Building cheap Doom box in UK problematical

BUILDING A Doom III compatible PC in UK is a little bit more problematic than in USA as two of the main components - the 6800 and the Sempron are as rare as dodo's teeth. Deals do not include P&P, software aka DOOM III and Windows XP or assembly. Items are in stock or in auction at time of writing. If you ever find cheaper prices elsewhere in UK or in any countries specified here, don't hesitate to contact me.

Most places where you go will give you a no-stock sign on the elusive Geforce 6800 series. Even large outfits like Dabs or Komplett seem to struggle to get some in stock. The cheapest available Geforce 6800 in UK at the time of writing is at Ebuyer. 35 Leadtek WinFast A400TDH GeForce 6800 128MB in their retail boxes were awaiting buyers to snap them up at £214.50 a piece. If you are really looking forward to save money, then why not wait for the Dabsvalue Geforce 6800 which will retail hopefully for £182 a piece, more than £30 less than ebuyer's. In fact, the card is a Geforce 6800 from Inno3D which you can see on vr-zone forums. The card features a cooling system by none other than Coolermaster and got 2.2ns Hynix memory equivalent to 900+MHz....

For the motherboard and the CPU, motherboard used is a Jetway S755 Max which as you can guess uses the SIS755 chipset. It features two DIMM sockets, six USB2.0, Raid 0 and Raid 1, AGP slot, five PCI slot and a normal ethernet adaptor as well as AC97 audio based on Realtek solution. Also included is an extra PCI bracket featuring SPDIF I/O. While there is only one review of the motherboard on the net - by a South African website, we might guess that its performance will be spot on entry level, even though it once earned the coveted Anandtech's Gold Editor's award for the best Athlon64 chipset. There is only one left at dabs.com, and its price is a shade under £50. For the CPU, Savastore sets the availability of the Sempron 3100+, the cheapest socket 754 processor you can get, at latest next week. The price is a lowly £88.07. Not that much expensive for a boxed processor which can support the NX bit and proves to be a DOOM III fanatic.

For the rest, I chose two 512MB Ebuyer Extra Value RAM for £95.02. They are PC3200 compatible - DDR400 and seem to be manufactured by Elixir, a brand known also in Singapore. They will provide enough leeway for overclocking.The optical drive I chose is an Emprex 8x4x12 Dual DVD+/-RW which costs only £39.95. Yep, a 8X DVD Writer for under £40.. Where? At PC World Component store. The drive is also a fairly standard 40x24x40x. Now who said that DVD is expensive? The drive has a 2MB buffer and will probably prove to be a steady winner with budget buyers. The accompanying hard disk is from ebuyer and is a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9. It has an unformatted capacity of 80GB, average seek time of 9ms, a 7200rpm spindle speed and a buffer size of 2MB. The price? £37.01. The last storage component is ye ol' floppy disk which we sourced from ebuyer again for £3.99. Brand is Alps.

To display the gory scenes of an Alien Marine being annihilated, the Eizo F724 monitor is the ideal display. Though it weighs a hefty 32Kg, it will provide you with almost lifesize pictures with its 21" size and maximum resolution of 1600x1280. It has a dot pitch of 0.28mm andhas both D-Sub and BNC connections. At £47 at mcscom.co.uk, you cannot find a cheaper supersize monitor.

For input devices, we have chosen a wireless RF keyboard and a wireless optical mouse which is currently going for only £11.75 for the set at aria.co.uk. Similar products go for twice as much on Ebay.. Who said Ebay was cheap? The items are black and silver with batteries and connect to your computer via the USB port. It has 11 direct access multimedia keys with volume control. Overall, they should prove to be worthy companions to the DOOM III addict.

The Audigy ES and the Inspire 5.1 P580 six speaker set complete the picture. Featuring an on-board 24-bit/96kHz DAC, the Audigy ES delivers crystal-clear 5.1 digital music and movie surround sound at an ultra-quiet noise level of 100dB SNR. And with the powerful EAX ADVANCED HD support, DOOM III is guaranteed to come alive. £61 for the set.

Last but not least, some more accessories like the casing - the KG888 with a 400 W PSU, front USB, audio, Firewire capable of handling full ATX motherboard and the long Geforce 6800, also round cables to allow air circulation and some fans as well to cool components efficiently when overclocking. All of which can be purchased for less than £25 at ebuyer.

Total = £545+vat. Note that you can even go further down. For example, you might save some serious money by going for a used motherboard like the K8VT800Pro for £44.53 which adds more functionalities - UAJ function, Gigabit, Firewire etc due to its latest and by chpping the separate sound card or going for something cheaper. A £499+VAT DOOM III computer is absolutely possible. µ