Still putting a PC spec together. What do you think to

[TheBrit]

1 Antec SX630 II mini tower 300W
1 Gigabyte GA-8IHXP Intel 850E, ICH4, USB2, RAID, LAN
4 Samsung 256Mb RDRAM 1066
1 Intel Pentium 4 Northwood B @ 2.53Ghz, 512k L2
1 ATI 128Mb Radeon 9700 Pro DVI, TV out
1 Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy Platinum
3 80Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 2Mb cache ATA100
1 Panasonic 3.5" 1.44Mb
1 Plextor 40x12x40 CD/RW Burn Proof 2Mb
1 Microsoft Internet Keyboard
1 Microsoft Internet Mouse
1 Microsoft Windows XP Pro OEM

This little lot should set me back about $1700/1800. If you are wondering where on earth I'm buying this stuff from that's so expensive, my answer would be "England". We used to say that the computer industry set UK prices by changing the dollar sign for a pound sign...

[SantorinSteve]

"The Brit" (for a screenname)? I think you were referred to as that in the feedback forum a couple of days ago, and it highlights one of the great ironies of the World Wide Web: If it's so worldwide, why is everyone on it American? (To the extent that when someone refers to you as "The Brit", everyone knows who are the person they are talking about.)

As to your computer, damn that's expensive. Is the price difference mostly VAT, or is someone somewhere reaping in huge profits? Most modern power supplies have switches between 110V and 240V; what is stopping you from purchasing all that stuff from across the pond and getting it shipped over? The shipping price shouldn't be that much.

[Skrill (RexxKw0nDo)]

I am a Rambus user as well. I would suggest looking at the Abit TH7-II Mobo. Its an excellent overclocking board. But do some research re whether or not it can support 1066 Ram.

All that said. I think DDR is definately the wave of the future of P4. There are many more options out there as far as memory and motherboards. And honestly, you will be hard pressed to actually see much of a speed difference.

Also, if you overclock. I would suggest the 2.26 P4. It overclocks very well and can be had for cheap (mine can run at over 2.9 ghz).

Finally, although I take my hat off to Ati for making a great card hardware wise, their software engineers are suck. Read some posts on message boards (like at HardOCP.com or Rage3d.com) re 9700 driver issues. I had an 8500 a while ago, and all I can say was -- I was always anxiously awaiting the new drivers because something always seemed broken. Unless you are an expert troubleshooter -- I think I would pass on 9700.

The Nv Geforce 4 Ti series is cheap now thanks to the 9700, and the Nv 30 chip should be really nice. I would go Nvidia simply because the drivers fantastic, unified and updated frequently.

[Skrill (RexxKw0nDo)]

Your PSU may not be up to the task. A 300w is a little weak for all that equipment. I would look into a 400w.

Also, if you are willing to spend a bit more, look into Lian-Li cases. They are awesome and well worth the money if you care about style.

[bob5820]

Just a few thoughts -

Most definitely go with a better power supply, about 400w should be good. Remember the 9700 needs alot of power.

ATI has come along way with there drivers. The 9700 launched with much fewer issues then the 8500. The 9700 has AGP8 and DX9, both are very new standards so there are bound to be some issues.

That being said I won't disagree with Skrills coments on the nVidia cards, even though Im know happy with my 8500. You can get good deals on GF4 now and the NV30 looks to be a real screamer. THe 9700 will only be king of the hill until the NV 30 is released. The one thing that troubles me about the 9700 is the amount of heat that it generates. This should not be a problem with the nv30 due to its smaller fab size.

I noticed that you are getting a mobo with onboard raid and 3 drives, but you don't mention if you will be setting up a raid array. My opinion on ide raid arrays on a non server computer - don't bother, not with a raid 0 array anyway. The perfomance benefit (raid 0) can be bench marked, but in my eyes the real world performance gain is negligable, and not worth the trouble. The onboard controller is better used as an extra set of ide connection. Hook the hd's up to the raid controller, but do not set up a raid array. Set up your other drives (cd, dvd) on the regular ide chanels.

Antec makes great cases, not as pretty as the Lian-Li, but very nice to work with.

[TheBrit]

Although I did feel that some people had more animosity towards me when it was obvious I wasn't American. I've been to America and I liked it, if that helps anyone get over the fact that I'm British! Oh hang on, I went to Canada and I liked that too - back to square one! ;-)

[TheBrit]

but those are ex-VAT prices! I can buy stuff at trade price through the company and claim VAT back, so that's trade price devoid of any tax at all!

If I went to the high street to buy that stuff, I'd add 5-15% and if I was a consumer who could not claim VAT back, I'd then be looking at 17.5% VAT on top.

Living in England is very expensive, houses, cars, food, electronics - it's all much dearer that the rest of Europe let alone the US.

[TheBrit]

I'm not bothered about the longevity of RDRAM, as I'm going with 1Gb, by the time I need more I'd want a new motherboard as well. The raw bandwidth of RDRAM 1066 should help MPEG2 encoding, which is one of the heavy uses it will be put to.

I looked at the Abit board, it was a close call with that and the Gigabyte.

Thanks for the input.

[TheBrit]

I figure that the performance gain for regular OS and application / games use is negligible, but for capturing DV and MPEG transcoding, it should make a noticable difference.

[TheBrit]

I did wonder about the 300W PSU, but that's what's included in the case. The case was chosen for it's front USB and firewire, but I guess a replacement PSU isn't out of the question.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I'm going to place a few orders today I think.