DiamondGeezer

I've had this machine for over 4 years now and think it's time for an upgrade but instead of buying a ready built PC would it be possible just to upgrade components like Motherboard / CPU / Graphics Card etc and keep the current case / psu or are these cases just designed to house Dell manufactured parts.

little_pob

Dell cases are only usually designed to take Dell parts, certainly motherboards anyway.

You could always use your current Dell machine as a media server or HTPC, then start afresh?

__________________
I can tell by the pixels.

DiamondGeezer

Thats what I thought, bit to noisy for a HTPC plus I don't want to many boxes knocking around

looks like I'll have to start from scratch

Thanks anyway

DiamondGeezer

I would like something like this but comes in at £1,199.00

CyberPower Gamer Ultra Perseus PC Review - PC Reviews - TrustedReviews

Self build with similar specs comes in cheaper at £873.08

MOBO ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX Socket AM3 onboard VGA DVI HDMI 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard - Ebuyer £99.97
PROCESSOR AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz Socket AM3 4MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Ebuyer £129.97
RAM OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 Gold Dual Channel CL 9-9-9-26 - Ebuyer £55
PSU OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU - SLI Ready, Silent 120mm Blue LED Fan - Ebuyer £88.99
GRAPHICS CARD Sapphire HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer £199.00
SOUNDCARD Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard - Retail Boxed - Ebuyer £54.05
HARD DRIVE Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 32MB Cache - OEM Green Power - Ebuyer £64.51
BLU RAY DRIVE LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA - Retail Box With Software - Ebuyer £78.68
CPU COOLING Zalman CNPS10X Extreme Ultra Quiet Socket 1156, 1366, 775, AM3, AM2+, 939, 754 Tower Processor Cooler - Ebuyer £54.08
CASE Kikatek.com | (TWELVE HUNDRED) Antec Twelve Hundred Tower Case £116.10

Is there anything I can do to cut the cost even further or any other ready made machines out there

Cheers

little_pob

It looks to that price due to the watercooling and coming pre-overclocked.

If that is your budget for the graphics card you might want to look at an nvidia GTX275 it benchmarks slightly higher than ATI's HD4870 and has physx support for games like GRID, Mirrors Edge etc and examples can be had for £15 less: XFX GTX275 896MB DDR3 XXX Edition Dual DVI HDTV Out PhysX and Cuda ready PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer

To use all 4Gb of RAM you are going to need a 64bit OS. Assuming you are going for Vista or Win7 rather than XP64, it's worth pointing out that you'll get no benefit of the X-Fi over the older Audigy2. You could use the ALchemy software from the Creative website (to emulate EAX5 etc) but results are not what you get in XP which allows direct. Asus does a much better job with their Xonar cards. But neither are without their detractors (Google xfi snap crackle pop, and asus xonar hiss).

For the cooler I'd go for a Noctua, Scythe or passively cooled Thermalright with a Noctua fan on it. Having had several Zalman coolers I know that they are fairly loud when running at full belt and still not as quiet as those above when throttled back using the bundled Fanmate controller.

__________________
I can tell by the pixels.

DiamondGeezer

Thanks for the feedback

Was going for vista but forgot to add that into the budget and was also going to dual boot with linux

Ideally my budget would have to be under £700 so guess I would need to cut the spec of the cpu and graphics card and maybe a cheaper case. May even have to run XP and start with 2GB ram

little_pob

Just to check, what are you after doing with it? I'll have a go at spec'ing out something cheaper in my lunch break.

Two things then with Linux and that hardware:

1. Get an Asus Xonar - apparently Creative's linux support is non-existent.
   There are quite a few cards at different price points so weigh up what want out of them, e.g. here is a break down of the Dolby/DTS tech on each:
   
   Quote:

   D2 & D2X have Dolby and DTS technologies D1 & DX has only Dolby technology DS has only DTS technology

2. There is no blu-ray playback software for linux last I checked on google (about 3 months ago).

__________________
I can tell by the pixels.

DiamondGeezer

Looking for an entry level gaming PC to begin with. Also the use of video editing (taking out adverts etc from recorded HD content)

May even start with XP (Already have licenced copy) so could start with 2GB RAM

Not to worried about linux and playing back blu ray as this will be dual boot and would use windows for blu ray playback.

Would also like to have my monitor and HD TV connected but graphic cards these days have dual outputs

Regards to sound I have a denon 1909 AV Receiver - could this be utilized?

EDIT:- I've also already these in my Dell 8400
4GB DDR2 800Mhz PC2-6400 / 240pin DIMM / Dual Channel Memory Kit

little_pob

I know I said lunch, but only had half an hour today.

I've actually come up with 2 systems largely based on what you've already spec'ed out yourself, what you are salvaging from the Dell and that AM3 CPUs can be used in AM2+ motherboards. Both systems assume you will be using the existing HDD as the boot and possibly even the DVD drive.

System 1 (quad core AM3 CPU in an AM2+ mobo):
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz Socket AM3 4MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Ebuyer
Aftermarket cooler: Noctua NH-U12P (Socket 754, 940, 775, 939, AM2, AM2+) aluminum with nickel plated copper base Processor cooler - Ebuyer
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 770 Socket AM2+ 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard - Ebuyer
RAM: Exsiting DDR2
GFX: XFX HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Soundcard - Vista Compatible - Ebuyer
HDD: Samsung EcoGreen F2 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 32MB Cache - OEM - Ebuyer
BD: LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA - Retail Box With Software - Ebuyer
PSU: OCZ Stealth XStream 600W PSU - SLI Ready ATX2.2 12cm Fan - Ebuyer
Case: CM Storm Scout Case - 120mm and 2x 140mm Fans Included - Ebuyer
Total: £698.80
Recommended future upgrades: AM3 mobo, DDR3 and a GTX285 (or better).

System 2 (dual core AM3 CPU in an AM3 mobo):
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz 1MB L2 Chche Socket AM3 Retail Box Processor - Ebuyer (a quick google suggests this CPU is capable of blu-ray playback.)
Aftermarket cooler: Noctua NH-U12P (Socket 754, 940, 775, 939, AM2, AM2+) aluminum with nickel plated copper base Processor cooler - Ebuyer
Mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX Socket AM3 onboard VGA DVI HDMI 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard - Ebuyer
RAM: OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 Gold Dual Channel CL 9-9-9-26 - Ebuyer
GFX: XFX GTS250 1GB DDR3 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Soundcard - Vista Compatible - Ebuyer
HDD: Samsung EcoGreen F2 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 32MB Cache - OEM - Ebuyer
BD: LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA - Retail Box With Software - Ebuyer
PSU: OCZ Stealth XStream 600W PSU - SLI Ready ATX2.2 12cm Fan - Ebuyer
Case: CM Storm Scout Case - 120mm and 2x 140mm Fans Included - Ebuyer
Total: £701.68
Recommended future upgrades: Phenom II X4 CPU and a more recent GFx card as the GTS250 has the same G92b GPU as the 9800GTX+, which in turn is just the 55nm version of the G92 from the 8800GT/GTS.

Unfortunately there wasn't the budget for the GTX275 on either setups. The HD4890 is upto 25% cheaper depending on the model but scores similarly on benchmarks. The issues with it is it doesn't do physx, the main one is that it draws more power at idle than the GTX275 does under load and therefore runs hotter. However, the case I've spec'ed has 2x 140mm fans so this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

__________________
I can tell by the pixels.

DiamondGeezer

I really appreciate your time in putting this together and you've done this in less than a day

Most definitely some food for thought there

Misses just reminded me last night that I got to pay the balance on our holidays by next week :-( so might have to do this in 2 stages

It may be the Case,CPU,Cooler,Mobo to start with and use existing bits to get it up and running

Thanks again


EDIT:- What's happened to the add rep button?