775 help please.

pastymuncher

pastymuncher

pastymuncher

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Aberlour, NE Scotland
Hi guy's. My son has given me £250 to build a gaming rig. A complete rig too. :eek: Anyway, i have a cunning plan. I can build him a rig that will play games but it will be not that much to shout about. I was thinking of building it around the Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA LGA775 Motherboard which i have found in stock for £41. I was thinking of dropping a P4 524 3.06ghz (533 fsb)or a 630/631 3ghz (800 fsb) cpu in it for the time being and he can have my old Asus V9999GE Gamer Edition agp graphics card. With this motherboard he can upgrade it as, and when, he can afford it, bit by bit. Namely to a C2D after the price drops. The only thing i am not sure of is the memory.

Will a dual channel kit of Corsair (TWIN2X1024-5400C4) 1024MB DDR2 XMS2-5300/5400 (667/675MHz) 4-4-4-12 2x512mb 240pin DIMM Black XMS2 be compatiable with the P4's and any C2D he decides to buy?

Cheer's for your advice. :)
 
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Sounds like a plan.

Yes the memory will work but If money is the problem why not go for OCUK value DDR2??

For a little extra you can also get a Pentium D 820 dual core instead of P4.
 
Because i am not getting it from OCUK. Only paying one postage charge is part of the plan and i can get a brand new 524 for £44, 630 for £49 or a 631 for £52. That memory also only cost's £67.84 as well.

I did think of going for a Pentium D but as he is going to upgrade to C2D when he can afford to i did'nt see any point. Was tempted though as i found them from £58.
 
steve258 said:
Sorry just noticed you're in the states.

Those are very good prices, that case i'd go for the 631.
Click to expand...

Since when has Scotland been in America? I mean, I know they want independence, but moving 3000 miles is a bit excessive, isn't it? :D
 
Deiwos said:
Since when has Scotland been in America? I mean, I know they want independence, but moving 3000 miles is a bit excessive, isn't it? :D
Click to expand...

LOL shows how rubbish I am in geography!! :p
 
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I know the two faced Labour government is all pally with the yanks but Scotland has'nt drifted all that distance. We are waiting for independance before we up anchor and motor off to warmer climes. Taking our oil resources with us of course. :p

So there's no problem with the speed of that memory for any of the chips then?
 
About 6 months ago I picked up a used Dell of similar spec for £120. 915 chipset, P4 3GHz, 512MB DDR2, 80GB hard drive, on board LAN/Video/Sound. That price even included a USB keyboard and optical mouse. All you'd need on top of that to play games is a graphics card (PCI Express in this case).

Since that was 6 months ago, I bet you could get a Pentium D level system for a similar price.
 
pastymuncher said:
We are waiting for independance
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I don't see what benefit independance will ever have...

BUT away from politics :p

I'd stay away from 533Mhz FSB's if I were you - I had one and it just didn't perform well for me... I think, even if he is gonna upgrade again soonish, you should get an 800Mhz :)
 
I would'nt touch a Dell with a barge pole. Anyway, he would have no upgrade path then as Dells are such a pain to upgrade. The plan is in my first post.

Ok then, i will go with the 630/631. Will that ram be ok or do i need faster stuff? Never built an Intel pc before. :confused:
 
That ram's fine unless he's gonna overclock :) 6400 would be nice, but 5400 is fine when you're on a budget!
 
He thinks overclocking is when you overwind a clock. :D

Cheer's for that. I will have a look for 6400 at the same place to see how the price differs.

*Edit* They have budget 6400 2x512mb at the same price. Not sure what to do now. Bear in mind he's going to go with C2D when he can afford it after the price drops.
 
Uhm... tough one... I'd be tempted to go for the 6400, but un-branded ram tends to have a higher failure rate! But a majority of people who use it have no problems at all.

Yeah, I think I would go for the 6400 unbranded over the 5400 branded.
 
OK, cheers. :D

One last question. I know P4's run hot but will a 65nm be much cooler than a 90nm. Does it work the same way as AMD chips were the smaller fabrication menas cooler running more efficient chips?
 
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Yes the 6 series P4 is certainly cooler but not by a lot. With regards to RAM - yes both PC6400 and PC5300 will be fine:

Both at stock settings:
P4 - 800FSB - DDR2 400 PC3200
C2D - 1066FSB - DDR2 533 PC4200

As said unless you are ocing both will be fine, but will personally go for PC6400.
 
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Am i right in thinking then, that a P4 with a 800mhz fsb uses a quad pumped 200 bus?

If that's so DDR2 6400 runs at 800mhz, presumably 400x2? I suppose that means that for the P4 (gone for the 631 by the way) the memory speed will drop to 200mhz/DDR2 400? :confused: :confused:

Sorry about all the questions but i have never used ddr2 or anything Intel.
 
Yes the mem speed will run at DDR2 400 by default, unless you run a FSB:RAM - 1:2 divider to run mem twice as fast as FSB to bring the speed back up to DDR2 800.
 
Did'nt know you could do that.

So really if i stuck with the XMS2 5300 667mhz kit i could still run that at 200mhz to give the P4 it's 800fsb. That way he gets a decent kit of branded memory instead of some stuff i have never heard of and it will still be good with a C2D?
 
God dammit. With all these flaming questions i have been asking the damn stuffs gone out of stock!!!! :(

Still need to know the answer to the last question though. Last one. I promise. ;)
 
Yes that is perfectly fine, doesn't matter what memory if it's used with a P4 it will default at DDR2 400 PC3200 unless configured otherwise.

Oh bummer :(
 
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