New PC

[Smoosh]

I'm trying to build up a list of parts for a new pc I'm going to build when i get paid, I'm going to be using it for pretty much everything, games, occasionally a web server, college work, recording, sound editing etc + i would like to try and over clock it .

Here is the current spec I've got:
Motherboard
DFI Lanparty UT RDX200CF-DR SKT939 CROSSFIRE Dual PCI-E ATI RD480+SB450 Chipset Dual DDR400 SATA ATX
£149.98 ($257.32 USD)
CPU
AMD Athlon 64 (San Diego) 3700 CPU Skt 939 San Diego Retail inc Heat Sink Fan 3 Years Warranty
£161.30 ($276.75 USD)
Hard Drive
Western Digital WD740GD 74GD "Raptor" 10,000RPM SATA/150 8MB Cache - OEM
£117.48 ($201.56 USD)
RAM
Corsair (VS512MB533D2), 512MB, DDR2, PC4200, 533MHz, 64Mx64, non-ECC, 240pin DIMM, unbuffered, CL4
£66.20 for 2 ($113.58 USD)
Graphics
Xfx GeForce 6600GT PCI-E 128MB DDR3 TV+Dual DVI
£101.78 ($174.61 USD)
CPU Fan
Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower Cooler (Socket 478, LGA775, 754, 939 and 940)
£37.94 ($65 USD)

Total: £634.68 ($1,089.76 USD)

I don't really want to spend much more than that, would be nice to be able to knock off about £100.

Couple of questions

Does everything look ok with it?
Do the prices look ok? or am i getting ripped off?
Is it worth getting a PCI-E graphics card or just get AGP?
Should i get a SCSI drive like a Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP 18.4Gb instead of the WD Raptor?
I wouldn't mind trying to reduce the price a bit so is there anything unnecessary?

What the difference between

DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR SKT939 - Retail Box

And

DFI Lanparty UT RDX200CF-DR SKT939 CROSSFIRE Dual PCI-E ATI RD480+SB450 Chipset Dual DDR400 SATA ATX
?

Any help would be gratefully appreciated

 

[Trifid]

I will not buy from XFX after having my card overheat randomly after 10 months. Leadtek and BFG are good companies to buy from.

Get rid of the raptor, they do not give a performance gain that justifies the cost. There is a benchtest at www.anandtech.com for it if you want it, and it gets beaten in almost every test by the Segate 500gb which is £10 more expensive. Anyway, a standard 80gb SATA harddrive is alot better riceerformance wise.

I wouldn't get the crossfire board, as I don't know how good the chipset is from ATI but the Nvidia one is extremly good.

Get 1gb of ram, it is really needed. Games like HL2 stutter badly, and BF2 and FEAR benefit nicely from having more than 1gb. I brought 512 originally, and a week later I had to get 1gb more.

You need a PSU - the Hiper type R 580w is one of the best ones you can get in the UK, and is extremly well priced - £65.

You need a case.


Also Corsair Value Select doesn't overclock well. Geil is meant to be quite happy to overclock a bit, but with all value ram, dividers are needed.

PCIE is the next generation technology, and the new cards will be based on it. And it isn't that much more expensive.

SCSI costs alot of money, and 18gb's is no where near enough for hdd space. windows uses 5.6gb's with drivers installed on C, and nothing else, and a game now is 4gb's.

If you are not going to get dual ATI cards, than get the SLI-D or ultra-D. As I said, I don't know how good the ATI chipset is, but I do know the Nvidia one is great.


Also DVD drives?

 

[Static_11]

lol.. i went through picking out little bits and parts of what i was going to say.. then all of it was answered by trifid.. lol

 

[forlorn_ronin]

I agree with the above comments. But, How about case, optical drives, and peripherals? Definetly 1 gig of ram. Like the board and the processor especially. More media go with pentium. More graphics oriented go with AMD> my only advice.