Hey all,

So my Laptop looks to be heading towards the ends of its days, and I think its time to invest in a rig that will last me a while. I have plotted out some specs that I think may suit me, and would appreciate a quick check from those in the know about component compatibility, whether power supply and cooling is enough, and any other thoughts you may have.

http://jpshortstuff.247fixes.com/specs.PNG

Average use would be not too intensive, but I'm a programmer so there will be times that I may need to stretch things a bit. The odd game may well be played on there from time to time, and would be good to make this computer last a good while.

On a similiar note, I am considering tri-booting XP, Vista and Linux on the single harddrive. I've dual booted XP and Linux without problems, are there any extra considerations for tri-booting, or with Vista? I would install them in the order above, and use Grub to (hopefully) sort things out at the end. I haven't looked into this in great detail yet as I am still pondering the idea, but I've read that you should use Vista's Disk Manager to shrink its size before installing other OSs. Is this necessary or is it sufficient to sort out all the partition sizes with Grub?

Cheers,

-jp

Hey mate,

It looks all good from here, but I'd personally want a bit more information - such as where are you buying this from and what's your budget, what's the make/model of the Power Supply and case, etc...

If you ask me, you should buy the parts and build it yourself, it's good fun and extremely rewarding, I wrote up a nice guide with Artellos' help over on Geeks to Go if you want to follow it.

Cheers

Troy

EDIT: And I'm not sure about triple booting or even dual booting at all, I'm not a fan of it as it can complicate things immensely. I do have multiple OSes on my system but have installed each to their own hard drive when there are no others connected, so I manually choose which HDD to boot to from the BIOS menu if I want one other than the default to load.

This post has been edited by Troy: Apr 30 2009, 08:16 AM

Hey Troy,

Well, I'm currently using pcspecialist to plot these specs. Having never bought a customized computer before I really have no idea where to go, so I chose these guys purely because I know someone else that has bought from there. I don't know if you have any suggestions of where to buy from (UK)?

I am considering buying all the parts seperately and building myself. The reason I am currently getting everything from the same place is to attempt to ensure full compatibility between what I'm buying. While I know what roughly what specs I want on each component, I am not too sure on how to make sure everything I buy is compatible.

The case seems to be a pcspecialist own make, and I can't find anything more about the power supply.

I'm looking to spend up to £600 (with a bit of leaniancy), and the above specs clock in at 599.

Cheers for the input, greatly appreciated.

-jp

CPU: E8400 is fine, the E8500 specced is a tiny increase for the extra bucks you pay, up to you though.

RAM: Ideally go with 4GB, you won't regret it.

Graphics card is fine for an odd game here or there... obviously not your main focus, so you don't have to spend mega bucks.

Don't skimp on the PSU. Wattage is not as important as quality. Make sure you get something namebrand; Enermax, Coolermaster, Gigabyte...

Tribooting will work fine in the order you've specified. Start with XP, then Vista, then *nix. You'll want to leave unallocated partition space for *nix, rather than having the installer squish your partitions down, as *nix and NTFS still aren't best friends, and bad things happen! Not as important on a fresh install though...

I would probably partition the drive myself before installing anything, got a bootable GParted disk to hand. Perhaps the Windows 7 RC would find its way into the mix instead of Vista though...

I agree with your suggestions for CPU/RAM, works out cheaper that way and looks more formidable.

Just a quick question; how much are you planning to spend on the CPU? That looks to be a really nice CPU, just hope the price tag is nice too.

I don't have a budget for any particular component, rather a rough aim for the total cost of the computer. I don't have an individual price for the CPU I'm afraid.

Just an update, I've decided to fork out a little bit more on the graphics card and nabbed a 9800 on ebay.

I would like to see the exact PSU you intend to use.

A 9800 will want a minimum of 500 watts and at least one dedicated PCI_E 6 pin lead.

Surely a 600W SHAW will do the job, Jephree.

/sarcasm

I had upped the PSU to a 600 Watt, but it looks like I will need to ring these guys anyway to check the PSU out.

I forgot to mention that I was looking at the 9800 GX2, the dual GPU one. The nvidia website has this:
Supplementary Power Connectors - 6-pin & 8-pin

Forgive me for being inexperienced and not knowing much about these things, but does this mean that the card will require a 6 pin and an 8 pin, or that it will support either and only one is required?

Will probably give them a ring later today, just wanted to go in knowing a little bit about what I am asking.

You'll have to check other sites for price matching (see if you can find better deals), but here's the list:

Case
Power Supply
Processor
Motherboard
RAM
Hard Drive
DVD Burner
Graphics Card
Monitor
Mouse
Keyboard
Wireless N PCI Card

That matches or exceeds the specifications on everything except the CPU, which is one step down (E8400 3.0GHz instead of E8500 3.16GHz) - except for the card reader and surge protection... If you already have / don't need them, then the total is £637.58 including delivery... Price matching some other sites that deliver to you may help save (Dabs is the only one I know, it's hard helping with parts from Down Under), otherwise I can re-work it a bit further.

Wow that took too long... And then I just realised you want a 9800GX2 graphics card? Oh boy... This needs a major reworking of either parts or budget!

No problem. This is how we all learn. You are correct that that card takes both a 6 pin & 8 pin connection i.e. both are necessary. Hence if you go with that card you will need a corresponding PSU. Most cards in the range you are considering now will require both 6 + 8 or else dual 6 pin.

In this area it is very crucial to get a good match between the PSU and the graphics card.

Sorry about delay in update here.

I've gone with a 9800GT - just a single GPU. Gave the company I'm getting the rest of the pc from a ring to check it would be compatible with the PSU and got a thumbs up there.

Nice list Troy, I've not looked through dabs before. Definitely going to bookmark that one for the future.

What? Don't be lazy - build it yourself!

Hehe, I wouldn't say so much lazy as just a lack of confidence. I've never actually had a (non-Laptop) computer of my own to open up to look around in before. Now that I have, I think I would be ready to give it a go next time.

So its all here and up an running. Graphics card went in without any problems, only one power connector required despite it saying "6-pin x2" on the website.

Tri-boot hasn't quite gone to plan yet. I partitioned the drive myself into 3 logical drives ready for my 3 operating systems, hoping that would avoid any problems, but apparently its not that easy. XP installed fine, Vista installed fine. Ubuntu apparently partitioned and formatted the remaining unallocated space fine and installed with no problems, but subsequently Vista wouldn't boot. Perhaps Ubuntu decided to take a sneaky cheap shot at its' rival when I wasn't looking. Not sure what went wrong there but I re-installed Vista and as I expected Vista overwrote GRUB so now I can't get to Ubuntu. I'm hoping that Vista didn't retaliate and that Ubuntu is still in tact - if so I will try installing GRUB again to regain access.

Thanks again for all the advice guys, appreciate it.