let's rip the wrapping off our components and get cracking. All you need is a Philips screwdriver, a clean and well-lit working area, an hour or two to spare, and a thirst for greater framerates (and take time out to read the 'Be Advised' column on the right of this page before proceeding)...
Buying Online?
Then make sure your PC is spyware clean. Use Spybot and Adaware to clean your system before you start typing-in your credit card details. Next, wonder why you never did this before.
Shipping
Many UK component vendors rely on professional couriers rather than Parcelforce to deliver your goods. If you're out when they deliver, your bits are stored overnight at the nearest depot, and they'll try again the next day. These depots are often out of town, and only near cities, so it can be a real pain to get hold of your stuff. If you're at work during the day and there's no one at home to take delivery, get them delivered to your workplace instead.
Memory Matters
Your motherboard will recognise the speed of your memory from the word go, so you shouldn't have to alter the timings in the BIOS at all - until you come to overclock it, that is. We recommend running your memory in dual-channel mode for a cheap speed-boost; simply install both sticks into the same coloured DIMM slots to achieve this.
BUY IT!
Motherboard £65.08 (Asus P5B)
Sporting Intel's excellent 965 chipset, the P5B ticks all the boxes for us, as it supports Core 2 Duo processors, dual-channel memory up to 800MHz, and of course, will take any PCI-Express graphics card we choose. In our experience, Asus boards are competent and reliable, and this model, with its 1066MHz FSB and decent overclocking headroom, is just the ticket for a fast rig.
Processor £103.11 (Intel Core 2 Duo E6320)
Chipzilla's legendary Core 2 architecture is at the heart of this dual-core chip, and the reason we've chosen the lowly 1.86GHz model is that its overclocking potential is massive, even using the bundled stock Intel heatsink. With a little bit of tweaking, you can wind this baby up so that it performs like a high-end Core 2 Duo processor worth £400.
Memory £65.54 (OCZ PC6400 800MHZ 5-5-5-12)
We just wouldn't bother playing a game on a rig with less than 2Gb memory these days, especially if Vista is involved. This 2Gb kit from OCZ fits the bill perfectly: it's fast, it boasts reasonable latencies, and its quite acceptably priced.
3D card £181.13 (XFX GeForce 8800GTS)
Simply put, there's never been such a performance-to-price sweetspot as that offered by the 320Mb iteration of nVidia's 8800 GTS design. If you need a yardstick to measure it by, then think of it like this: it offers 80% of the power of the fabled 8800GTX, for 60% of the price. It's a card that is DirectX 10-ready, and also runs DX9 games effortlessly.
Resolution-wise, its natural home is between 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 - any more than this is stretching its abilities to keep pace. Stock tends to be very low on these cards at most etailers as they sell like hot cakes, but any brand will do; stock cards are identical in performance, regardless of their brand.
Hard drive £63.98
Featuring half a terabyte of storage, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 is not only capacious for the ridiculously low asking price, but its speed credentials are impressive to boot. With 16Mb cache and its SATA300 interface, you can expect some pretty swift level-loading.
DVD-RW £19.35 (NEC AD-7170A-0B Multiwriter Black 18x DVDRW)
No frills here: this model from NEC plays and records DVDs, and that's all you really need, especially when the asking price is so low. Wootings!
Chassis £37.51 (Antec NSK6000)
While we could have gone for a pricier, sexier chassis, this baseline model from Antec fits our bill nicely. There's room enough for all our components, and the price is right. However, if you want your PC to look as good as it plays, feel free to shop around.
PSU £40.89 (EZ-Cool PS900Tornado 700W)
700W is enough juice on tap for today - and indeed tomorrow, should you decide to change your mobo for an SLI model, and whack in a second graphics card. This model from EZ-Cool is also perfectly quiet, and rather pleasing in its shiny black. There are much higher specification PSUs available - up to around 1200w - but that would be overkill for our system. If we were running an 8800 Ultra, or maybe a pair, plus a quad-core processor and a bunch of drives, we'd consider it. As it stands, 700w is quite enough.
BUILD IT!
The CPU and Heatsink
Raise the lever beside the socket, and carefully seat the CPU: it only fits one way. Lock the arm back into place. Place the heatsink/fan block over the CPU slot, ensuring that its power cable can reach the power pins on the mobo. With a flathead screwdriver carefully press on the leg-locks to seat each of the heatsink's legs into its hole in the motherboard, locking them with a 90 degree twist.
The RAM
Open two of the DIMM sockets on the mobo, just below the CPU socket. Use identically coloured ones, as you want your memory running in dual-channel mode - by popping down the clips at either end. Orient the RAM stick so the cutaway on the bottom matches a tooth in the slot. Press firmly but carefully on each end of the stick, until the retention clips spring back into place.
The Motherboard
Replace the flimsy metal backplate in your case with the one that came with your mobo. Place the motherboard into the case, so that the rear ports of the motherboard (USB, etc), match up with the backplate holes. Screw the board into the chassis using the hex-head screws. Plug the fiddly wires for the various case switches and LEDs into the motherboard, and any USB ports.
The Hard Drive
Locate the lower drive-cage in the chassis, and slide the drive into place, with the power and SATA cable terminals facing back into the chassis, and the screw-holes on the drive visible. Now screw it into place using two of the round-headed screws that came with your motherboard. Take the right-hand side panel of the chassis off, and do the same the other side.
The DVD-RW
Reaching into the top drive-bay at the front of the chassis, pop out one of the optical-drive-bay covers on the front panel. (You may also have to remove a partially punched-out disposable metal panel in the case itself.) Now slide the DVD-RW in from the front until the front bezel is neatly lined up with the rest of the drive-bay covers. Now just as you did with the hard drive, take four round-head screws and screw two into each side to secure it to the drive bay.
The Graphics Card
Locate the PCI-Express slot on your motherboard: this is where that lovely 8800GTS is going to sit. Now hover the card over the slot, as this will help you work out which of the backplates you need to remove to fit the card. When you've popped these out, take the card and slide it into the slot until it clicks into place (there's a retention bracket at the far end of the PCI-E slot). Using a pair of hex-head screws, fasten the card's backplate to the chassis backplate.
Hook It All Up
Run down this list, and place the correct power-blocks from the PSU into their respective component sockets:
Motherboard: long 24-pin ATX block and four-pin CPU power block
DVD-RW: 4-pin flat Molex block and IDE ribbon cable to motherboard IDE socket
Hard drive: flat SATA power block and SATA data cable to any available SATA port on motherboard
Graphics card: Six-pin PCI-Express power block
Shut Up Shop
A tidy case means better airflow means better cooling, so you might like to fasten adjacent wires together with plastic cable-ties.
In fact, we don't care whether you might like to do it or not: just do it. It'll keep your cables away from spinning fans, and keep things tidy for when you next delve inside.
Now all your components are securely in place and hooked up to the PSU, replace the side panels of your case. Pat yourself on the back: you've just built a PC, and saved yourself about £200.
Buying Online?
Then make sure your PC is spyware clean. Use Spybot and Adaware to clean your system before you start typing-in your credit card details. Next, wonder why you never did this before.
Shipping
Many UK component vendors rely on professional couriers rather than Parcelforce to deliver your goods. If you're out when they deliver, your bits are stored overnight at the nearest depot, and they'll try again the next day. These depots are often out of town, and only near cities, so it can be a real pain to get hold of your stuff. If you're at work during the day and there's no one at home to take delivery, get them delivered to your workplace instead.
Memory Matters
Your motherboard will recognise the speed of your memory from the word go, so you shouldn't have to alter the timings in the BIOS at all - until you come to overclock it, that is. We recommend running your memory in dual-channel mode for a cheap speed-boost; simply install both sticks into the same coloured DIMM slots to achieve this.
BUY IT!
Motherboard £65.08 (Asus P5B)
Sporting Intel's excellent 965 chipset, the P5B ticks all the boxes for us, as it supports Core 2 Duo processors, dual-channel memory up to 800MHz, and of course, will take any PCI-Express graphics card we choose. In our experience, Asus boards are competent and reliable, and this model, with its 1066MHz FSB and decent overclocking headroom, is just the ticket for a fast rig.
Processor £103.11 (Intel Core 2 Duo E6320)
Chipzilla's legendary Core 2 architecture is at the heart of this dual-core chip, and the reason we've chosen the lowly 1.86GHz model is that its overclocking potential is massive, even using the bundled stock Intel heatsink. With a little bit of tweaking, you can wind this baby up so that it performs like a high-end Core 2 Duo processor worth £400.
Memory £65.54 (OCZ PC6400 800MHZ 5-5-5-12)
We just wouldn't bother playing a game on a rig with less than 2Gb memory these days, especially if Vista is involved. This 2Gb kit from OCZ fits the bill perfectly: it's fast, it boasts reasonable latencies, and its quite acceptably priced.
3D card £181.13 (XFX GeForce 8800GTS)
Simply put, there's never been such a performance-to-price sweetspot as that offered by the 320Mb iteration of nVidia's 8800 GTS design. If you need a yardstick to measure it by, then think of it like this: it offers 80% of the power of the fabled 8800GTX, for 60% of the price. It's a card that is DirectX 10-ready, and also runs DX9 games effortlessly.
Resolution-wise, its natural home is between 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 - any more than this is stretching its abilities to keep pace. Stock tends to be very low on these cards at most etailers as they sell like hot cakes, but any brand will do; stock cards are identical in performance, regardless of their brand.
Hard drive £63.98
Featuring half a terabyte of storage, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 is not only capacious for the ridiculously low asking price, but its speed credentials are impressive to boot. With 16Mb cache and its SATA300 interface, you can expect some pretty swift level-loading.
DVD-RW £19.35 (NEC AD-7170A-0B Multiwriter Black 18x DVDRW)
No frills here: this model from NEC plays and records DVDs, and that's all you really need, especially when the asking price is so low. Wootings!
Chassis £37.51 (Antec NSK6000)
While we could have gone for a pricier, sexier chassis, this baseline model from Antec fits our bill nicely. There's room enough for all our components, and the price is right. However, if you want your PC to look as good as it plays, feel free to shop around.
PSU £40.89 (EZ-Cool PS900Tornado 700W)
700W is enough juice on tap for today - and indeed tomorrow, should you decide to change your mobo for an SLI model, and whack in a second graphics card. This model from EZ-Cool is also perfectly quiet, and rather pleasing in its shiny black. There are much higher specification PSUs available - up to around 1200w - but that would be overkill for our system. If we were running an 8800 Ultra, or maybe a pair, plus a quad-core processor and a bunch of drives, we'd consider it. As it stands, 700w is quite enough.
BUILD IT!
The CPU and Heatsink
Raise the lever beside the socket, and carefully seat the CPU: it only fits one way. Lock the arm back into place. Place the heatsink/fan block over the CPU slot, ensuring that its power cable can reach the power pins on the mobo. With a flathead screwdriver carefully press on the leg-locks to seat each of the heatsink's legs into its hole in the motherboard, locking them with a 90 degree twist.
The RAM
Open two of the DIMM sockets on the mobo, just below the CPU socket. Use identically coloured ones, as you want your memory running in dual-channel mode - by popping down the clips at either end. Orient the RAM stick so the cutaway on the bottom matches a tooth in the slot. Press firmly but carefully on each end of the stick, until the retention clips spring back into place.
The Motherboard
Replace the flimsy metal backplate in your case with the one that came with your mobo. Place the motherboard into the case, so that the rear ports of the motherboard (USB, etc), match up with the backplate holes. Screw the board into the chassis using the hex-head screws. Plug the fiddly wires for the various case switches and LEDs into the motherboard, and any USB ports.
The Hard Drive
Locate the lower drive-cage in the chassis, and slide the drive into place, with the power and SATA cable terminals facing back into the chassis, and the screw-holes on the drive visible. Now screw it into place using two of the round-headed screws that came with your motherboard. Take the right-hand side panel of the chassis off, and do the same the other side.
The DVD-RW
Reaching into the top drive-bay at the front of the chassis, pop out one of the optical-drive-bay covers on the front panel. (You may also have to remove a partially punched-out disposable metal panel in the case itself.) Now slide the DVD-RW in from the front until the front bezel is neatly lined up with the rest of the drive-bay covers. Now just as you did with the hard drive, take four round-head screws and screw two into each side to secure it to the drive bay.
The Graphics Card
Locate the PCI-Express slot on your motherboard: this is where that lovely 8800GTS is going to sit. Now hover the card over the slot, as this will help you work out which of the backplates you need to remove to fit the card. When you've popped these out, take the card and slide it into the slot until it clicks into place (there's a retention bracket at the far end of the PCI-E slot). Using a pair of hex-head screws, fasten the card's backplate to the chassis backplate.
Hook It All Up
Run down this list, and place the correct power-blocks from the PSU into their respective component sockets:
Motherboard: long 24-pin ATX block and four-pin CPU power block
DVD-RW: 4-pin flat Molex block and IDE ribbon cable to motherboard IDE socket
Hard drive: flat SATA power block and SATA data cable to any available SATA port on motherboard
Graphics card: Six-pin PCI-Express power block
Shut Up Shop
A tidy case means better airflow means better cooling, so you might like to fasten adjacent wires together with plastic cable-ties.
In fact, we don't care whether you might like to do it or not: just do it. It'll keep your cables away from spinning fans, and keep things tidy for when you next delve inside.
Now all your components are securely in place and hooked up to the PSU, replace the side panels of your case. Pat yourself on the back: you've just built a PC, and saved yourself about £200.
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and most of the stuff is not available here, anyway..
