New PC?

[Toison d'Or]

Judging by the incredible amount of noise my hard disk is making, I'm thinking it's about to die. I've thought about just replacing it - a good option - but I'm also considering upgrading to a new PC. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I'd like to be able to play most current (and future!) titles - the most important thing is that it runs MII:TW well and will be able to cope with Empires when it arrives. Otherwise, I'll use it for office work from home, photo editing and maybe some light video editing.

I've been looking around, mainly at online retailers, and it's pretty hard to get an idea of who's reputable and who's not. So I was hoping you good folks at TWC might be able to give me a heads up on a couple of points (or point me in the direction of relevant threads if these have been covered elsewhere):

1. any reputable UK online PC retailers you can recommend? I'm not sure if naming them would count as advertising, so please PM me with suggestions if you prefer...
2. is it worth spending the extra money on a quad core processor? Is the performance gain noticeable on games like MII:TW?
3. self-build, custom-build or off-the-shelf? I'm not a techie, but I'm not completely ignorant of the inside of a PC case either - I kind of like the idea of the challenge of a self-build, but worry that it'll just be a total disaster...
4. I guess I'm looking at mid-price rigs - so any recommendations would again be very welcome.

Thanks in anticipation of some words of wisdom.

[wickED_dude]

1) sega and the creative assembly suck ass cuz they havent released the minimum specs. and i dont think they've announced whether the game's engine will be able to take advantage of multiple cores. anyways i dun actually have a core2duo or quad core, so i am not sure of m2tw, but i would imagine four cores is better. i think the Q6600 cpu costs around $220 and is quad core. it runs at 2.4ghz i believe, but you could prolly OC it.

2)custom build it yourself. buyin from a company like hp or dell is stupid if you are a computer enthusiast cuz their products are not so good (unless u buy a gamin machine from a company like alienware, but then they're pretty expensive)
what is your budget for this build? also, are you gonna be able to re-use anything from ur current computer? maybe the case and power supply?

[Freddie]

1) For quality parts go to overclockers.co.uk, there not the cheapest but it's a good place to start. Other sites I would buy from are Scan, Aria and Dabs.com. It's worth also checking out google shopping to make sure your not pay over the odds for one part.

2) More and more new games are coming out that utilise quad core CPU’s (Supreme Commander, Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis to name a few). As yet we don’t know if Empire: TW is multithreaded or not, both Rome: TW and Medieval 2: TW only used a single thread so it’s worth waiting until the game comes out to see what sort of specs are needed to run it.

3) Self build all the way.

4) How much do you want to spend? Do you need an Operating system or will you use your current one? For mid range I way somewhere between £550 to £700 is about right.

[Calvin]

I've just spent about £430 on parts for a new pc. It's looking to be very swich by my standards.

Edit: Oh, listen to Freddie in whatever he says. He's the king.

[Toison d'Or]

Thanks for the advice.

Self-build does have an appeal to it beyond just the price considerations. I don't think I'd recycle much of my existing PC - the case is pretty knackered and the power supply is very much low-end. I'd want to upgrade pretty much everything.

I hadn't considered the OS particularly. If I was buying new I guess I'd go for Vista, but I have XP at the moment and that's perfectly serviceable. I suppose it might depend on how costs rack up.

My budget would probably run to about £700 - I doubt I could justify spending much more than that.

I'll check out the self-build & buyers guide FAQs and get a bit more info on the whole self-build malarkey. One of the things that worries me about it is making sure that everything is compatible - I can deal with techie stuff up to a certain point, but over and above that point it's just like white noise to me.

Thanks for your help, it's always good to hear other views and advice to help focus your thoughts.

[wickED_dude]

makin sure everything works well together is easy....i think the only thing that could potentially not work is the ram. as for the OS, i would suggest staying with XP

[Roman Clone]

Do not get Vista. It is way too expensive for nothing, other than Dx10, which is available for XP in a way, there is no need in giving yourself (nightmares) Vista.

[Toison d'Or]

Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm planning on a self-build more seriously now. I've had a look about and selected what I think might be a pretty decent set-up. I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you might have on it.

The price isn't that important, but I'd only be looking to spend more if it represented a significant performance gain. For example, an E8400 wolfdale 3Ghz cpu will cost about £20 more - but would it be worth it?
Please do point out any particularly dumb and incompatible selections.

Is it worth waiting a while to see if any new components (cpu/gpus) come on the market in the near future that might push down the price of these components, or that might be better value?

Oh, and at the risk of asking a REALLY stupid question - this motherboard has onboard sound, right? Or would I need a soundcard too?...

Any alternatives you could suggest that might be better value? I haven't shopped around yet, I thought I'd find the parts first, then scour for bargains later.

I'd almost certainly use my existing OS (XP SP2) and plan to get 22" monitor at a later date.

Oh, and finally... Is it actually any good?:hmmm:

Any other thoughts more than welcome! I really appreciate all your help on this...

[Freddie]

Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm planning on a self-build more seriously now. I've had a look about and selected what I think might be a pretty decent set-up. I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you might have on it.

The price isn't that important, but I'd only be looking to spend more if it represented a significant performance gain. For example, an E8400 wolfdale 3Ghz cpu will cost about £20 more - but would it be worth it?
Please do point out any particularly dumb and incompatible selections.

Is it worth waiting a while to see if any new components (cpu/gpus) come on the market in the near future that might push down the price of these components, or that might be better value?

Oh, and at the risk of asking a REALLY stupid question - this motherboard has onboard sound, right? Or would I need a soundcard too?...

Any alternatives you could suggest that might be better value? I haven't shopped around yet, I thought I'd find the parts first, then scour for bargains later.

I'd almost certainly use my existing OS (XP SP2) and plan to get 22" monitor at a later date.

Oh, and finally... Is it actually any good?:hmmm:

Any other thoughts more than welcome! I really appreciate all your help on this...

That's a pretty mean PC you've got there. I can't believe how cheap that 8800 GT is, £113 inc vat plus it's overclocked and it has a life times warranty to boot, fantastic value for money.

You might want to get a third party HSF (heatsink and fan) for your CPU. The stock HSF you get from Intel does the job just fine but it is noisy. From experience I can tell you the Arctic Freezer Pro 7 is a great product. Not only does it cool better then a lot of other third party HSF on the market that cost more then twice the amount that the Freezer Pro 7 costs it's also very quiet. Trust me, there's a lot to be said about quiet computing and overclocking.

[Roman Clone]

Dang, I would love to help, but I don't know how much other currencies other than a dollar are worth.

If price doesn't matter, than get that Wolfdale.

And look around for Gskill memory, they provide huge amounts of RAM for cheap prices. (My future rig is going to have 4GB of Ram, for only 80$.)

And once again, if price doesn't matter, try looking into the 8800 GTS.

[Quinctius Cincinnatus]

2 gigs of ram... that isn't much these days. Get 4 gigs instead.

Q.