Check my build

Garyj881

Garyj881

Garyj881

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Joined
29 Sep 2006
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2,164
Location
West Yorks
Hi, looking at building a budget core 2 duo system and wanted to make sure i havent missed anything b4 i buy. :)

e4300 cpu - £77.54
Artic cooling freezer pro - £17.61
Asus P5B - £76.56
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 £123.36
Asus GeForce 8600 GT - £105.74
Coolermaster RS550 550W - £82.24
Antec Nine Hundred £64.61

Total £547.66 + carriage inc vat :)

Gary
 
I would swap the 8600GT for the X1950pro, its cheaper i think in the clearance section if its still there. But overall it looks pretty good. But you will need a hard drive if you dont have one. The Gigabyte DS3 is also a good board, and i would choose it over the P5B. Mainly cause i know Gigabyte better and have never had an Asus board before :p

You could overclock the E4300 to at least 3GHz.

EDIT: here is the X1950pro
 
This is about £5 more even including carriage but the graphics card is significantly better, in fact if you buy the OcUK 320mb 8800GTS then it is about £10 cheaper. I haven't included an aftermarket cooler however as the stock one should do for basic overclocking and the PSU is also probably better. You don't have optical or hard drives listed but I don't know if you already have them. :)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £54.99
(£64.61) £54.99
(£64.61)
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £57.99
(£68.14) £57.99
(£68.14)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £154.99
(£182.11) £154.99
(£182.11)
Asus P5B (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £65.99
(£77.54) £65.99
(£77.54)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £458.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
Vat : £82.23
Total : £552.12
 
OK thanks guys.

Firstly i have two 200gb sata 72k seagate hdd so im there there.

I can afford to get the 8800 (i think) but would the X1950 support DX10?

I have looked at both the DS3/4 and P5B motherboards and to be honest will decide on the day.

I have a budget of around £600 inc delivery, and that doesnt include things like case fans, as5 cpu paste etc so reall £550 is my budget.

Thanks Gary.
 
Here is my suggestion. Pretty similar to semi-pro's, but includes aftermarket cooler:

6332qv8.jpg
 
OK that looks good apart from the memory,s houldnt i be going for atleast 6400 memory and what about the psu shouldnt i go for a minimum of 600W for a 8800 GFX card?

Thanks again
 
The Ballistix selected apparantly uses the same chips as the PC6400 Ballistix and the Corsair 520w is one of the best PSUs on the market currently so will have no problems with the 8800GTS. :)
 
The Corsair will be more than enough for the 8800 series. The ram overclocks like a beast. Some people have got it to 1000mhz which is far above the PC6400.
 
Ok guys again thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

So ill stick with that power supply, the memory im still not sure cos if it still oc to the speed of the 6400 and beyond, wouldnt the 6400 run much more smoothly and be faster as standard for little extra?

Now the mobo im thinking towards the P5B as a origionally said nut quite a few are saying go for the DS3 now whats the real difference?

Do they both overclock as good as each other?

I heard one guy said he was running the DS3 and it went kaput on him so changed to the P5B and noticed an improvement in performance(could be due to it being faulty) so is there any benchmarks to compare ?

EDIT:
Ive just read that the heat sinks on the North / south bridge of the P5B are not copper but aluminium and that they are very picky with ram when it comes down to oc'ing so the DS3 it is me thinks.

Now for the DS3 i think i read something about a bios update or a revision on the mob is this true ?

Gary
 
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There are four revisions for the DS3: 1.0, 1.3, 2.0, 3.3. You will probably most likely get the 3.3 because it is the newest. Some say the older ones clock better, but the rev3.3 natively supports 1333mhz fsb processors which could be useful for the new generation of cpus.

The DS3 does have fairly regular bios updates. The newest is the f11b which is beta and the only new thing in them is the support for the E6320 and E6420 processors. f10 are the newest proper bios, but the f11b is fine.
 
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