What Hardware Should I Buy? - Dec 2008

Interestingly the Palit just went up 8 quid on Scan. :|
The ASUS one is still 113£ and pre-order. HiS (120£) and Sapphire (127£) both on stock.
I think my christmas money will go to an e-tailer for a new graphics card as my 8800GTS/640 seems to die slowly.

Any comments if I should invest the 20-25£ more to get a 1GB though I think it's not worth it just for FarCry2 and maybe 1-2 FPS in other titles. Gaming on a 22" 1680x1050 here btw.

Love the series, but I noticed that the us price link for the Noctua cooler actually brings up a page with the NH-U9B, not the NH-U12P.

just out of interest for the affordable system wouldnt a p43 board make a better choice than a p31 one?

Originally Posted by fathazza
just out of interest for the affordable system wouldnt a p43 board make a better choice than a p31 one?

Find us one for a good price and we'll certainly consider it!

The Big VS Small monitor is a difficult one.... as usual, no graphicscards on the earth can deliver good enough framerates for big screens, unless you have 3-4 in tri-sli or crossfire. I have a 22" wide, and an ATI4870, and by no means does it deliver the framerates i want in either Crysis, Age of Conan or Fallout 3. My friends laugh at me when i play games with black bars on the side to get 1280x1024 resolution. Playing counter-strike on widescreens is something i also can't get used too.
I say go with lower resolution and crank up the AA :)

I have had something like the "High-end" setup for a year or two now, except for the graphics cards of course.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
Find us one for a good price and we'll certainly consider it!

well the asus p5ql p43 range starts at £55 on scan, tho it is the budget board of the budget range so i doubt it is that feature/connector rich...

I've got the mobo/cpu/cooler from this article and there all working fantastically (except the cooler fan is flakey but is being replaced by ebuyer without me having to send the old one back - score) Got it running at 3.125GHz, on stock voltage effectively passively cooled in my antec P180 case, idle temps ~44, full load mid 60's with the rear fan on min and the roof on medium, once i get a working fan i'll be letting the cpu fly!

Thanks for the awesome recommendations, that gigabyte board is awesome and the only thing missing is firewire connectivity, now where did I put that pci card........

The SSDs for the premium system are 2.5 inch drives, so they need a mounting kit to go into most tower cases. I couldn't find any such mounting kits at local stores, so I finally ordered this one: http://www.startech.com/item/SATA35252X-35-Bay-to-Dual-25-SATA-HDD-Adapter.aspx

If your next set of recommendations still include 2.5 inch SSDs, please also provide a link for buying such a mounting kit (or did you expect to put the SSDs in that Cooler Master case loose?)