Finally got my clients to pay up-to-date (before I had to start subsisting off insects and spiders this time - I'm getting better at this!) so in about a week's time I'll be buying a new computer. I intend to build from components again, probably purchased at dabs, ebuyer or aria. I've already got a new monitor, so it's just the PC I need (and OS).

No upgrading of old kit - my current computer is going to live with someone else, so I need a completely new one. Budget is £800-1000, and my only absolute requirement is that it's quiet, so I won't be doing any overclocking. And I don't want to piss about with water cooling.

Any suggestions?

It's got to be Intel C2D, they've just recently slashed the prices as well.

As far as graphics cards go, it might be worth holding out to see what ATI bring to the table, sadly it's mostly heresay and conjecture that you find when trying to read up on their new cards.

i built a ~700€ ~500£ computer for my father a few weeks ago and so far its doing fine

its a 4300 on a cheapish gigabyte p965-ds3 (any ~100€ ~70£ 965 mobo should do fine) with 2 gigs of 800-cl5 mdt rams
the combo above should cost you ~300€ ~200£ so on your budget that gives you a lot of headroom for a proper graphics card cooling and a few hard drives

edit:
also on your sort of busget a 6600 is well within reach

https://www.komplett.co.uk/ is also a really good place to go for upgrade kits (mobo, cpu, heatsync+fan and ram in one bundle). but with a budget like that i don't think you'll worry too much about kits. when shopping for graphics, try to get one (or 2) that use silent pipe technology. these cards are fanless and water cooled (cooling inside 2 heatsyncs) and they usually come preclocked.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Finally got my clients to pay up-to-date (before I had to start subsisting off insects and spiders this time - I'm getting better at this!) so in about a week's time I'll be buying a new computer. I intend to build from components again, probably purchased at dabs, ebuyer or aria. I've already got a new monitor, so it's just the PC I need (and OS).

No upgrading of old kit - my current computer is going to live with someone else, so I need a completely new one. Budget is £800-1000, and my only absolute requirement is that it's quiet, so I won't be doing any overclocking. And I don't want to piss about with water cooling.

Any suggestions?

Kev,

I built a C2D E6600 on a ASUS 5NE-SL mobo, i only used 1 gig of Corsair 800MHz DDR memory and a Geforce 7600GT, cost £500.

MAybe with your increased budget, you could go with 2 GIG mem a better board and maybe an 8800GTS card

Yeah I definitely want 2Gb of memory, was thinking maybe an SLi-capable mobo too, just to make upgrading cheaper if I run out of FPS steam a couple of years down the road. Anyone know roughly what the benefits are of running a pair of graphics cards - is it a decent performance increase?

Anybody with any experience of so-called "quiet" components?

E6600 C2D
Any Mobo (You MIGHT want to look into native 1333FSB support, as Penryn C2D's later this year should bring sub- $300 Quad Cores!)
2 Gig DDR667 (You Do Not need any higher speed if no OC'ing)
Nvidia 8800GTS 320mb (Probably Fine for LFS forever) (The HD2900XT from ATi looks to be comparable in price/performance, but will probably be initially more expensive).
Cooling, get a Scythe or Thermaltake or Zalman cooler, the C2D runs cold, but those fans would keep it real quiet.

Antec 180P is supposedly a Really quiet case, but can be expensive.
Any decent brand 500W PSU would be fine.
Not sure what prices are like in the UK, but in America that system could be had for ~$1000

Good Luck, this is an exciting time for PC builders on the cheap!

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Yeah I definitely want 2Gb of memory, was thinking maybe an SLi-capable mobo too, just to make upgrading cheaper if I run out of FPS steam a couple of years down the road. Anyone know roughly what the benefits are of running a pair of graphics cards - is it a decent performance increase?

Anybody with any experience of so-called "quiet" components?

No, Sli/Crossfire is almost NEVER worth the cost, unless it is initially purchased. One Newer graphics card is almost always faster/cheaper than adding a second older/slower card. The gains are not as good with a second, plus the system gains NO benefit from the added ram of the second card. IE, two 320MB 8800gts = 320MB with 2 8800 processors.

Memory is presumed to be close to "rock bottom" right now, I've seen 2GB DDR2-800 for as low as $110 right now.

If you're going VISTA, the 2900XT(May 2nd) and 8800gts are both DX10 capable, but their DX10 performance is only conjecture at this point.

Great info, thanks.

I'm slightly tempted to buy into Vista, but only slightly. I like the sound of the Spotlight-rip-off feature, but the rest of it I could live without.

Don't skimp on the PSU, get a nice modular Corsair or something for mucho power and pretty ickle wiring.

for a grand? you dont want to overclock?

Quietness can be got with a Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler (~£15), and silence can come via a Zalman Reserator Water Cooling system, but its £80 used, or £120 new! (i know you dont want to watercool, but i might as well say it)

I would get:
Gigabyte DS3 - £78.58
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - £153.93
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - £16.29
CellShock 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 PC2-8000C5 1000MHz - £164.49 (eBuyer have a rubbish amount of memory)
BFG 8800GTS 640MB OC version - £255.94
Creative Soundblaster X-fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard - £45.98
Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATAII - £50.48
Coolermaster IGreen 600W PSU - £62.80
Antec 900 Case - £68.43
2x LITEON DH-18A1P-18C DVD-RW Drives - £16.80 each, £33.60 in total
3x AKASA 120mm Amber series case fans (nice and quiet) - £7.76 each, £23.28 in total
Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit OR 64bit - £70.47/£71.66

Total - £1024.27, i know, a little over budget, drop the X-Fi if you want!

You can skimp on the mobo (down to about £40), but i've given you one with a LOT of headroom for overclocking (these things go quite a way on stock voltage with very little heat increase!)

Ive used eBuyer because they have a lot, you can probably get things a little cheaper

The Core 2 Duo range should soon be getting cheaper, too!

The case is up to you (just picked a quality one)

Soon ATi's new DX10 cards will be out, and they will drive nVidia prices down (irrespective of their speed)

Vista users have noted some Large problems with Audigy (and other) soundcards. At least one trusted site is recommending leaving soundcards Out of new vista builds... (www.anandtech.com)

I can't hear my Zalman 9700, although it was too expensive.

Jakg has a point, the C2D's have such overclocking headroom, you should buy parts that at least give you the option to oc. You might find, like i did, the itch for free speed!

I'd give Vista a miss if you're planning on this system being your main one. It's still not really stable enough for that for my liking.
If it was a for a 2nd system for playing around on, then go for it, but if you really need it to working without any problems 99% of the time, stick with XP untill after the first Vista Service Pack comes out.
I've just finished building a new system, and set it up with 2 seperate installs. 1 of XP, 1 of Vista. The XP install is fine, hasn't crashed once in over 3 weeks now. Vista is falling over every other hour.
All the hardware is 'Vista Certified' and came with Vista drivers, and I downloaded updated versions of them where they were available and did all the available Vista updates as well. Still falls over every other hour or so.
Doesn't bother me, since it's only on so I can start learning the OS and where things are, what the common faults are, etc... so I can provide support to customers, but not what I'd call suitable for a working system.

I've recently suspended my hard drives in elastic, it's great (1 2), I have silent fans so there's now almost no noise at all (with fans at minimum setting on the fan controller, this gives me flexibility to have some noise but still cool temps when gaming)

Motherboard:
MSI P6N SLI-Platinum, nF650i SLI, GbE, 1394, eSATA - silent cooling for chipsets
http://www.dabs.com/productvie ... e=All&NavigationKey=0

CPU:E6600
http://www.dabs.com/productvie ... e=All&NavigationKey=0

CPU cooler:Zalman 9700 - you will not hear it at all

http://www.dabs.com/ProductVie ... 56808,50440&InMerch=1

Memory: 2x1GB DDR2 800Mhz
http://www.dabs.com/productvie ... 9063,4294959239,405050000

HD:500GB 16MB cache - Samsung has very quiet HDD
http://www.dabs.com/productvie ... ,370810000,42240000,50429

DVD writer: LG multi DVD+-,DVD RAM
http://www.dabs.com/ProductVie ... 40000,50383&InMerch=1

PSU:600W - Seasonic silent series
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=CA-002-SS

Thats make total 566GBP aproximetly and you will have very silent PC.
I didnt include case as everyone has different view/taste how it should looks.

Regarding graphic card I would wait 2-3 weeks because the new ATI HD2900XT will come which should have same price as GF8800GTS 640 MB and better performance.Something between 8800GTS and 8800GTX.Price should be about 250-280GBP. HIS company has usually silent version of the ATI cards with special cooling solution - big heatpipe design with low rpm fan. There is already pre-order in my country for ATI HD2900XT when converted to your currency 230GBP.

Including graphic card this would be around 800-840GBP.So there is around 160-200GBP left for case and other things.

I would say this would be very powerfull machine and quite silent.
Hope this help.

Thanks for all the great advice guys. Quint999 - yeah I was looking at those Antec cases, probably will go with a P180. Shame it's such a boring-looking case though, I'd rather have a nice stylish Lian-Li or something.

Now all I need is these stupid cheques clearing...

how bout this antec then:
http://www.anandtech.com/casec ... owdoc.aspx?i=2966&p=2

Bleh...

I was semi-seriously considering Vista y'know. Hahaha. Now I've actually gone and read some recent editorials regarding Vista and Windows builds in general, I'm considering (again!) buy a Mac instead!

Ah I hate this. I don't want a Windows OS, but if I buy a Mac I'd have to run both Bootcamp and Parallels, which means two XP licenses. And I don't want to buy a Mac until Leopard is out, really, which could be the end of this year.

Crappy time to be buying a computer, it seems.

Why you just dont but Windows XP Pro OEM.I dont see needs to buy Vista now at least not untill SP1 for Vista.

bc then you're forced to bend over and buy another windows title, and endure installing that/backing up and changing over all your files...

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

Why you just dont but Windows XP Pro OEM.I dont see needs to buy Vista now at least not untill SP1 for Vista.

The main reason I didn't want to buy another XP license is because I think it's a shit OS. I'm pretty sure Vista is actually worse, but it did seem to have some valuable features (for me) which almost tempted me to buy it. Not DX10 - I couldn't give a toss about DX10.

Quote from srdsprinter :

bc then you're forced to bend over and buy another windows title, and endure installing that/backing up and changing over all your files...

if you are smart enough you will not install everything under C: drive and then reinstalling the OS with software takes couple of hours.If you dont have many applications then its max 1 hours.Thats not so bad.

OK, final decision to make: Graphics card.

I thought about buying an 8-series nVidia, but I can't see myself buying into Vista any time soon so I don't really need one.

So I decided to go for a DX9 card. Any recommendations? From what I've seen there are a lot of different 7900s and ATI X1900s to choose from, and it's a bit confusing. Again, I'm not interested in overclocking, I just want a decent performer at stock speeds at 1680 x 1050 (I can't run resolutions higher than that so I'm not too bothered about super-high-res performance).

Edit: It would also be nice if it outperforms my mate's 7800GTX that he paid £400+ for!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... p;catid=56&subcat=404
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... p;catid=56&subcat=404
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... p;catid=56&subcat=358
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... p;catid=56&subcat=912

They're all pretty good cards, not too expensive either.

8800 would be alot faster, but if your not going for one then an 8600 or an X1950 would do the trick.

a DX9 card works in vista pretty well (well my 6600GT 512MB doesnt seem to stuggle with vistas eye candy ) so i dont think vista should be a big concern even if you were going to buy into it