Before buying PC please ask our advice first!

You DEFINATELY need a heatsink. If this was 10 years ago and you did that and turned it on, it would burn out the CPU. Thankfully there's thermal shutdown now :P

As for PSU connections...24 pin on the motherboard, 4 pin near the CPU socket, 6 pin for a graphics card (if you have one), 4 pin molex for older hard drives/DVD drives, flat cable for SATA devices.

You should have some left over, so don't worry about those.

Checked on scan.co.uk
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i5-2300-s1155-sandy-bridge-quad-core-28ghz-gpu-850mhz-6mb-cache-95w-retail

It says heatsink active and a heatsink fan with it... what does that mean?

Means it should have one with it. I thought you got a 2400?

So...it came in a box like this:



But didn't include a heatsink that looked like this?

Hey everyone, I'm planning on buying a macbook pro. Before all hell breaks loose, please understand I'll buy a macbook pro regardless of the never-ending debates. I am very into photography, I do it a lot as a hobby and have managed to do it every now and then as a part-time job. I've been told macs are really good for editing so I'd like to buy one. I've had high-performance computers before (alienware) and they turned out to be crap, so I'm trying to avoid that, and I've never had any trouble with macs so far so I think they're a pretty safe bet. A friend of mine is buying it in America, so it shouldn't be insanely expensive.

The thing is, I want to be able to play games as well (by running bootcamp), will a laptop with a combined AMD Radeon HD 6750M (with 1 GB of GDDR5 video memory) and an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 (with 384 MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory) be able to run games? I'm not talking all the latest games, but just if it's reasonably powerful to play decent stuff. Also, I've been told the matte screen is better for editing pictures, but it wouldn't really matter that much if I'm in a room with controlled lighting, so I could just go for the glossy one as it's cheaper? (then again, the difference isn't that big).

I'll probably buy it on ebay instead of the mac store as they are cheaper and are usually upgraded. Any ideas on this as well?

Thanks a lot and sorry for the inconvenience!

Any help on this anyone?

New build, which one to go for though?

As far as I can tell one has no RAM and the other does but has no motherboard. And apart from that they are the same

Not a fan of Macs so cant help with that, just wanted to point out that buying in the US will not necessarily save you money as you will probably be liable for the tax when it is brought back - so look into that.

Ebay might be good, although the good point about Macs here is what is bad for you - they are even worse value for money second hand than the silly premium you pay for a new one. If you can find a good deal on ebay I would probably take it.

look closer

and yea i know, i was wondering which combo of cpu, ram and mobo was best

Any help on this anyone?

Hi guys, I built my pc yesterday and made a real noob mistake. I never used the stand off screws with the motherboard... Yeah, I know.... So I got a bit of smoke and straight away I shut down the power etc. Now when I try connect everything up (with the standoff screws) and turn the power on the green LED on the mobo lights up but nothing at all happens.

If I press the DIM memory ok button (not sure if that's it's name) everything powers on and I get the mobo giving out one long beep and two short beeps. So is it my RAM that's the problem? Do you need a certain type of RAM for the mobo. I have the Asus P67 pro.

Also is my mobo fried? The fact the green light comes on gives me hope that i've been lucky but does that normally happen? I have the warrenty and insurance so I think i can get a replacement if so.

Thanks

Lul. So you let the Mobo be in direct contact with the plastic/metal of the side of case?

Yep *facepalm*

Dear oh dear. Hopefully it will all be sorted ;P

From my personal experience, Macs running bootcamp will play any game as well as a similarly specced Windows machine. Yhat hardware spec should be more then enough to play recent games (though perhaps not on max settings, but let's be honest how many machines can?)

As for the matte screen, it's supposedly better so if your serious about your editing then it might be worth the investment.

Lastly, sure you can get a cheaper Mac on eBay, but if you do just make sure yours either has AppleCare included or is less then a year old so you can purchase it for yourself after.

Apple are good with servicing etc, but out of warantee stuff can be crazy expensive (especially motherboard or "logic board" issues).

I would recommend going for an American machine though, you can save quite a bit. (my Macbook Pro was brought in the US a few years back for about £500 less then the UK retail price, and I only plan to upgrade once I go back )