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PC gaming hardware

foot long subbacultcha

07:50 / 24.10.06

Hi, all. I'm looking at purchasing a new desktop PC and would like to find out if anyone else has done any research lately on what the best value systems are out there. In the UK, I've been looking at what's on offer from sites such as pcspecialist and wired2fire. I guess the approach to take for saving money is to buy the latest motherboards which will support new cpus, but purchase bottom/mid end cpus to start with.

Another question is that of graphics hardware. My only concern now is directx10 compatibility. I’m thinking of perhaps only purchasing one graphics card, and then would probably like to upgrade to a directx10 card about a year in the future, but I’m not sure if a machine I purchase now will be able to support that.

Do any of you experts have any information on whether the motherboards and power supplies (I’ve read that each card will consume 250W. This feels wrong) on offer will support the future directx10 hardware?

w1rebaby

18:21 / 24.10.06

Wanna buy a PC mate? It's "Vista-ready", so will be fine with DirectX 10.

foot long subbacultcha

07:18 / 25.10.06

That's actually a pretty good spec. Is it on an SLI motherboard? What power supply does it have? What memory config does it have and is that upgradeable to 4GB? Those are my main concerns. When did you get it and whose warranty is it under?

w1rebaby

19:58 / 25.10.06

The motherboard can cope with SLI (it kept nagging me about only having one card, until the last driver update). Offhand, I'm not sure about the memory to be honest - I'd have to check. I got it from MESH, but they don't do any shuttle case PCs any more. Oh, did I mention it's in a shuttle case? It's in a shuttle case. As far as I know, the warranty is transferrable.

foot long subbacultcha

13:29 / 26.10.06

I'm still not ready to buy yet because I'm curious to see how the requirements for future technology will change. I'm gonna hold out and keep reading for a few months. Does anyone have any views on the items I mentioned in my initial post?

Grey Area

02:16 / 28.10.06

We have a couple of directx10 graphics cards at work (I <3 working for a games developer!). I'll have a shufti and let you know what the power requirements look like on ours.

As far as gaming hardware is concerned, I'm thinking of investing in a Dell XPS laptop plus docking station and widescreen monitor. I use a similar setup at work (although there it's a Latitude) and so far I can find little fault. Dell claims it's XPS series of machines are Vista ready...but yeah, directx10 might just throw a spanner into the works as regards imminent hardware purchases.

foot long subbacultcha

09:50 / 30.10.06

I'd love to hear what you find out about the dx10 cards, Grey..

Grey Area

22:05 / 31.10.06

The pre-prod nvidia cards we have here require 300 Watts on top of what the rest of the systems require. Our graphics peoples' machines are now equipped with over 1KW of power, usually using two standard PSU's. There's talk that some of the higher-end DX10 cards may require up to 350-400 Watts. Apparently PSU manufacturers are looking into manufacturing supplemental PSU's only for the graphics cards which will fit into a standard 5.25" drive bay.

My second thought about this (the first being a combination of "Whoa..." and "Damn...") was that cooling these things will be a job and a half. I know that my venerable Praetorian case with the 4 80mm fans plus 120mm PSU fan probably won't manage to push enough cold air through to keep one of these monsters from overheating.

foot long subbacultcha

11:42 / 01.11.06

I've heard of the dedicated drive-bay PSUs. It appears that the best approach to take here is to wait around a year for more efficient dx10 cards to hit the market, and by then the uptake of the technology should start to mature. Looks like the best approach right now is to get the latest motherboards and buy mid scale cpus and graphics cards with the intention to upgrade later.

It's almost irresponsible to buy such power hungry kit! It's all about marketing isn't it?

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