Computer Specs

[re:FORM]

Nice at $105. About £75 in the uk.

[re:FORM]

Any reason to go with vista ultimate rather than vista office?

[re:FORM]

Interesting, there doesn't appear to be much reason for going for vista ultimate over home premium.

Here's an updated spec. Comes in at £1368 incl delivery and vat.

Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM
2 x 6.0GB Corsair DDR3 1333mhz XMS3 CL9 (3x 2GB)
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Zotac GeForce GTX 260 "Maxcore" 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (288-OK101-000ZT)
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Black (No PSU)
Thermaltake ToughPower 750W Modular Power Supply
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A38016)
LG GH22NP20 22x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939)
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 (Socket LGA1366) cooler

The question now is whether to wait... will prices rise or fall... hmmm. At the moment I'm thinking its best to buy before import costs really start to rise. (and I can enjoy the speed straight away!)

[glyph]

I've read that Intel prices (probably including i7) are due for a cut on the 18th Jan
no idea how long they will take to filter through..
its the ram that needs to come down in price

[re:FORM]

I've read that Intel prices (probably including i7) are due for a cut on the 18th Jan
no idea how long they will take to filter through..
its the ram that needs to come down in price

Well overclockers have just discounte their i7 price, perhaps in anticipation of the intel price cut. Agreed that ram needs to come down in price although I managed to find a pair of 6gb corsairs priced at £150 incl vat. each Pretty decent.

[glorybound]

Video Card

How does this card look? I am ready to order my new machine...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133218

[glorybound]

My Specs - suggestions?

[re:FORM]

What price does that come in at?

[glorybound]

Updated - $3299.00

[beestee]

Nice choice on adding the VelociRaptor HDD!

That card looks fine. A little costly compared to the gaming equivalent though.

[MoonDoggie]

SSD Drives imo And yeah, you should consider a high end gaming card as well.

[glorybound]

Ordered

The order has been placed. I'll let you know how it runs. Any suggestions and/or tips on over clocking other than proceed with caution?

[MoonDoggie]

overclocking is a great way to add value to your purchase provided you have good memory and active cooling! It's free mhz (sometimes ghz). It's relatively simple to get started with some good tutorials (I would suggest finding one for your mobo.)

I know people get really nervous about overclocking, but honestly it's pretty fail safe, the only step that isn't failsafe is adding voltage to your components, but All manufactures of ram and cpus have a voltages recommendation and top limit for their products, just don't exceed this value (for example, my corsair DDR2-900 tops out at 2.1v).

Be conservative and once you get it running at a higher frequency, run "Prime95" and "SuperPI" to test the stability of the machine.

in Prime95 run the "Torture test"
in SuperPI calculate PI up to 1mil digits

A system can run windows just fine but NOT be a stable overclock, which is what these programs do, make sure your system is rock solid.

If either of these programs throw an error or message box indicating the test fail, restart and lower your clock speed.

Make sure to test temperatures on the way and you should be great!

-Colin

[re:FORM]

Nice, recon I'll put my order in soon... although I'll be running a lowly 920. Will be interesting to see how an overclocked 920 compares with the 965 at stock and OC'd.

In terms of tips for overclocking... make sure you have a good cooler... and you monitor the temps all the time. Apart from that, your best bet is to hit any of the multitude of hardware and extreme overclocking forums (or is it fora?). There's always lots of info posted by those more geeky than thou!

[werticus]

should get the new keyboardless apple laptop

http://www.theonion.com/content/vide..._revolutionary