Check my Spec'

Sinque · 23 Jul 2009 at 16:12

If you have been reading my other monster problematic thread you will have read I need a new setup. Happy has given me this spec' and was wondering if there is better for the money or if it's perfectly fine:

Minus the thermal paste as I didn't realise some came already on the CPU

Does that look reasonable?

HazardO · 23 Jul 2009 at 16:29

Well what ever you do, you don't want to replace the Arctic cooling MX2 paste that comes with the cooler with that Akasa ****. Save yourself £2.29 right there.

Without telling us your budget, it's difficult to recommend alternatives, but although that CPU will overclock well, it has a very small L2 cache, which will be a bottleneck compared to the dual cores with 4 or 6M cache.

Sinque · 23 Jul 2009 at 17:01

HazardO said:
Well what ever you do, you don't want to replace the Arctic cooling MX2 paste that comes with the cooler with that Akasa ****. Save yourself £2.29 right there.

Without telling us your budget, it's difficult to recommend alternatives, but although that CPU will overclock well, it has a very small L2 cache, which will be a bottleneck compared to the dual cores with 4 or 6M cache.

Yeah I realised the CPU came with paste, hence why I said minus the thermal paste in my post

My budget is as cheap as possible really, i've broken my computer and need a cheap replacement

HazardO · 23 Jul 2009 at 17:08

So you've still got...

Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
PSU
Case
OS?

If so, it's certainly a bargain. What do you need it for?

Sinque · 23 Jul 2009 at 17:12

HazardO said:
So you've still got...

Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
PSU
Case
OS?

If so, it's certainly a bargain. What do you need it for?

Yeah I only need to replace those three parts. Got a 22" monitor, Saitek Eclipse, MX518, 460W PSU, Gigabyte Aurora case, X-Fi Xtrememusic, 512mb 250 GTS, and XP Pro

It will be used for gaming mainly.

daniel_bourton · 23 Jul 2009 at 17:29

is that mobo sli if not you could seeif you can get a sli one for a litlte bit more future proofing

HazardO · 23 Jul 2009 at 18:37

It's an intel chipset, so no SLI (only the x58 has SLI). I wouldn't worry about SLI, this is a budget build, you would need to look at a much better PSU for SLI, and the CPU would immediately become a huge bottleneck.

Sinque · 23 Jul 2009 at 18:40

Should I try an AMD system?

Happy · 23 Jul 2009 at 19:09

If you wanted to go AMD, then swap the CPU/mobo/cooler for these:-

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £60.98
(£53.03) £60.98
(£53.03)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £51.68
(£44.94) £51.68
(£44.94)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £17.24
(£14.99) £17.24
(£14.99)