Vnf4Ultra-
Nope, I got it confused with another CPU (4400+). My bad, thanks for catching it.

Rv13UK-

FX55 $811 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103527
4800+ $884 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103544
4600+ $690 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103545

Was looking more at the 4800+ cost than the FX55. Price difference is right in line w/ the UK.

smart move dual core is the way to go. In 3-6 months you wont see any fx anythings amd will bust out with some gfx-66 dual core gamer chip or whatever and the fx-55 will be $289 on special. Dont listen to those "hardcore gamers use single core cpus" because CPUs are so fast nowdays it doesnt take a super strong chip anymore to run the fastest games. I would STRONGLY CONSIDER A DIFFERENT POWER SUPPLY. Once again good luck.

One last thing the differeance betweent 4400 toledo and 4600 manchester is .2ghz and 1mb cache. The toledo is a far better chip. and you saving an additional 100 bucks.

Toledo is 11 multiplier
and the manchester is 12 but it has 512 less cache.

If you OC your toledo to fsb 230 (easily done)

230*11 that give a 2530 GHZ

Thats practically a DUAL CORE FX 55 for only 575 bucks.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220140

Get this memory instead. and ditch the power supply get an enermax PSU.

People keep saying 'get rid of the psu' but I'd like to know why before i made the decision, as far as I can tell the one I have chosen is a very good one, for the price anyway.

I agree on the PSU. It gets great reviews from what I could find. Maybe it is just because that unit is not available in the states and is therefore an unknown quantity.
http://reviews.pimprig.com/power_supply/hiper_type-r_modular_580w_psu.php?page=6
http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cases/other/psu/hip4B580/p2.shtml

This is the thing. A lot of PSUs claim to do one thing and give out another. They might say 500W but act like a 350. They burnoutm or draw a lot of heat. etc etc etc. You dont want to go down the road and get ready to run your SLI rig and find out you comp is unstable. Or later on find out your computer is unstable and cant figure out why just to find its a crappy PSU Ive used several PSUs and found enermax to be a consistent quality with unsurpassed performance. IF you got the $$$$ get enermax. Or you might be disappointed. And Voltage rail almost always puts out the right voltage on the MARK. Once again good luck.

Hondablaster-
I am in total agreement with you re. the PSU. Picking a less than stellar PSU is the single biggest cause of system problems and failures out there today. I'd say 70% of the problems I see are caused by the PSU being either underpowered or just plain junk. I read one review where the reviewer found a 550W PSU that was advertised for $20 or so. Dug around the manufacturers website and yes, it could hit 550 watts....for 12ms (milliseconds!!), then failure.
I have an SLI rig and put a PC P&C 510 in it to run things. Can't get much better than that. Yeah, it is way overpriced but I figure it will last ten years or so and pay for itself that way. LOL

Anyways, the PSU he is looking at has great spec's., dual 12v rails with 20a and 18a respectively, etc. etc. but maybe you are right on this one. I looked at the test data and all the voltages seemed really high. Then I got to Tom's Hardware Guide where they did the big PSU stress test and sure enough the Hyper was in there...and guess what, it failed due to voltage out of spec. http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/200507111/stresstest-28.html
Granted it was the -12v line but the +12v was nearly out of spec too.

So rv13uk you may want to look at another PSU. Check out the THG for a really in-depth look at PSU's.

Thing is, Im actually on a really tight budget, so I couldnt afford some of the better quality PSU's, currently I have £655, in theory i can take £600 out the bank, plus b'day and x-mas money. . . that still doesnt leave me with gr8 funds. I am going to try and sell stuff such as PS2 to raise it but at the mo im just trying 2 buy the basics, as the PSU counts as basics i need to buy that and i cant afford to spend a gr8 deal of money on it.

i think your missing the point. The power Supply NEEDS to be all there on a performance rig. Without good clean strong stable power you run the risk of random reboots etc. You know i thought like you did and thats how i learned alot about PSUs. (lots of visits to fryes electronics for bad parts) Go to performance forums and look at the #1 cause of an unstable not OCed rig. ITS PSU!!! Did you even look at any enermaxes they are as much as your hiper. Dude just dont got all out of the CPU. They depriciate faster then a ford focus.

Get a good Nice priced Dual Core. When a year goes by and the games are finally catching up to the speed of your CPU buy the fx 55(whatever you wanted to buy) because by then it will only be 250 bucks anyways.

Im giving this advice because it sucks spending big cash on a rig and finding its unstable and you need to purchase another PSU. (ive been there 2 or 3 times)

I know exactly what your saying, its just the only independant reviews of the psu ive found have been good, and it sounded like a quality psu. What would help was if someone could tell me how 2 work out how much power im going to need, so i know wot sort of psu i need 2 luk at.

btw, just an update 2 the parts, because I need it sooner rather than later im making some compromises and getting the following parts:
Asus A8N Sli premium
Amd Athlon 64 x2 4400
XFX PCI-E Geforce 6800GT
Maxtor diamond plus 300Gb
1Gb Corsair DDR400 PC3200 RAM
Antec p180
PSU - provisionally Hiper black modular 580W
19" viewsonic VX912

Alot if not most restart and hardware crash problems can be traced to the power supply. Read below the quote from Tom's Hardware.

"It happens more often than many users realize. An old graphics card or a slow processor runs smoothly and without a peep for weeks, and then suddenly, after a system upgrade, system failures start occurring with nasty regularity. Frequently users blame problems like this on sloppily programmed drivers or hardware mined with errors.

But often it turns out that the power supply unit is simply no longer enough for the upgrade and the associated power requirements. The result is sporadic system failures due to unstable power delivery. Once it becomes clear that the DX9 capable AGP graphics card at full 3D capacity alone consumes up to 30 watts, the reaction is hardly surprising."

You can read the rest of the article here, http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040122/

side note: here is a PDF titled "Calculating System Power Consumption".

I dont know if this PDF is any good because i dont have adobe installed at the moment. But i think this might help. This was from another thread.

Just thought i'd let you know ive made my final decision and ordered all the parts (Case and PSU came today ) The final line up was:

Asus A8N-Sli Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4600+
XFX PCI-E Extreme addition Geforce 7800GT
1Gb Corsair DDR400/PC3200 RAM
19" Viewsonic VX912 monitor
300Gb Maxtor Diamonmax Plus 10
Antec P180
Hiper 580 modular type-r PSU (i know what you guys said about it, and dont think i completely disregarded what you told me, it made me look into it and it did get very high quality reviews, and now ive got it it does look like a very good PSU and its quite heavy as well, the time honoured quality test )
LG 16x16 +-R Dual layer DVDRW/RAM writer
and some arctic silver 5 thermal compound

This is kindof a noob question but ive never used one b4, with the LG DVD writer can i use that as my only CD-Drive, or will i have to use a normal cd drive to read software and stuff.

BTW, thanks for all your help, 11 months in the waiting it should be ready on saturday, yay

System looks awesome. The DVD RW will take care of all the CD functions with no problem. Have fun with what will be a great rig I am sure.

Yay thanks, this is officially the best computer ive ever had, its going to be so different to the one ive got now. The onli problem is that the case is absolutely massive (comes up 2 my knees, and im 5ft 9, not sure if this is standart size now but its seems big 2 me), anyway, not sure if all the psu cables will be able to reach the drives, and was wondering whether you could buy extension cables for the molex/sata/4 pin cables.

Yeah, for molex(4pin), you can just by a molex splitter, it turns one molex into two, and gives you about 8" more wire.

Here's one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812189002

To get sata from molex, or to get a longer sata.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812189005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812101120

Looks like a beast, you made some good choices there. I think the biggest mistake is the PSU but hey its your money. the XFX PCI-E Extreme addition Geforce 7800GT WAS A GREAT CHOICE. As well as getting the dual core CPU.

GoodLuck on your rig.

Despite the fact that it wont change anything, i still feel i should justify my choice of PSU, on their site it has a list of reviews - http://www.hipergroup.com/English/reviews.html and i know how obviously biased it will be, but still, theres a lot of full marks there

-=How do I delete my post=-
Sorry..I forgot to read the last page.

(You asked about Scan and I was going to recommend www.overclockers.co.uk or www.aria.co.uk, if you still weren't sure about Scan. Sorry for wasting your time with my noobish mistakes :unch: )