I've found that my new PC is more prone to hanging than my old computer that I didn't expect. It just hangs with the image unchanged for several seconds about once every couple of hours, it tends to happen in fairly light usage, browsing the web watching DVDs rather than in games. I don't think it's power related because it doesn't effect games and if you wait everything comes back normally.

I also find HD movies are stuttery in anything other than VLC and even in VLC DVDs sometimes stutter, I'm not sure if this is software or hardware though.

I've updated my mobo and graphics card drivers other than that I haven't updated drivers (including Windows Update) so I suppose I should do that first?

Full specs (1|2)

Cheers for the advice guys! Updated the spec now in attachment. Do Scan do any sort of free p&p option like eBuyer?

Changed the mobo and gfx card, kept the E4500 as I felt it might be worth spending a lil extra now than regretting it later down the line. The difference spec wise between a E2180 and a E4500 doesn't seem much to me (200mhz & 1mb extra cache) but I'm guessing it all makes a difference .

Think I'll splash out and go for the 24" Acer, got a £120 from my Dad to put towards a decentish monitor. Considering I'm hoping to be studying Visual Communication/Graphic Comm next year I'd best be prepared

Keiran

If your doing anything professionally i'd go for a better quality 22" monitor, as the 24" i picked isn't the best on the market (but for £200 it is an AMAZING buy!)

If it were me, and i played more than just LFS, i'd go for the E2180. If i could afford the extra, and loved my CPU power then id get the E4500.

IMO the price difference isn't really worth it, though.

You have everything you need, however i'd REALLY recommend spending a few extra £ on a decent case like this one - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101. It's £42, yet it comes with a free PSU thats actually decent. It's nowhere near as good as the one you chose, and will probably not support any faster GFX card, but you save £18 and get a better case.

If youw ant more RAM for cheap, then this - http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpe ... 2x1GB%29+?productId=27220 - might be good. It's only PC-5300 rather than 6400, though, but £23.44 for 2 GB isn't bad, and you might even wanna get 4 GB, which comes to £46.88, however if you spend £50 you get £5 off if you buy via Google Checkout. It's up to you.

EDIT - Yes you CAN get free P&P from Scan, lemme get a link...

You can collect it from their warehouse near leeds, or if you want it delivered then try this.

Quote from Jakg :

If your doing anything professionally i'd go for a better quality 22" monitor, as the 24" i picked isn't the best on the market (but for £200 it is an AMAZING buy!)

If it were me, and i played more than just LFS, i'd go for the E2180. If i could afford the extra, and loved my CPU power then id get the E4500.

IMO the price difference isn't really worth it, though.

You have everything you need, however i'd REALLY recommend spending a few extra £ on a decent case like this one - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101. It's £42, yet it comes with a free PSU thats actually decent. It's nowhere near as good as the one you chose, and will probably not support any faster GFX card, but you save £18 and get a better case.

If youw ant more RAM for cheap, then this - http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpe ... 2x1GB%29+?productId=27220 - might be good. It's only PC-5300 rather than 6400, though, but £23.44 for 2 GB isn't bad, and you might even wanna get 4 GB, which comes to £46.88, however if you spend £50 you get £5 off if you buy via Google Checkout. It's up to you.

EDIT - Yes you CAN get free P&P from Scan, lemme get a link...

You can collect it from their warehouse near leeds, or if you want it delivered then try this.

Cheers Jakg thats the sort of stuff I needed to know

I think I'll stick with the 24" Acer you suggested because it seems like a great buy and also the fact I could be done with the bigger desktop.

I had thought about the case but having read the reviews people had left it doesn't seem to be all bad. Changed it for this one (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119590). My line of thought is to spend more on a PSU which will hopefully let me off with upgrading in the future. If the case turns out to be pants I'll replace it sometime down the line when I've got a bit more cash.

I'll have to think about the memory deal, quite tempting to go for 4gbs.

Cheers again Jakg, you've been very helpful Hopefully order all the bits today!

What i'm thinking is that for the sake of a few quid i usually replace all the case fans in a case with quiet ones, as on my current case it cost a tenner and gave me some spare fans to mess around with - a higher quality case will look nicer, have better airflow and be quieter.

Of course, you could always go for the case + PSU bundle and sell the PSU on eBay...

Yeah, why spend show much cash on nice bits then go and buy the shittiest case you can find?

If I decided to go for the case + bundle you suggested Jakg would the PSU be up to powering the system? Problem I've got is buying the bundle + PSU is going to put me close to the £780 mark.

If the PSU isn't up to the job what sort of make/price range should I be looking at for a decent case with preferably no PSU or a PSU up to the job.

Cheers
Keiran

The PSU in there should be up to the job of that system, however it wont really cope with many upgrades.

Of course, by the time you feel the need to upgrade that system, the PSU's will have got a bit cheaper...

Cheers, that bundle will knock about £25 off! Also decided to go for the E2180 over the E4500, further down the line if I find I need the extra CPU power I'll upgrade.

Unfortunately Scan are out of stock of the mobo, Dabs have it in stock and are slightly cheaper but I'll have to cough up £7 p+p... ah well

Final spec attached, going to order it tonight and hopefully receive it sometime next week

Thanks for the help!!

Congrats and good luck

Sweet rig!

Quote from keiran :

Cheers, that bundle will knock about £25 off! Also decided to go for the E2180 over the E4500, further down the line if I find I need the extra CPU power I'll upgrade.

Unfortunately Scan are out of stock of the mobo, Dabs have it in stock and are slightly cheaper but I'll have to cough up £7 p+p... ah well

Final spec attached, going to order it tonight and hopefully receive it sometime next week

Thanks for the help!!

The GFX card i originally linked you to was better and the same price. I saw the mobo go out of stock today as i was pricing up a PC for someone else, but i forgot to post about it in this thread.

If you went back to Scan for the GFX card i recommended, you could get this mobo which CustomPC seem to like.

All ordered, bought the gfx card you suggested from Scan (got free P+P with that deal) and the mobo you suggested from dabs.

Aint I lucky dabs went out of stock of that gfx card , I thought they were the same ones.

Came to £701 all in (£496 for all the PC components) so not bad

Received everything bar the DVD drive on Monday, DVD drive arrives tomorrow

Considering this is my first build things went a lot better than I expected and I've only one question!! Just want to check that you do plug two sources of power from the PSU into the motherboard? The motherboard manual isn't exactly clear. I've a 4 pin slot (ATX_12V) and the 24 pin slot.

Other than that all is ready to go once the DVD drive turns up.

Cheers
Keiran

Yes, you should!

Got it up and running Thursday night and all is going great! Unfortuantley, I should have checked but my PCI wireless card (out my old comp) doesn't have a Vista driver so I have no net on my computer. Will pop past my local computer store for a PCI card on my way to work tomorrow.

Played some LFS offline and it's just so much better Can actually see where I'm going and read my dash!

What did harjun do?

I tricked my pc without overclocking into running at 205 fps at times don't ask me how i don't know

Quote from Luke.S :

What did harjun do?

I tricked my pc without overclocking into running at 205 fps at times don't ask me how i don't know

2Ghz to 3Ghz on my Dual core chip, now it runs like a treat, my brother said that i should get 4 Gb instead of 2....btw, do people actually have 8Gb of RAM in their machines?

Quote from harjun :

2Ghz to 3Ghz on my Dual core chip, now it runs like a treat, my brother said that i should get 4 Gb instead of 2....btw, do people actually have 8Gb of RAM in their machines?

Yes they do but only for multitasking jobs like photo/video editing plus some people have more then 8gb of ram in there system.

Quote from rc10racer :

Yes they do but only for multitasking jobs like photo/video editing plus some people have more then 8gb of ram in there system.

how, with two motherboards? or it must be some fancy pants motherboard, because what i know, the max RAM supported by a Mobo is 8Gb....4 slots, each for a 2Gb stick of RAM

Well, for starters, there can be more than 4 slots on the mobo. The Apple PowerMacs, for example, have 8 slots I believe.

It indeed has 8 slots, and can support up to 32 GB of RAM, along with the 2, quad core Xeons.