N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

I was feeling inspired by the earlier custom builds of the clan. My own PC is seriously UP (anyone else still using an AGP motherboard?!) and so I decided a new build was in order - unfortunately I had to change car this year so only have about £300 max to spend on a dual core set up ...

Solution .. the Ebay computer! I have been buying up bits and pieces over the last few weeks and nearly have a complete kit. I just need to build it now ... I'll post some pictures and give details when it all arrives in the post!

Consequently, I may not be playing AOE too much in the couple of weeks.

Hmm I'm intrigued by how much you can make your money stretch on Ebay? I'm looking to upgrade my rig for when Empire:Total War comes out and have barely any money to spend too.

I feel your pain for the AGP motherboard buddy, what speed was it? I have the 8x motherboard!

[quote=""djdan""]I feel your pain for the AGP motherboard buddy, what speed was it? I have the 8x motherboard![/quote]

It was an AGP*4 board - so not worth getting a new AGP card for as the bottleneck was the mobo. It was only due to my average 5Meg broadband connection that I can play AOE online at all!

Haha yeah, we recently increased the speed of our broadband from about 4 to about 8, I thought that might increase performance online, but nope still the last one in game by far! I really need a new machine! lol

Ok then, here's the kit:

Core
Intel Core 2 duo E6600 £49
Asus P5B/Wi-Fi AP £26
Corsair 2 x 2GB 667Mhz DDR2 £38
Hiper 670W PSU £20
Seagate Barracuda 120GB £11
Maxtor Raptor 36GB 10,000 rpm £18
Sony Optiarc DVD ROM £21
Floppy Drive £1
ATI X850XT 256Mb £24
Cooler Master E330 £30
Subtotal £238

Case and DVD drive were bought new as these are difficult to source otherwise as they don't tend to need upgrading.

Nice Extras
Thermaltake Green LED Case fan £4
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card £29
Phillips surround sound speakers £12
Subtotal £45

Software
Vista Premium 64 bit OEM £58
Subtotal £58

Total cost £341 + £55 delivery.

I still need to order a few extra cables, but that's basically it. I admit I hadnt budgeted for the O/S but if you take that out then the cost is below £300 ignoring postage.

I just have to build it now! More on this later ...

Seagate Barracuda 120GB £11
Maxtor Raptor 36GB 10,000 rpm £18

Would have bought a new Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 16MB SATA II (WD3200AAKS) instead. Same expensive but new and faster.
36 GB Raptors aren't so good as the 10000 rpm may suggest, the 320 WD will be faster

[quote=""Comadevil""]

Seagate Barracuda 120GB £11
Maxtor Raptor 36GB 10,000 rpm £18

Would have bought a new Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 16MB SATA II (WD3200AAKS) instead. Same expensive but new and faster.
36 GB Raptors aren't so good as the 10000 rpm may suggest, the 320 WD will be faster[/quote]

Can't buy that for less than £40 in the UK - and certainly not on ebay! The barracuda for £11 was a bargain - I admit I have been smitten by raptors for a while and paid more than I intended to here!

Err, i think u are mistaken

e.g.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebP ... ce=froogle

http://www.shop.bt.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=4J0K

OK....translating to American Dollars (Because I'm interested)

[quote=""ruminator""]Ok then, here's the kit:

Core
Intel Core 2 duo E6600 £49 --- $71
Asus P5B/Wi-Fi AP £26 --- $37
Corsair 2 x 2GB 667Mhz DDR2 £38 --- $55
Hiper 670W PSU £20 --- $29
Seagate Barracuda 120GB £11 --- $16
Maxtor Raptor 36GB 10,000 rpm £18 --- $26
Sony Optiarc DVD ROM £21 --- $30
Floppy Drive £1 --- What's a floppy drive?
ATI X850XT 256Mb £24 --- $35
Cooler Master E330 £30 --- $43
Subtotal £238 --- $345

Case and DVD drive were bought new as these are difficult to source otherwise as they don't tend to need upgrading.

Nice Extras
Thermaltake Green LED Case fan £4
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card £29
Phillips surround sound speakers £12
Subtotal £45

Software
Vista Premium 64 bit OEM £58
Subtotal £58

Total cost £341 + £55 delivery.

I still need to order a few extra cables, but that's basically it. I admit I hadnt budgeted for the O/S but if you take that out then the cost is below £300 ignoring postage.

I just have to build it now! More on this later ...[/quote]

A good bit better than I did, to be sure.

Rascal - I much admired your new rig - I just didn't have that amount of cash to spend!

Comadevil - I bow to your greater knowledge, but you won't see one of those on ebay, which was where I was trying to buy most things! The barracuda is a great buy for £11 - you won't find better - the raptor was an impulse purchase and more than I intended. The plan is to now instal vista only on the Raptor and all games/apps on the Barracuda. This should hopefully help load times.

I decided to clean my graphics card last night as there was a lot of dust in the fan section - you needed to take the whole card apart to do it - and one screw won't go back in now. We'll see if it is terminal or not!

[quote=""ruminator""]
I decided to clean my graphics card last night as there was a lot of dust in the fan section - you needed to take the whole card apart to do it - and one screw won't go back in now. We'll see if it is terminal or not![/quote]

1000 W hoover is the way to go

JUst hold it into the fan and almost every dust is gone. Usual way to clean GPU+CPU fans

[quote=""Comadevil""][quote=""ruminator""]
I decided to clean my graphics card last night as there was a lot of dust in the fan section - you needed to take the whole card apart to do it - and one screw won't go back in now. We'll see if it is terminal or not![/quote]

1000 W hoover is the way to go

JUst hold it into the fan and almost every dust is gone. Usual way to clean GPU+CPU fans[/quote]

Hoovers r OP Coma. Does urs get the "suck faster 40%" upgrade from the church also?

out

[quote=""LaZy""][quote=""Comadevil""][quote=""ruminator""]
I decided to clean my graphics card last night as there was a lot of dust in the fan section - you needed to take the whole card apart to do it - and one screw won't go back in now. We'll see if it is terminal or not![/quote]

1000 W hoover is the way to go

JUst hold it into the fan and almost every dust is gone. Usual way to clean GPU+CPU fans[/quote]

Hoovers r OP Coma. Does urs get the "suck faster 40%" upgrade from the church also?

out[/quote]


Lets not go down that road lazy....... :roll:

Not seen me online much recently?

Well I can't install AOE3 on my new PC - faulty CD I think! I have the cabinet file from Disk 2 on my old PC so tried to add the IDE drive to the IDE connector (rest are SATA) on my new build but no luck.

Tried to put old PC back together and now that won't boot - I'm basically stuffed!

I will need to have another go - I think maybe using the DVD cable rather than the IDE HDD cable may be worth a go.

If not, I will have to work out why old PC won't boot, fix it and then get a large enough flash drive to transfer. I only took out the two drives and then replaced them with same jumper settings - I can't see why this would stuff it up so much!

Hopefully I'll be back online soon - providing my wife doesn't find out that all her files are on the bust PC and I didn't back up first!