Any comments on this <£500 spec?

Dogtanian

Dogtanian

Dogtanian

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Joined
15 Dec 2003
Posts
34
Hi everybody,

I'm thinking of putting the following together (I'll be running vista 64 and already have keyb oard, mouse and display) and wondered whether anyone has any comments. Have I missed anything (I guess that the cables'll come with the mb and that the days of needing a boot floppy for sata drivers are long-gone?) or is there anything that I ought to swap for? Probably won't be overclocking too heavily, but will be playing games a bit. The things that I'm least sure of are the memory (too much choice...) and the the wireless card --- it's a nightmare to find a cheapish one that'll work with vista 64.

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £49.99 (£58.74)
Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £74.99 (£88.11)
OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £59.99 (£70.49)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £61.99 (£72.84)
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £33.99 (£39.94)
Asus DRW-1814BLT 18x18 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - Retail £16.99 (£19.96)
Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Adapter £14.99 (£17.61)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £60.99 (£71.66)
Arctic Cooling MX-1 Thermal Compound £3.99 (£4.69)
Akasa AK-965 Low Noise CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £10.99 (£12.91)

Total : £388.90 (£469.82 inc del)
 
Go for this RAM
Go for an E2140 and overclock it to ~3ghz, its easy peasy i assure you.

Your right you probably wont ever need a floppy drive now.

And with the extra savings, upgrade the heatsink.
 
How about this puppy :D

Budget overclockers rig ;)

f50703322.png


The E6320 will easily clock to 3Ghz and it will scream quite a bit of performance as the EVGA 650i is a top quality board ( Well apart from its rival the P5N-E SLI ) :)

Edit: Crap, I put a silver optical drive in :confused:
 
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For that processor to hit 3ghz (multiplier of 7) the ram would have to reach
857mhz, which im not 100% sure that ram would manage.

The E2140 or E2160 would only need ram fsb of 750mhz, or 667mhz, which the crucial ram can easily get too. And be a lot easier to OC. Although admitedly does have less cache.
 
Thanks for replies so far. Good suggestion re the heatsink --- In fact, I meant to go for the freezer 7 pro before but put the wrong thing in the cart :rolleyes:

Was there any reason for swapping the hdd and dvd? I quite like the idea of lightscribe with the original dvd (as well as it not being silver ;) ).

Thanks for suggesting the change in motherboard --- I hadn't considered anything other than P935 before. Anyone else had much experience with the EVGA 650i ultra?

Finally - the ram. Am thinking of ordering tomorrow, so the crucial ballistix PC5300 isn't an option. Wouldn't I see much benefit from the OCZ platinum I originally suggested or any of the other (cheaper) 6400 memory over the Giel value 5300 that wiggins suggested?
 
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Edited:

Your not going to overclock much so possibly the better bet would be to go for OCZ Platinum Version 6400 or even the Corsair XMS2 6400. A little bit more but would still keep you under £500 as you dont need to bother with the Thermal Paste as semi-pro waster stated.

You can easily do a small overclock to 1333Mhz FSB on the CPU and have it equivalent in speed to an E6600 :D
 
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Dogtanian said:
Was there any reason for swapping the hdd and dvd? I quite like the idea of lightscribe with the original dvd (as well as it not being silver ;) ).
Click to expand...

The Deskstar 5xx have had blazing reviews for being quiet, cool and fast and the Optical Drive I made a boo boo :o

Maybe this would be a better choice. Its black :o , Lightscribe and Sata so you get better airflow.
 
Lol - that's the dvd I originally thought of. I think that I might stick with the E2160 for now --- might upgrade the cpu and gfx sometime next year anyway when dx10's more popular.

So, so far, I've got this:

spec.png
 
In the end, I decided to go for this P35 motherboard rather than the 650i ultra: I've been scared off using ati gfx on an nvidia chipset by a bad experience in the past... Hopefully the P35 should be a bit more future-proof as well.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions guys.
 
Dogtanian said:
In the end, I decided to go for this P35 motherboard rather than the 650i ultra: I've been scared off using ati gfx on an nvidia chipset by a bad experience in the past... Hopefully the P35 should be a bit more future-proof as well.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions guys.
Click to expand...

Enjoy your new soopa-computer :p
 
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