The Student Room Group

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Original post by moorbre
How much of an advantage is having more than 4 GB of ram ? or is 4 GB plenty ?


Depends what you're doing. RAM is so ridiculously cheap nowadays I'd say go for 8 almost for the sake of it.

4GB has finally revealed itself as not being enough today when I tried to run Minecraft Tekkit Mod Server as well as the game client. It uses a tonne of RAM.
Original post by mikeyd85
I just bought: http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/bargain-fast-computer/102777845

Aside from the quite ridiculous 17-year-old boy-racergamer case, I think it's pretty decent for £150. I'll whack in a ATI HD 6850 or 6870 at some point and that should do me as a fairly inexpensive solution to my need of a PC that'll play Diablo 3. The idea of a 360 release it just wrong IMO. Diablo has always been about breaking left mouse buttons. :yep:


Looks good (not actually its looks - it's hideous, I mean its specs :tongue:) for £150 :smile: Yeah I'd go for a 6870 if I was you since they've dropped in price a bit now :smile:
Original post by hassi94
Looks good (not actually its looks - it's hideous, I mean its specs :tongue:) for £150 :smile: Yeah I'd go for a 6870 if I was you since they've dropped in price a bit now :smile:


Hahaha, I'm hiding it behind my tele for the moment... Does nothing for my attempt at having an adult ambience about the place! :lol:
Original post by SMed
I wouldn't. Those drives have the dodgy sandforce controllers which are ****. Not reliable. The Crucial ones have the better more reliable controller, can't remember the name now.

But read/write times aren't the impressive thing with SSDs apart from just benchmarking. It's the access times that make them worthwhile. Makes everything open and pop up instantly. You won't detect any difference in read/write times between most SSDs. It's worth paying for reliability. Have a look around, Crucials are the most recommended SSDs - the SSDs of choice if you will.



Original post by hassi94
Definitely wouldn't go with the agility 3. Yes reviews are good but that's because people always review soon after purchase. Googling will find many users with problems. Also, read/write makes very little difference with SSDs. Get the Crucial M4 or SanDisk (personally I'd go with the crucial M4 but I hear good things about the sandisk's reliability too).

If you can spare the money it might be worth paying the extra for a 256GB - it's £155 at the moment :smile: There might not be any point getting a 7200RPM hard drive since you'll only be using it for storage. 5400 or the 5900 eco drives will work fine (and come in 2tb variants at quite a cheap price).


EDIT: SMed beat me to basically everything I said there :getmecoat:


Ah okay, thanks a lot for the advice. Someone I know linked me that SSD saying it was better since it had better read/write times, I'll disregard their opinion for now :P.

So what's the difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm if 5400rpm is more efficient?

When you use an SSD alongside an HDD, do you install your OS and most commonly used software/games on the SSD?
Do you guys use OEM windows 7 installs when you build for yourself? I know you're not supposed to but as far as I can see it's easy to get away with.
Original post by RipperRoo
How so? Because it's a bit cheaper and overclocked?


The msi's overclock better than the sapphires, people have had better luck gettign the msi's over 1200mhz OC than the sapphires ( i have a sapphire and can only get mine to 1150mhz oc)

It's just better all round
Original post by RipperRoo
Ah okay, thanks a lot for the advice. Someone I know linked me that SSD saying it was better since it had better read/write times, I'll disregard their opinion for now :P.

So what's the difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm if 5400rpm is more efficient?

When you use an SSD alongside an HDD, do you install your OS and most commonly used software/games on the SSD?


The 7200rpm is a faster drive but it's not really noticeable because all of the times you'll actually need a fast drive you'll be using SSD.

I'd say the OS, basically all software (that aren't games) then your most played games is what you should put on. At least, that's what I'll be doing.
Original post by Chow mein
Do you guys use OEM windows 7 installs when you build for yourself? I know you're not supposed to but as far as I can see it's easy to get away with.


I bought a retail version of W7 home when it first came out for £45. I can shift it from box to box quite happily. :smile:
Reply 6970
Original post by RipperRoo
Ah okay, thanks a lot for the advice. Someone I know linked me that SSD saying it was better since it had better read/write times, I'll disregard their opinion for now :P.

So what's the difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm if 5400rpm is more efficient?

When you use an SSD alongside an HDD, do you install your OS and most commonly used software/games on the SSD?


The slower drive should also be quieter as well. I went with a 2.5" 5400 laptop drive for my storage. It's pretty much silent as far as I can hear which suits me just fine.
Original post by mikeyd85
I bought a retail version of W7 home when it first came out for £45. I can shift it from box to box quite happily. :smile:


Ah just found a way of installing full W7 from an upgrade disc which should save me some cash
Original post by Chow mein
Sorry I meant between the 690 and the enforcer!

Also is found a xfx 6870 for under £120, the double fan is the same price as normal though? Does double fan have any drawbacks?


I could have chosen then enforcer, but I chose it on the basis of future expansion and airflow rather than looks. Though the 690 II still looks pretty nice, just the enforcer looks a bit more cool.

I actually got the xfx 6870 with a single fan.........I would've got the double fan, as they are cooler slightly.


As hassi said the coolmaster deal is pretty good, or look at the 690 II versions which are nice, especially the white version.

And seeing as you want to get a cool case, cool master cases are very good and most noise is likely to come from a cpu on load and gpu. CPU can be quieter just by getting a good aftermarket cpu cooler, while a gpu is much harder as you'll have to turn down the fan speed manually but at the cost of extra heat which can be compensated by placing quiet fans around the case(depends, my case has 2 slots above the gpu and cpu)
Original post by mikeyd85
I just bought: http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/bargain-fast-computer/102777845

Aside from the quite ridiculous 17-year-old boy-racergamer case, I think it's pretty decent for £150. I'll whack in a ATI HD 6850 or 6870 at some point and that should do me as a fairly inexpensive solution to my need of a PC that'll play Diablo 3. The idea of a 360 release it just wrong IMO. Diablo has always been about breaking left mouse buttons. :yep:


That case looks ok apart from the X looking colour thing,looks weird especially as Xbox exist.

Get a 6870, under 120
Original post by hassi94
I went for the enforcer due to the front panel USB 3.0. Looks pretty cool too, it's very sturdy and the tool-less system seems great (I haven't actually used mine yet so I can't tell you for sure :tongue: There are plenty of reviews on Ebuyer - just check the case on its own rather than the bundle). Though there's very little between the two.

Double fan doesn't have any drawbacks - will run a tad cooler looking at reviews (and I really do mean a tad - barely anything in it).

Check here to see some info on graphics cards warranties.


I got an xfx :s-smilie:
Original post by moorbre
To be honest that's a bit out of my price range, my budget is more like up to £400, thanks tho :smile:
Basically It would be nice to know how to tell before buying what's a processor and graphics card, I'm fine with knowing the rest :smile:


£400 is ok, but gaming will be poor for some of the latest ones, so around low-medium settings to not being able some in the worst case scenario.

Processor, it's essentially the main component, a small chip which does all the calculations of your computer.
While a graphics card also has a similar sort of chip, but designed for graphics specifically.

But in your price range at best you get is an 2nd gen i5 which is a good processor, but graphics wise you'll get a built in one.

Would you like me to look for you?
Getting one on-line is best, as pc world, etc sell at high prices with outdated technology compared to on-line stores.
Original post by Deank
Hi, I'm looking to buy a new computer this year.
I don't need anything fancy, just want to play online browser games such as Runescape with a good fps. Also, I need to be able to use it for school work.

Looking at spending around £400, but wouldn't mind saving a bit more.

Any recommendations? I suck at computers :/

Thanks, Deano.


You got your own Operating software cd?
And don't mind building a bit of it?
[INDENT]
Original post by Iqbal007
You got your own Operating software cd?
And don't mind building a bit of it?




Well I suppose I could do it this summer when my brother gets back from Uni because he studies computer science which should be useful.

Would around £400 be enough for something half-decent if I built it? Also, how hard is it to build a computer, I heard you just slot things in :redface:


Good Ram and CPU- I have both of those and I can recommend them both. One thing to note however, is that that motherboard does not support Sli- this may or may not be an issue, but it might hinder your future upgrades if say for example, the GTX 660 comes up really cheap and you feel like running two in Sli. It also only has 1 PCI-e 3.0 slot, so although you can run Crossfire, the second card will only be running at 2.0 bandwidth, which although isn't an issue at the moment, it could be if cards start saturating 2.0 bandwidth. If however, you are intending on upgrading your CPU and motherboard fairly regularly, then this isn't an issue. I myself bought an Asus P8Z77-v, which although costs a fair amount more than that MSI, does support SLI and Crossfire at 3.0 bandwidth, it comes with built in Wifi (so it will save you about £10 on a PCI wireless card if you need wi-fi access). Plus it has nice goodies like Fan Xpert 2, and ASUS's very nice UEFI bios, it makes overclocking so simple. Plus it has a 3 year warranty. So if you do decide to spend more, I would recommend taking a look at it- I can endorse it personally.
I would also recommend looking at a WD Caviar Black if Ebuyer still have them, I got a 1TB version for £86, so only £16 more, but you get a 5 year warranty, plus they are one of the fastest HDDs, though of course not near SSD speeds.