New PC?

Originally posted by BL21DE3
Well there's not much of a price difference between the SATA and the EIDE model of the HDD I'm considering so I reckon I'll go with the SATA version just as a bit of 'future proofing'. The same goes for the gfx card, I know it'll be out dated within 6 months but at least it'll hang in there a bit longer than the lower models. Plus it should be able to handle my occassional 'power gaming' moments.
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If I were you, I would buy 2 sata drives (both seagate of course) and run them in a raid config (raid 0 if u want performance) just make sure your motherboard has true 150mhz bus performance.

sata connectors are due to change soon (better latching mechs), but I dont see why you would want to stay with pata (parallel ata)

Steer clear of drive shuttles - they are far far more unreliable than the drive itself.

cheers //craig
 
Originally posted by technobear
For a small tower PC, I can personally recommend MESH and Evesham.

A friend of mine had a very bad experience with Time.

Another friend had a very bad experience with Watford/Aries.
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HenryT used to swear by Mesh and Evesham - VERY VERY good VFM and quality.

I had a Watford as my first PC - they suck. The tower was fine, but they stiffed me on a monitor upgrade AND they didn't send out a software bundle. This was 1992, and there's never been a day I'd consider buying from them again.

Time and Tiny operate from the same crib sheet. My mate used to work for Tiny; their in-house acronym was:
Tough It's Now Yours.

Says it all really.

He's also worked for Evesham funnily enough - they had to ditch him due to overenthusiastic expansion :(
 
Well thanks for the replies folks. As regards to SATA installation, I've had my fair share of dealing with awkward installs/re-installs so it shouldn't bother me too much, though I'd make sure I'd got all the info I needed before I started.

Another quick query, has anyone here got experience of the AMD 64 chips?
 
no pt going for amd athlon 64 chips now, nothing uses 64 bit architecture as far as i'm aware
"ordinary" amd xp 3200 is quicker and cheaper than the "lowest" spec 3000+ 64 bit cpu. i personally prefer the amd chips over intel, better performance for the price. if u do go intel, then the 2.8 gig 800 mhz prescott 1mb cache is probably the best price / performance. but the amd 3200 barton core is only a couple of £ more.
i dont do mail order, just service local area, otherwise i'd give u a quote. (i'm a part time self employed pc builder)
and yes, craig, i do prefer seagates. no space in a shuttle for a dual raid + floppy + cdrw though !
 
Thanks for the input. I think I'll hold back on the 64-bit revolution until the software I use benefits from it. Much as I like AMD chips, the Intel path looks the more likely if I'm heading down the SFF road as the Intel versions of the Shuttle XPC's offer more features. But as with everything in the PC market it's a case of swings and roundabouts.
 
Originally posted by BL21DE3
PeteH, I'm looking at an ATI 9600 Pro or XT as my graphics card. In fact the spec I'm pricing at the moment is a SB75G2, P4 3GHz 800 MHz HT, 160 Gb S-ATA HDD, 2 x 512 Mb DDR 400. Current calculations have it all coming to around £700 inc. vat.
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Sounds pretty good to me, go for it :)
 
Auric, the revised spec I'm looking at is as follows.

SB75G2
3GHz P4 'Prescott' 800MHz FSB 1 Mb Cache
160 Gb Seagate SATA HDD 7200 Rpm 8 Mb Cache
Sapphire 9800 Pro 128 Mb
2 x 512 Mb DDR 400 (Matched Pair)

So far I'm looking at paying around £742 inc. vat and delivery for it all, assuming of course I've got my calculations right :). Admittedly I'm saving some cash by already having an OS, a decent CRT monitor, mouse, keyboard and using my old CD writer (I'm waiting to see how the new dual layer DVD writers pan out before jumping on the DVD wagon). I guess with the ISHS unit your paying for the convenience of someone else sourcing the components and putting it all together.
 
Originally posted by robert_cyrus

i dont do mail order, just service local area, otherwise i'd give u a quote. (i'm a part time self employed pc builder)
and yes, craig, i do prefer seagates. no space in a shuttle for a dual raid + floppy + cdrw though !
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Cheers Robert - Just to make you feel even better, you may want to look under the hood of a Cyrus audio server (well, the 160gb version anyway;))
 
Originally posted by robert_cyrus

i dont do mail order, just service local area, otherwise i'd give u a quote. (i'm a part time self employed pc builder)
and yes, craig, i do prefer seagates. no space in a shuttle for a dual raid + floppy + cdrw though !
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Cheers Robert - Just to make you feel even better, you may want to look under the hood of a Cyrus audio server (well, the 160gb version anyway;))
 
So BL21DE3, have yopu built you new pc yet, did you stick to the sb75g2 or did you go for something else ?

Auric:)
 

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