New PC Ordered!

[slycat]

After months and months of pondering over the idea, I've finally taken the plunge and purchased myself a new PC. I was originally waiting for free upgrades to Windows 7 to come out and then I've ended up just waiting for Windows 7 itself to come out. Ultimately the longer I waited, the less I should have to pay and I'd also have more of my debts paid off. One thing I did know was that I needed to purchase this year before VAT rises again in January.

All this time, I've been using a pretty old but still functional PC. It uses an AMD Athlon 3000+ XP CPU on an nVidia nForce 2 motherboard with 2gb RAM. Since my old graphics card died a death, I've been using what is considered to almost be the most powerful consumer graphics card available for AGP slots which is the ATI 3650 HD, however it seems that everything else that's in the PC drags down the performance of any modern games. I think the most recent game I can play without compromise is Half Life 2, so that gives an idea of how poorly my PC performs for gaming. I bought games such as Supreme Commander and Battlefield 2142 but neither would work to a level where I could just play the games without frustration. As such, I've since migrated my gaming to the Xbox 360 until my PC will be in a state to game again.

One thing I will say is that I did put Vista on my PC as I had a free legal upgrade to it from XP. Originally I didn't put it on despite having it for free but I had Vista on my laptop which died (hopefully to be reborn by being fixed by twinkie_ottah sometime) and after using Vista and moving back to XP, I missed all the new UI advances that were part of the OS and so did the upgrade. I've never really had much of an issue with Vista since disabling UAC and the associated nagging but I expect it's killing my performance in some areas of the system. These days I find issues with performance of my PC just from decompressing a file and transferring another. It's really not up to the task of multitasking... I did put the Windows 7 preview on a separate partition but found that it didn't understand my ancient and unsupported nForce 2 motherboard. It couldn't even detect the network adapter so that idea was pretty much dead in the water.

So now, I've got the opportunity to propel myself into the modern age by getting a state of the art PC and the new Windows operating system to match. There's many many sites on the internet to get a PC from but I ended up deciding on CyberPower as they offered full customisation of the systems from a wide range of components.

Here's the configuration I settled on:

Processor: Intel Core i7 860 2.80GHZ 8MB Cache
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster V8
Motherboard: Asus P7P55D LE
Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) PC12800 DDR3/1600mhz
PSU: Be Quiet 750W Dark Power Pro
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX275 896MB
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16M Cache
DVD: LG 22X DVD+/-R/+/-RW + CD-R/RW
Case: NZXT HUSH
Addons: INTERNAL 52in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit Edition)
Warranty: 3 Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support
Freebies: Cyberpower Unleash The Power T-Shirt & Street Fighter IV

Now, I pretty much started from the case which is a really nice looking case but is also built to dampen noise coming from the system. However from there, I ended up getting other components which would compliment the case in terms of noise such as the Be Quiet PSU (which is also more energy efficient meaning it shouldn't drain as much power) and also the Coolermaster V8 cooler. Now with regards to the cooler, my original choice was a liquid cooling device which cost the same as the V8. I figured the liquid cooling would mean less heatsinks and fans to get clogged up with dust. However I started to have second thoughts as I wouldn't know what to do in the event that it malfunctioned. Therefore I went for the V8 which is marketed on the Cyberpower site as a very quiet cooler. I only got a look at the thing after placing my order, and damn... that thing is huge!

I went for the Core i7 860 over the 920 because it costs less but on a performance basis, it performs pretty much just as well. One main difference is that the 860 uses dual-channel memory rather than tri-channel. Therefore I went for 4gb but the machine has the space for 4 memory sticks so I could double up later on if I wished. The graphics card is pretty much the best balance of cost vs price at the moment and should be more than capable for today's (and tomorrow's) games. Finally, I went for Windows 7 Professional rather than Premium because I'll be after the extra features such as RDP and XP compatibility mode which annoyingly aren't in Premium.

In terms of price, including delivery, this lot cost me £1061, which won't help with the debts but it seems that Cyberpower are putting the prices up at the moment (probably for the new-found demand since 7 came out) and I also had a 5% off discount code which expires soon. I'll be putting any birthday money I receive towards the cost of the machine so hopefully won't be too bad, but I've still got other credit debts to worry about too.

With it ordered today, it should be dispatched within 2 weeks. I paid extra for a Saturday delivery only later remembering that I'm going to my Grandad's birthday party that day. I work Monday to Friday so have to have it delivered on a Saturday. If they do say delivery for the 7th, I may need to get them to delay it for a week which I'm sure I'll find difficult having to wait another week!

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this as I imagine this will be so much better than my current system.

Comments

[slycat.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

[calgor.livejournal.com]

stop me if I am wrong but dont i7 mother boards require 3 or 6 dims of memory?

[slycat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you've not kept up with the times ;)

Before the i5 and i7 8xx systems came out, you would have been right but with the new cheaper systems they work on dual channel rather than tri channel of the i7 9xx upwards

[baby-carlie.livejournal.com]

Jesus its about time! :P and holy crap, that is a beautiful rig you're getting there. Are you planning to buy any game(s) for it when you get it?

[slycat.livejournal.com]

Well I already have Left 4 Dead on Steam. And I've got Unreal Tournament 3 which will be fun :) I'll not have the money for new games for a while tho, need to work on paying this off!

[slycat.livejournal.com]

The credit card company is paying for mine!