Hello all you computer gurus, some quick pointers into picking parts would be appreciated.
My graphics card looks like it's on its last legs so (given that my computer has been pretty much upgraded to the maximum over the years) this means that it's time to clean out the closet and get a new computer. Or at least most of it.
The only problem is that I'm completely out of the loop with hardware and I'm finding that technology has marched quickly by whilst I've been left behind!
I have no need for a monitor, keyboard, speakers, OS, mouse etc etc. I also have a soundcard, but it's very old, so replacing it with some of these incredible-looking onboard jobs would definitely be desirable.
I'd quite like to pick from
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Components.html because I've used them many a time and they always seem to have the cheapest prices in my experience.
I'm looking for a computer that will be able to play the best games for at least the next year or so and has the potential to be upgraded (ie. so I could just slip a better processor in for example). I really want to play ES3: Oblivion on full detail when it comes out too
Please don't feel that you have to suggest exact components, but I have such a slow connection at home that doing tons of research would be agonising (eg. it takes well over a minute to load an ironworks page!). If I could just be pointed to a rough idea of models or makes then that would be great!
Case - Does
this case look ok? Scroll down to see it, it's the silver one called the
Quote:
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OcUK Value (6097) Gaming Case Silver - 400w PSU (CA-002-OK)
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I don't want to spend much over £50 really, I like plenty of space, a case that looks fairly smart and I'm not loaded so value for money is also important!
Motherboard - Ideally I'd like to pay no more than £100 for this and it would need to support ATA-133 hard drive connections. Having bought two massive ones recently, I'm not about to buy new SATA drives. If there is a motherboard that has connections for both however, this would be a
major bonus. Are the nforce2 boards still very good or am I completely out of touch? Does
this one look like a good deal?
RAM - Something nice and nippy, but doesn't have to be absolutely top of the range. I'd like to pay not much over £100 for 1GB of the stuff. If anyone could match me RAM with an appropriate motherboard that would be particularly useful as I always get confused by the different speeds.
CPU - I'd quite like either a 64-bit processor or a nice hyperthreading one. Money is at a premium though, so I'm not after a 'hot off the press' one - half a year old or so is fine by me. I've always been an AMD man, so would prefer one of those (and they're usually more costeffective anyway). It looks like one of the Athlon 64s will be what I'm looking for, but what's the difference between Socket 939 and 754? Which is likely to become the standard?
Graphics Card - It has to be an NVidia chipset because I've had enough of ATI's rubbish Linux support. It's replacing a Radeon 9700 128MB card so a bit of a performance jump from that would be nice! Ideally wouldn't want to spend more than ~£150 on that.
Overclockers also do bundled motherboard/CPU/RAM
deals that are guaranteed to coexist peacefully. They also generally work out a little cheaper than buying the components separately. The link is for the Athlon 64 ones, but there are Intel ones too.
I'd be quite keen to pick one of these bundles if you guys think they are good value, and wouldn't want to spend much more than £300 for a bundle. Or less if possible - eg. paying £50 for an extra 200MHz on a 3GHz processor isn't really what I consider good value...
Thanks very much for any help/guidance you can offer [img]smile.gif[/img]