component shopping.

Can anyone tell me where the best place is to buy pc parts? Ive heard novatech is a good site?? I want to start putting a pc together soon, , i only know the basics but im gonna have a bash. Is it best to buy part seperate, or start off with a motherboard or barebones bundle? And can anyone recommend a motherboard at a reasonable price? Cheers

It all depends on your budget really, Amd route would be the cheapest option.

I normally purchase from the following vendors. due to the prices and customer care service.

http://www.cclonline.com/

http://www.scan.co.uk/

My advice is.

Try to use some of the existing parts you may have to reduce cost.

PSU:
550w psu will surfice and run a quadcore.
650w with the intention of upgrading to high end hardware in the future.
The cheaper psu's have poor quality rails, capacitors. and the life span maybe short lived to that of
a more expensive Psu. Capacitors etc degrade over time.

Mobo:
I cannot fault Asus as all my boards are Asus.
The motherboard is the heart of the machine as it controls everything via its bridge controllers etc.
Money is well spent on a good board. I recommend doing your reserch and reading reviews before purchasing a board.

Ram:
First I would recomend viewing the selected boards qvl list to see what ram is supported. Please note that on some mother boards the bios may need to be updated to allow 4 gig of ram. This was the case for me.

I would opt for atleast 4gb ddr2 with a minimum of 800 bus speed.

The corsair xms2.
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... 096-6400c5

or the 4GB Corsair XMS2 DHX 800MHz
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... -6400c5dhx

Both are very reasonable prices.
Please check qvl list to confirm compatibility with motherboard.

Cpu:
Currently there are not alot of games that use multicore. Coders find it diffult to write games for this.
Multicore is best used for multitasking or as someone else pointed out video rendering etc.
Granted they are highly overclockable, but some of the dual cores beat these in gaming when the quad runs at stock.

CPU Fan.
Basically get a good one, no need to spend large ammounts of cash.
The intel fans that come with the cpu are pants.
Another way to dissepate the heat from the cpu to the heatsink is lapping. But i wont go into this.

Graphics:
Anything that is a X600 0r X800 series is fine.
nvidia 8600 cards retail at around 40 euros as an example.and still play most games.
Ati route is the best way to go at present but remember your budget.
If its within your budget then go Ati. I would advice selecting a card that has a good warrenty. Some vendors provide 12yrs of even life time warrenty. The more cores the better really. If you go for a top end card then make sure the psu can handle the extra load.

HD;
An 250gb drive is fine for the operating system. Just remember that the installation of games are now larger.
The 250 gig drive will soon become full if you install alot of games.

Case:
Use your existing case if its the correct form factor as the new motherboard.or try an antec 900
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... id=gsearch

Regards,
Paul.

I have an Antec 900 and to be honest I wouldn't really reccomend it.

Its a really good looking case and has lots of fans to keep ur hardware cool
but it sucks up more dust than a dyson.
I bought some fan filters for it but because of the way the fans fit into it there is nowhere for the fans to go.
In the end I had to stick the fans on the outside of the case to keep the dust out looks fkn awful but at least I don't hve to hoover inside it every week.
Also all thouse awesome looking fans a pretty loud especially on medium or high settings.

ukVandal, how true, I hate dust bunnies.
One of the options to reduce fan noise is to opt for the larger fans at a slower rpm with the added extra of a dust filter.
Remeber dust can add to the heating problems. Try to create a flow of air throughout the case. The fan in the front of the case will act as an air intake which in turn moves the air to the cpu fan area, and then to the rear fan on the back of the case which acts as an exaust. Some of the bridge controllers on the boards are hot to the touch and is maybe wise to read the reviews on these boards. Some boards manage to disepate the heat well while others dont.

As explained above, This depicts the airflow that you are after.

Thanks for that, will have a proper looj after work. I guess the way to go is to start with a decent motherboard. What sort of price range am i looking at to get something half decent? Obviously i dont want to spend stupid money, but i want something thats up to the job.

I normally pay around £120-140, It really depends on if you want the latest chipset etc. The AMD boards tend be be cheaper than the intel ones. In any case you can pick up a board for £50-60 that will do the job. As i cant stress enough before you buy any board check the reviews. The higher end boards tend to be able to run graphics in sli at 16x by 16x. The lower end boards have like 8x by 8x or 16x8. (16x by 16x basically means that both cards are running at full speed.) 16x8 means that there is only an improvement of 1.5

Firstly what processor do you intend to run?

You can put a pc together for around £400 if you shop around.

The first thing to do is to set a price/budget then divide this amongst the parts you need.

I think for around £240ish you can purchase a q6600 2.4ghz quad core, motherboard and 2 gig corsair ram.

You can find bundles here.
http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=491

The nvidia XFX pci-e 8600 GT costs around £40 now, Its an ok card for the price and runs at 16X.
Id use your hard that you currently own unless its small. Use some of the things you have now and maybe upgrade these at a later date. ie case, hard drive, dvdrw,

Remember that most cases now do not come with PSU's,

Regards,
Paul.

I use overclockers.co.uk built loads of PC for friends and family from the bits they do. Also they have a really good forum where you can ask questions and get answers from overclockers staff.

The do really got case bundles that come with PSU, case and fans. They also do some very good mobo.cpu,ram bundles.

I have the 900 case that vandla has but i got the new version it has filters on the main air ports a full length filter on the front panel a large 12cm out fan on the top and a large fan on the rear. yes it dose get dirty after a couple of month but id rather have to clean the filters than strip the hole PC.

cheers for that Paul, most helpful. think im going to have to do some homework! i can basically put together a computer, but with constant ungrades that come out, finding the right compatibility is something im going to have to reasearch!

Amazon.co.uk

You get people seeling brand new components from small businesses, and with full waranty's etc etc.

E.g. I got a £500 processer Intel Q9650 which was £500 every other site I looked on

But i went to amazon.co.uk and there are soem people who at the time selling stuff for £100's cheaper, just becuase
they had alot of it in stock and needed rid of it, I brought it, works fine, and i got over 1/3 off.

Reccomend it for sure, I can find any component being sold on amazon.co.uk cheaper then anywhere else I've ever looked.

Not only this u get usualy alot of customer reviews on the product u are buying, just make sure you look at the new products when ur searching for things
and not used products. But ofcourse if u want to buy used thats up to you.

the ting is bully wat do you whont to do

if you yust whont to play game's and some internet and movie you can have a real nice system for like 650-750 euro don't know how mutch that is in pound
first thing first

what monitor do you have it STUPID TO GO and get a high end gpu if you yust are going to play in rez off 1280*1024 ore 1600*1200
i know alot off dude's that think if i get that part it the best ther is so that must be great NO IT IS NOT you olways going to bottelnek on someting so you better can get a system dat run' on all AND BTW 4 gig off ram are only be whorking on a x64 os

same thing if what brand is better all depents on what you whont to do

if you yust whont to game go for a mobo whit a ati onboard and put a 4870 on it you are going to be very glad trust me

I'm with Orford on using overclockers.co.uk

If it's something simple, then ebuyer

For memory, I buy direct from crucial.co.uk

overclockers.co.uk is an excellent choice. Best bet maybe is too maybe post the budget of how much you want to spend, And we will try to spec a pc bang for the buck. Like i said once you have a price in your head, you can start from there. My mistake is i see something for x amount then see something better for an extra 7 quid, and so on etc. then it becomes expensive. Also sometimes you can buy things that are too future proof and infact will never get used, as by then you would of probberly brought a new pc. If your not too concerned about the brands then it becomes slightly cheaper. As somebody mentioned bottlenecks etc its about time solid state drives became cheaper.

thanks guys, im gonna have a look around to see whats about.