[Tech] Here's 600 quid...

[Ashya]

...now built me a computer, b*tches.


Well..?

[taps foot]

I'm waiting...

(sorry for that outburst, just seriously frustrated by my inability to make head nor tails of the various components and their (in)compatibility. Soo tempted to buy something ready off-the-shelf and then find out later it's not -quite- what I wanted. *sigh*)

 

[Iron_fist]

ok well did you have a vauge idea what you were looking for i.e ATI or Nvidia graphics?, a certain size of HDD?, a certain amount of ram?, do you need an OS?, keybaord?, mouse? monitor?

any of those you can answer make it easier to build you something that fits what you need (presumably able to play WoW is a minimum?)

 

[Ashya]

Right....

A fan of XFX graphics cards, Nvidiaaaaaa, want to play WoW smoooooothly (and shiny), have a large enough PSU (650 watts or more) to expand later, at least 4 (or more) gigs of ramskulls. Intel preferred, minimum 250gig HDD, (got two 250gig sata drives in my old rig that would be transplanted as well), eSata connection so I can hook up my portable HDD. Want Win7, 64bit version (Home Premium would be sufficient, no need to go silly with Pro).

Sound-wise I am quite happy with the onboard sound from most motherboards. Have Realtek on my old rig which kinda sucked (Use a SoundBlaster USB soundcard now, and it is fine) but the Realtek chipset on Rhya's new rig is just lovely.

Got two good TFT screens to run off it. Don't use 5.1 sound, usually just use a headset or two speakers at most.

I... I think that covers it, I guess.

 

[Wol]

Do we have to give you the computer after we build it?

I'll second the comments fisty has made though. Need moar infos.

 

[Wol]

A fan of XFX graphics cards

.... so nVidia or ATI?

 

[Haven]

 

[Ashya]

.... so nVidia or ATI?

Nvidia
Got a GTS8400 in my old rig. There's a GTS8600 in Rhya's old rig. Both XFX, both looooooovely

 

[Haven]

Slightly more helpful advice:

Focus on GPU memory - get one with 1GB RAM NOT 512MB.

Focus on System Memory - go with 4GB RAM (no need for more than this).

Focus on multi-core CPU anything with 2-4 cores will run wow fine.

Focus on CPU Frequency - I'd suggest 2.8GHz and above.

Do NOT waste money on SLi - WoW does not benefit at all from SLi.

WoW is GPU limited so put a little extra money into the Graphics if given a choice.

Hope that helps give you some guidelines.

 

[Ashya]

Also figured the GPU would be the bottleneck when playing WoW. But I see a card with 512, one with a gig, and get confused. Which one is better? And does the memory bus speed matter? Does it matter a lot? Does a gfx card with the same memory but with a wider bus matter? Matter much?

 

[Angelic]

More memory = better, programs will have to reload textures into it less often.
Faster memory and bus and shit = better, loading textures and whatnot will be faster.

Then again I really don't understand computers too well. These two are quite basic observations, though.

 

[Iron_fist]

maybe

i7 bundle

4GB Geil

and either

XFX 5770 or XFX GTS250
for some reason i can't find any better Nvidia cards from XFX :/

those would be my suggestions
it's a bit over your budget and you could possibly find the CPU and a slightly different board a bit cheaper, however i should be working so would need to take a look at that later, but that should give a nice powerful base to add a better gfx card and more ram to at a later date if needed.

edit:
PSU


hdd