Building my own quality pc - I Need help!

[Chuckyfaz]

Hey guys ive caught the 'i need a top notch pc' bug and ive been reading tonnes of stuff. This is what ive come up with...
For video editing (recording HD xbox360 gaming) and pc gaming (crysis)...

Processor - Intel Core 2 quad Q660 2.4GHz £160
Motherboard - ASUS P5N-E SLi £60
Graphics Card - Asus Nvidea 8800GTX HDCP £230
Sound Card - Creative Sounblaster Xfi Ex.Fid. £0 already own
HDD - Samsung Spinpoint F1 £158
RAM - 2 x 1GB Kingston DDR2-800 £30
Power Supply - ? any suggestions ?
Box - ? Doesnt have to look nice ?
Capture card - ? to be added in a month or so ?
Monitor - thru plasma tv

Question id like to ask u guys...

What box and power supply would i need for this setup? bearing in mind i intend to add an hd capture card at some point too. should i ditch the single hdd for a raid setup or around the same price?

I have looked at the coolmaster rc-1000 cosmos at £97, but do i need to spend this much on a box? Also the power supplies vary so much in price i dont know where to start, i found some of the best ones such as thermaltake toughpower 1200watt / 750watt but they are very pricey.

1) Should i keep the samsung f1 idea or go for a raid setup? if so which hhd drives do u recommend? remember i wanna capture in hd 720p.
Maybe 2 x Hitachi 7K100 750GB? will the samsung handle recrding in 720 on its own... large file writing speed 97MB/s

2) I was gonna get an artic freeze 7 pro but do i need one if i have a good box? or is that irrelavent?

3) Do u guys recommend any HD capture cards which i can use to record my gaming.

4) Is all this equipment compatable?

5) Am i over spending needlessly in any department?


Your advice will be much appreciated!

Chucky

[Jamie Nixx]

Processor = Good
Motherboard = dated now, go for an Asus P5KC, its about £10 more.
Graphics card = Good
Are you sure you need to spend that much on a HDD?
Memory is OK, but you can get better memory such as Corsair and Geil for the same price.

PSU, no need to buy a 1000w PSU, they are a waste of power and a waste of time, one of the VERY best PSU's in the world is the Corsair HX520w, its about £60 if you shop around.

No need to buy a mega expensive case either, you can get some really nice ones for about £40, not only do they look good but they are quality steel.

Check out these websites for your components.

yoyotech
novatech
ebuyer
aria
dabs
overclockers

And ebay is always good for sourcing good deals.

Arctic Freezer 7 is good, and for the Q6600 you should get one.

Get one HDD, RAID gets on my tits.

All equipment is compatible and tbh i wouldn't bother getting a HD capture card.

[Chuckyfaz]

Thanks Jamie, really appreciate your comments

I didnt really want a hd capture card but when i play my 360 games in hd i can't easily send a SD signal to my current dazzle 150 capture card (need to split hd boost the signal then convert one back to composite blah blah. sounded problematic and expensive so i thought a hd capture card would be easier.. i'll look into it all later. hopefully the xbox 360 lead makers can create a lead that delivers both signal out of one cable (without a switch as the current one has)

Thanks again im gonna go and look at the links u gave me

[Jamie Nixx]

Do you know how expensive HD capture cards are?

Decent one, over £200 easily all the way upto about £1000, lots a money.

Are you on Live?

[Chuckyfaz]

Yh im on xbox live Chucky iX, i play first person shoooters mainly PDZ, cod4 and of course rainbow 6 vegas. u?

I know the cards are expensive but so is splitting the signal and converting it back to SD (+quality must deteriorate). I really wanna keep recording our clan matches on vegas2 so am willing to pay 200 but thats my max, lol. I'm happy with the quality of my current capture card but just dont know how to get it to work, ive checked the video forums and they say its a pain...

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic317690.html


Ive switched the HDD to the 500GB spinpoint, big saving thanks (if i need to raid in the future i'll just get another one).

also switched the motherboard as u have suggested.

PSU - i am asuming 700 watt is a good amount of power for what i intend to run (500 too low)?
I found the arctic power 700w for £40, but im unsure how to check what box everything will fit into.


Also does the graphics card work on Windows XP SP2? it says soemthing about it being made for vista but i dont want vista just yet.


oh yeah switched the memory over to corsair hdd2-800

Cheers

[Jamie Nixx]

For the Power Supply, get the Corsair HX520w, its £60, you need a quality PSU for the components you are running.

Yeah i play CoD4 sometimes but i mostly play on PC, got one copy on 360 and one on PC lol.

I play Pro and GoW online mostly.

The GPU will work fine on XP, it just supports DX10 which is a feature that is in Vista, nothing to worry about.

[Chuckyfaz]

ok ill change the psu, thanks again!

I think im gonna try and get into crysis on the pc and, i havent used a keyboard and mouse since call of duty 1 / 2, so that'll be fun getting used to it again.

Chucky

[Chuckyfaz]

All Done....

Thank you very much for your advice... my final build is... o/s xpsp2
for video editing / gaming

Thermaltake Armour Case
Corsiar HX620 PSU
ASUS P5KC MBoard
Corsair 2 x 1GB DDR2-800 RAM
Intel Q6600 with Arctic Freezer 7
ASUS nVidea 8000GTX GCard
Creative Soundblaster Extreme Fidelity X-Fi
Samsung Spinpoint 500GB HDD
+my old nec dvd writer, keyb etc

I also got Crysis and it looks a quality game with amazing graphics.
I'm not up to date with pc games so are there any other FPS you would recommend? or any other really good games worth playing, past or present.

I found it quite easy to build after reading the forums here all the DEstructions carefully, i didnt really expect it to work when i pushed the power button for the first time.
Luckily the psu came with all the necessary leads for the gtx as they didnt come with the card.

It runs really stable and cool... so much faster than my old pc, highly
reccommend all of the above components. I bought them all from ebuyer, cheapest i could find and had everything i needed, they delivered the next day, even tho i ordered it after 5pm. total spend around £780


Chucky

[RickyTick]

Great job Chucky.

If you're wanting a good FPS, its hard to beat Call of Duty 4.