second, I would move down a notch or two on the graphics card. Third, I would skip the Raptor and just get a single, bigger drive. You probably wouldn't notice much difference in day-to-day use. Last, for the price of that PSU, you could get a much better unit from Corsair or Seasonic. You don't need 600W for that computer.

Again though, without knowing how much you're being charged for this, it's tough to give a good recommendation.

 

[didi]

Tks for the reply
The price was around £1000.00
The owner of the shop said i could add a second card later.
Also i would not hve too upgrade for a long time
The games as long as they play smooth thats fine.
so going for a cheaper version would be better???.

 

[jkresh]

what monitor do you use and what games do you play?
Enermax makes good powersupplies but they are not as good as they used to be and others (corsair/seasonic) have caught up or gotten ahead.
you might want to see how much extra they would charge to go to a 780i board over 680i as it is slightly more future proof (it would allow a processor upgrade to penryn later on, 680i probably would not)
also how long do you plan on keeping this without a major upgrade?
If you want it for more then 2 years then you should go to a q6600 (or wait 1 month for a quad core penryn) it is a little more expensive but it will make a difference in how long you can go before a cpu upgrade.

finally for most people the raptor does not provide enough performance to justify the cost (either get 1 300-500 gig drive or 2 for backup purposes, don't bother with the raptor)

 

[DSF]

What kind of service plan were you getting for 1000 pounds? I don't think you're getting a very good deal.

SLI is not very good as an upgrade path. By the time you want to add the second card, you'd see a lot more benefit from simply buying a new, faster video card and selling your old one.

 

[Goldfish4209]

1. Power supply is overkill, as DSF said go for corsair or seasonic. They make quality mid-lower end PSUs. I have a corsair PSU myself.

2. A newer intel chipset would probably serve you better. You can get a P35 chipset for less, and a second card isn't really necessary. If you must have a second card, I would rather go with ATI, their cards are a better value and are are more affordable in pairs. For crossfire, go for a X38 chipset. What you save with the graphics cards far offsets the increased chipset price.

3. Raptors are getting old, and some of the newer drives perform similarly to them. A smaller (200-400Gb) 7200RPM hard drive doesn't perform too bad for the price.

 

[cozumel]

Hi didi (aka dianne) and welcome to the forum,

I agree with DSF. SLI does offer an excellent performance on some games and a very poor performance (maybe crashes) on other games. A waste of money imo.

The raptor is an excellent drive but is being caught fast. Much better to ask for a Seagate 500GB 7200.11 or Western Digital Caviar 500Gb as you get more GB per £ at a similar performance.

If you do decide against the SLI then a P35 from Asus or Gigabyte will give you everything you need for now and for future penryn cpu. The P35s in my book offer the best mid-range boards you can get.

Also ask for 64-bit Vista as is better and less buggy. If you get the 32-bit then you may as well get XP. The 64-bit will also allow scope for an increase in memory for future upgrade when required if you plan to keep the pc for a while.

For the CPU I reckon it is either a Q6600 quad core G0 or E2180 dual core. These are the two chips that offer best value for money right now. The E2180 is real cheap but gives a decent performance whilst the Q6600 takes excellent advantage of the increasing number of multi-core supported games and is the cheapest quad core on the market. The E2180 would leave you with money left for an upgrade to a penryn when the chip becomes available next year.

I would like to add though that the people who are making this machine for you have picked nice parts and are not really stitching you up and £1,000 is a reasonable price.