Topcat

Chavvy stickers. 'drive it like you stole it' et

I've never liked stella in England, but heard it's nice brewed over there. Will certainly look out

I had a similair experience, get your code read. mine was a faulty crankshaft sensor, straight swap for a new one and it was sorted.

So i'm off to Brussels tomorrow morning for a weekend break, staying within walking distance from the main Eurostar terminal.

Who's got recommendations of sights to see, places to eat etc...

First on the list is to try a proper Belgian pint of Stella!

Then trying to stop my girlfriend from going crazy with the Chocolates

Not seen one on the roads yet, like what i've seen from pictures, will be interesting to see what kind of power can be produced with tuning options.

Arrived this morning, around, 10 days ahead of schedule!

Not had time to set it up yet, but eager to test it out.

I'd recommends pc specialist, very professional service and constantly updated on progress.

That being said I've not turned it on yet

 

what did you get?

Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX

Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P(2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk 240GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk 1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)

Processor Cooling TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)

Sound Card Asus Xonar DGX 5.1-Channel Gaming Audio Card (£25)

Network Facilities 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Just shy of 1.3k, only 600 over budget

In my top 10 cars of all time! Lucky burger.

On 12 hour night shifts, and busy in the day. Then off to Brussels at the weekend, so won't be able to play with it till next week!

It's just sitting in my front room teasing me!

Thanks for the recommendation.

Arrived this morning, around, 10 days ahead of schedule!

Not had time to set it up yet, but eager to test it out.

I'd recommends pc specialist, very professional service and constantly updated on progress.

That being said I've not turned it on yet

I've had no problems with my Scorpion.

I only read good reviews about them. Have already.been informed it's been built and is undergoing the first round of quality control testing. Impressed with the service so far.

Apparently the motherboard I got allows you to overclock.the processor.

Read good reviews on the graphic card.

Hopefully I will enjoy it or it's a big waste of money lol! Plenty of other games to test out though.

Thanks for all the help guys!

I might give it a go when my new PC arrives, hopefully only a week now. Got a few mates that rave about it.

Will drop you a PM if i join.

Read quite a few bad reviews on Dinopc, although they have the cheapest prices.

went with PC specialist in the end

Case COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX

Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P(2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk 240GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk 1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)

Processor Cooling TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)

Sound Card Asus Xonar DGX 5.1-Channel Gaming Audio Card (£25)

Network Facilities 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Just shy of 1.3k, only 600 over budget

It really depends what you will be using the computer for, as to which hardware will suit the job best.

Only 6 hard drives, I guess you don't want to be too greedy!

Yeah, what PSU are you running that on?

700/750w PSu should be ok?

Just noticed that's withou an operating system so another £90 for windows 7

They seem to have decent prices

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/nova ... .html?th=g

That's pretty similair to the one i built but with 16gb ram and an i7 processor instead of 8gb and i5.

Hope i'm not missing anything obvious?

Although it doesn't mention CPU cooler, It certainly looks like a good buy, thanks for the link.

Looks like i have underestimated my budget for what i want, so i've ended up making the below spec P.c

Customizations:

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.3Ghz

CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 Water Cooler

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX

RAM: 8GB Corsair 2133mhz Vengeance (2x4GB)

Hard Drive: Corsair 120GB Force3 SSD S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s

Additional Storage: 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s

Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA

Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB

Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio

Case: Corsair Carbide 300R

PSU: 700W Xigmatek

Warranty: 3 Year Platinum Warranty

Product Subtotal: £1,117

Maybe a few things that are a bit overkill? Or maybe even need upgrading if anyone has any thoughts?

Was thinking of maybe making the SSD 240Gb to facilitate future game updates and give a bit more scope to load a few more things on to it. only £80 more than the 120GB.

I second the don't go with Dell advice. Their customer service is pants and they sell underpowered, soon to be out of date, PCs to people who don't have a clue what they're buying (me included once).

 

I had my current PC built by a company called Dino PC. http://www.dinopc.com/

 

I paid a bit extra for their express service and the thing was with me in a few days. You can customise the components to suit your needs and budget. I was well impressed by their service and very happy with the PC.

 

Here's some reviews http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.dinopc.com

That's a good call mate, they seem cheaper than most, have made the same PC for £650 on their that was costing £750-£800+ on other sites.

Thanks!

Iv'e played some of the beta weekends of Guild Wars 2 and I think it's awesome, mainly played theif and guardian. I have some great memories of the original Guild Wars.

My system can handle about medium settings it's quadcore 2.4, win7 64bit, 4gb ram, gt9800 1gb - which is now rather outdated.

I looked at buying a new one but decided against it (or maybe my wallet did)

Hopefully see you in game

That's good to know what settings you can use at that spec, i was hoping on playing more towards the higher settings.

I never played the first guild wars, was on warcraft for a few years, but reached end game raiding and got bored.

You'll have to let me know what server you are joining, only a few of my friends are getting it.

I'd help you if it was any other month as I live in Nottingham, but I'm the process of moving down south and have a million other things going on which means I'm only gonna be in town for 2-3 days over the next month and these will be spent packing, cleaning, selling, shoving stuff into vans, driving this stuff up and down the country and all that jazz.

 

My one suggestion is: buy yourself a big case (full tower size) with good quality drive bays & tonnes of fixings (e.g. decent NZXT ones) as they are amazingly newbie-friendly and almost everything can be attached by hand with no tools.

 

Also get yourself a cheapo set of small precision screwdrivers for £3 or whatever from Maplin + a static strap & attach this strap to the computer case & your wrist. There are millions of guides out there, but in short.

 

1. Open up your case and all the other bits & bobs.

2. stick your motherboard into the case (should be easy to figure out which way this goes. Remember that there are bits that go between the back of the case and the motherboard that keep it away from the metal

3. stick the processor in. You've got to be a little bit careful & check that you're putting it in the right way (align the pins), but this is really very very simple.

4. put some thermal paste on top of the processor & shove the fan on top of it. On a decent motherboard & decent fan, you'll either have no need for tools or very minimal amount of screwdriver action.

5. ping all the other bits that you've got into the slots. Each one can only go into one sort of slot and for everything bar the memory sticks, it makes no difference whatsoever where you shove them. With memory sticks it all depends on how many you've got, what MB you're using and what operating system.

6. stick in your DVD drive & hard drive and attach these to your MB with cables. Spend 20 seconds reading the instructions - this is very very simple.

7. Ping in your modular power adaptor & plug in each component in turn. You really can't get this wrong.

 

8. Switch it on and install windows.

 

That's it.

That doesn't sound too hard, i won't be purchasing it for 3-4 weeks, so hopefully by that time i'll know what i'm doing a bit more. I'm sure there will be loads of videos guides online too.

I was in nottingham last night, Woodborough Hall, for a friends wedding, lovely place.

Just a bit concerned my girlfriend is getting ideas now

Thanks, Tom.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/index.php is where you want to be asking. Endless amount of helpful people who will help spec you a machine! I've been a member on there for years ever since I built my first PC, very helpful bunch

Thanks for the link, I'm trying my best to educate myself in the matter.

I'd like to build it myself but I feel like i'd end up doing something catostrophic like blowing the motherboard, maybe i'll see if one of my more tech savvy friends can spare an hour for a few beers