Very nice article, I assume a lot of people will find that helpful and if anyone asks me questions in the new few weeks I will think them here. I already have one friend who wants me to "find him a motherboard and graphics card"
I'd swap out the Blu Ray drive you list and replace is with an LG "GGC-H20L" £65 inc VAT (@Aria.co.uk for example) and it does Blu Ray *AND* HD-DVD playback. Along with the usual DVD and CD writing functions. With the current fire sale of HD-DVD films you can pick up a lot of 1080p content for peanuts!
We looked at this card just last week, and for just over £121, its fantastic value too, so we had to squeeze it in here. While there are cheaper HD 4850 cards out there, they all come with the frankly rubbish stock cooler, which means we literally have to remove the card from our test system with oven gloves after use.
This is fantastic, while I manage to keep on top of the gpu and cpu market, I rarely know what to buy when it comes to mobo's or cases. This monthly feature really boosts bit-tech in my eyes :D
you cant get much better than the sharkoon rebel series for the price in terms of cases i have a rebel 12 for my home server and rebel 9 for my development pc
is this a new thing you're going to be doing monthly, or have you been doing it for a while and i've missed it? either way, great guide. should save a few people from having to ask these questions in the forums.
"All movie titles released so far have had the feature encoded in 1080p, with most supplements in 480i or 480p. Almost all titles are encoded with VC-1..."
Originally Posted by supertoad is this a new thing you're going to be doing monthly, or have you been doing it for a while and i've missed it? either way, great guide. should save a few people from having to ask these questions in the forums.
It's the first time we've done it and the plan is to re-release an updated version every month. We're already thinking of adding a bit more into it as well but we're keen to hear suggestions from the community on that front. :)
Maybe you could have sub-categories, like, hardware for media centres, hardware for gaming, hardware for serving, and the different price ranges in them. Also bit-tech could push into a high-end server market and get some adepts from that area.
Originally Posted by Tim S It's the first time we've done it and the plan is to re-release an updated version every month. We're already thinking of adding a bit more into it as well but we're keen to hear suggestions from the community on that front. :)
I really really like this feature :D
I have a few suggestions:
Make a connection between these articles and the hardware reviews. "will the new xxx from xxx make it into our budget-gaming build?" That kinda thing.
I'd like to see one last page that lists the three builds in an overview. Just a simple table with which piece goes in each build that you could copy-paste to the people asking for advice you mentioned on the first page. It would be a true premium if you could build a table that lists and totals the price for each build with those nice pricelinks you use everywhere. ;)
Drop the fixed budget, and instead focus on what the numbers represent: Budget, high-end and power user. That way, the numbers will not become silly over time like they did in the Best Buy Guide that your Dutch friends from Tweakers.net compile every two months, and you won't have to make silly choices just to fit a fictional budget.
The other thing you could consider doing would be to benchmark each system so you can realistically see what a jump form one category to the next would bring you in terms of gaming performance etc. (altho I realise you probably don't actually have the systems you proposed... but hey...)
My month old build is almost exactly the same as the £1500. Cosmos S, HX1000W PSU, 4870X2 etc. But I bought cheaper RAM (useless water cooling rubbish on the ones in this article!) and only bought one 500GB HDD (for £40) and bought a nice big 22" 1680x1050 Sammy LCD screen with the money saved.
Great article guys, a friend of mine asked me about upgrading/making a computer for him and since I'd been ignoring the market a bit due to how many new products hit the shelves I was a bit behind. This was a great help
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The cheap mobo aint available :(
thanks it was in stock earlier this morning when I was doing the final edit - I've updated with another retailer.
Scan have a Palit 4850 with a different cooler design for £103.40 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=883439
And a Palit 9800GT with different cooler for £83.41 come to that. http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=863106
Great new feature, and makes comparing all the various options for competing products/upgrades much easier! Thanks guys!
"All movie titles released so far have had the feature encoded in 1080p, with most supplements in 480i or 480p. Almost all titles are encoded with VC-1..."
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Video
plus, I have 35 HD-DVDs that all play at 1080p ;)
It's the first time we've done it and the plan is to re-release an updated version every month. We're already thinking of adding a bit more into it as well but we're keen to hear suggestions from the community on that front. :)
I have a few suggestions:
:D
agreed, what a great idea
Good to see I chose some good components though!
What fan would you recommend for the TRUE?