I have made my order today (I thought I would order today to try and speed up delivery) however unfortunately I was forced to change a couple of the components due to my first choices being out of stock - so as opposed to the DVD-ROM previously described I have gone for one be Novatech (at a slightly higher price however it offers a faster CD read speed so it is even better) I also had to purchase a different screen - it is still 19inch and has the same specs as well as being slightly cheaper the only other component I had to change was the TV card which is now a dabs own brand analogue tuner so I will have to wait and see how they perform. Sadly I was not able to order my speakers today but they are due in stock in 2-3 days so I will order them soon as I am not prepared to compromise on them. The total cost of everything (bar the speakers) is £858.69.
My only concerns at this stage is the Ram as the barebone system comes with dual channel 512mb sticks giving me 1GB of ram however the ram only runs at 667Mhz when the motherboard can handle ram that runs at 800Mhz so I will have to wait and see how fast the finished computer runs, if I want to get different ram I will have to replace the ram completely (as it is not a good idea to mix different makes and types of ram) however I need to find out if and how I can change the voltage my motherboard supplies to the ram or if it is automatic (if anyone knows I would be grateful if you could drop me a message over Gengaming) as the 800Mhz ram I looked at uses 2.0V as opposed to the 1.8V it will be running when I get it.

Another component I have been looking at and considered getting is the AGEIA PhysX Processor this is a very new piece of hardware that you may not of heard of it is basically a processing card designed to deal with the Physics of a game (which is usually done by the CPU) allowing far more realistic game play. It comes in the form of a PCI card that you plug into your computer and is similar to a graphics card however it has connectors at the back. This piece of hardware is very cutting edge and completes the gaming power triangle between the CPU, GPU and now the PPU. They cost about £140. If you are interested I urge you to look at aegias’s website as there is lots of information and some very interesting demonstration videos and pictures of the technology. There are a number of games on the market that already support the PPU and many more in development (see the web site) however the one that appeals to me is the New unreal tournament which comes out next year.

If you have any questions about anything I have mentioned don’t hesitate to send me a question over Gengaming and I will attempt to answer it (or point you in the right direction if I don’t have a faint clue!)

I will report again when I receive my deliveries and include some Pictures soon.

Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1

Posted by Final Look on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 7:26 pm.