What processor do you think...

[santy001]

Places like novatech, cclonline and overclockers are good to check out, they all have varying systems and bundles, some like CCL will put it together for you after you've selected the components you want the other 2 have pre-builts available with one or two options you can choose to change.

If you put up your ideal budget, then I'd look around a few sites, point you in the direction of a few good deals and I'm sure others could do the same with sites they use too. An i3 or i5 genuinely is the way to go at the moment, well providing an i7 isn't within your budget.

[Eme Alberta]

I'd like to play about 9 to 15 leagues with about a medium database. I've found three computers and there is a significant difference in price. Would they all be able to handle my requirements or would I be significantly better off getting the third option.

1st:

Processor AMD Athlon™ II X3 425 Processor

- 2.7 GHz

- 2.0 GHz HT (4000 MT/s)

- 3 x 512 KB L2 cache

Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium

RAM 3072 MB DDR2

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 7100 integrated graphics

Hard drive 320GB SATA 5400rpm

2nd:

Processor AMD Sempron™ Processor 140

- 2.7 GHz

- 1.6 GHz HT

- 1 MB L2 cache

Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium

RAM - 2GB

- DDR2

Graphics card Integrated

Screen type None

Hard drive 320 GB SATA 7200 rpm

3rd:

Processor AMD Phenom™ II X2 545 Processor

- 3.0 GHz

- 2.0 GHz HT (4000 MT/s)

- 6 MB L3 Cache

Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium

RAM - 4GB

- DDR2

- maximum RAM 4GB

Graphics card ATI Radeon HD 4650

- 1GB dedicated memory

Screen type None

Hard drive 500GB SATA 7200rpm

[santy001]

How much are you looking to spend overall? Like I said, those systems aren't too great, the 3rd is a terrible system, looks only to be 32bit but the gfx card is semi-decent. Like I said, if you give a ball park figure people can let you know whats best.

[Chris Waddle]

Do you know of any places that build them to order?

If you are looking for a system that is built to order then these people build a great system. Granted they might look more expensive than something you can get from elsewhere, but all of the parts are of high quality. They don't build systems where one part is top of the range and the rest are bottom of the barrell to make the price look good.

If you look at what you get in one of these systems, then they are pretty good value. Of course it's not as cheap as buying the parts and building it yourself, but you do get excellent after sales service from these guys too. They will even overclock the system for you.

[Eme Alberta]

How much are you looking to spend overall? Like I said, those systems aren't too great, the 3rd is a terrible system, looks only to be 32bit but the gfx card is semi-decent. Like I said, if you give a ball park figure people can let you know whats best.

I'd say that my max would be about £600. However, I was told that sometimes the desktops around the £300 to £400 mark are just as good as some of the more expensive ones so advice from those who are more clued up would be great.

[santy001]

If you are building your own, you definitely can save that much if not more. The problem with pre-builts is you don't get the components where you want, for example if you only play FM and aren't much into other games you only need a very basic £30/£40 gfx card, but more expensive bundles have ones treble if not more that in them.

If you don't play a lot of other games besides FM, I'd say don't look at gaming PC's because they usually have a gfx card around 25% of the cost of the entire system inside. The more you let people know about what you're looking for, the more they can help you.

On Novatech for example who are pretty decent, their best gaming system listed is the iForge at £1249.99, which is for the pc with no speakers, monitor or operating system. So all of those would take it up to about £1600. They have the lowest end i7 core there, low end DDR3 RAM, a relatively poor case and a sort-of-ok power supply. The gfx card in it is pretty good, but ATI are doing ones on par with it for a third of the price, and the gfx card comes in at almost £400. So with that, its sort of a good system, but the processor, RAM and motherboard (not even listed as what component) mean you get so much less for your money.

I've just myself the components to build a new pc and I've spent around £1200 so its a similar cost to that system. For that I've got a high-end cooler (cosair H50 watercooler), a much better ventilated case, an i7 920 which overclocks way better than the 860 and is better in general. A comparable gfx card in the ATI Radeon 5750 which cost about £120. The PSU is better, I've also bought 2 more case fans to enhance cooling, as well as speakers at £45, an operating system at £80 and a monitor at £300 so the components to get a better system than what they're offering for £1200 has cost me about £760 so I've saved £450 by building it myself, with better parts .

Novatech are one of the better ones too, at PC world and currys for a comparable system to that iForge from Novatech, you're probably talking another few hundred quid on top of that.

As I said though, the more you let us know about what you want and what else you want to do the better the system can be for you. I play a host of games, which need a better gfx card I don't play any that are top of the line and overly demanding but have picked a card I can overclock easily in a year or two, and keep me happy for a good while yet. If you just play FM, then sack the gfx card and get some tri-channel RAM at around 1600Mhz but most pre-built systems don't offer that unfortunately.

Unluckily for people who don't know how to build computers, pre-built systems brutally punish you for that lack of knowledge. Depending on how much you do know, a motherboard bundle and then plugging a disc drive, hdd and some RAM might not be too hard but you would also have to wire up the power supply which could be quite tricky.

If you have any mates who know what they're doing, talking to them offering them £20 - £30 to put it together and then ask them what parts are best you would benefit enormously. If you aren't in a hurry, and are happy enough with your current monitor, keyboard and mouse I would suggest saving up to about £720 and buying http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=47336&category_id=1155&manufacturer_id=0&tid=cobra

It's pre-overclocked and got 1600Mhz RAM, a good processor cooler. If you already have a copy of windows 7 or something you could transfer it to that PC, or buy it and shop around as its bound to be available cheaper somewhere else. The processor is only a dual core, but it has 4 processing threads, and at 4.0ghz would be good enough for the next few years.

[SI_Saga]

I'd like to play about 9 to 15 leagues with about a medium database. I've found three computers and there is a significant difference in price. Would they all be able to handle my requirements or would I be significantly better off getting the third option.

They will all run what you want, albeit a tad on the slow side, I believe.

The 1st option is horrible because of the slow Hard Drive. The 2nd option is horrible because it has a very slow CPU. The 3rd option is the best, but not ideal by any means (for instance, you can't upgrade your RAM... those 4GB are all you'll ever have - and with Windows Vista or 7, that'll become a problem).

I was told that sometimes the desktops around the £300 to £400 mark are just as good as some of the more expensive ones

The whole "high-quality" parts is usually just a gimmick as they're not really any better than most of the cheaper ones (exceptions do apply, though). Still, for those values ((£300-400), I'm sure you'd be missing out on something when compared to something along the lines of the £600 mark.

I'd say that my max would be about £600.

Ok, here's an example (from Novatech):

-----

- AMD Phenom II X4 925 (£115)

- Asus M4A78LT-M (£57)

- 2x Novatech 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (£170)

- Novatech Iris Tower Case - Black -NO PSU (£19)

- Novatech 550W (£20)

- Samsung Spin Point F3 1TB - 32MB Cache - 7200rpm (£62)

- Samsung S223C (£16)

- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit DVD - OEM (£75)

TOTAL = £534

-----

This is assuming you don't need peripherals, of course. The above configuration gives you lots of room for upgrading later (double the RAM, dedicated Graphics Card, new CPU, etc).

I'm not sure if they assemble the PC for you, so I've left some room for any fee they may charge for it (couldn't find any info about that in their site).

It's just an example, though. Hope it helps you stick to the right track.

[stelly]

I wouldn't bother with an i7. I've gone with an i5-750 and it's closer to the i7's than anything else, if you read the benchmarks. It's really fast and sweet the i5-750 and the 6DDR3 RAM is perfect.

[santy001]

I wouldn't bother with an i7. I've gone with an i5-750 and it's closer to the i7's than anything else, if you read the benchmarks. It's really fast and sweet the i5-750 and the 6DDR3 RAM is perfect.

That depends on your budget, the 750 is close, but the i7 920 (which is great for overclocking) is the same price. I expect to get my 920 operating at around at least 3.7/3.8ghz hoping to get closer to 4ghz mind you. It all comes down to what you want to pay and what you want to do. With the eventual addition of an SSD and a few other things I hope to have a very fast PC lol.

[Remco]

But can the game recognize 6 cores? I am intending to buy the latest Intel Core i7-980X processor Extreme Edition so that I can run ALL 51 nations plus load up ALL the leagues in the game at Full detail on a large database! Perhaps I will also add in new leagues for good measure as well!

Don't try. You'll be disappointed with the results.

[beezer1967]

thanks for all the advice lads.

it's appreciated.