Do you know of any better components ?

[jigger]

Im building a new rig with a bubget of £300ish to replace my Opteron 180 at 3ghz with 2gb Ballistix tracer and a DFI Expert.

The new system needs to cover this.

Be a lot faster than my Opteron setup
Overclock as much as possible
Have an SLI Chipset (option of a 8800 gx2)
Have three usable PCI slots
2gb of ram
And on board RIAD3 would be handy.


This is the most tempting rig that i come up with so far so, but im not sure on the EVGA MB but the price realy helps with the budget, what do you guys think?

EVGA nForce 650i Ultra £58.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-003-EA&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=205


2Gb G.Skill DDR2 PC2-8000 HZ Series 4-4-4-5 £130.
Expensive but Mega fast and tight timmings( 1.1ghz and at 4-4-4-5 )


Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 £115.
The more i read about this CPU the more i like it.

 

[V|per]

Pointless getting the above ram for that price, when some crucial ballistix would perform just as well, maybe not quite as tight timings, but the performance difference would be unnoticable, and the money saved would allow you to get a quad core.

 

[WJA96]

The EVGA 650i Ultra isn't an SLi chipset.

The best SLi 650i board is the Gigabyte N650i-DS4 but you might be better off with a B-Grade Striker Extreme.

Buying expensive RAM with these boards is a bit of a waste too, as the FSB's you'll be hitting can usually be covered by the cheaper PC8500 RAM like Crucial Ballistix PC8500

The E6750 is an excellent processor for the money.

 

[Tetras]

You do realise that unless you have mega-monster graphics power you'll get no performance increase in games, right?

At least with a quad you'd get extra cores but E6750 from a 3 Ghz Opty 180? Seems to me how to spend £300 and be dissapointed.

 

[jigger]

If i went for this,

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 £188
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 £112
B Grade** Asus Striker Extreme nForce 680 £106

What HSF and PSU would i need keeping in mind the 8800gx2


Also the conroe seems to respond very well to high speed low latancy ram take a look here.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/print/core2duo-memory-guide.html

 

[Cob]

You're looking for a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme heatsink and a decent 120mm fan anyway. No idea about the PSU as I don't keep an eye on them.

But you'd be far better with two 2x1gb pairs of decent PC6400 (like the Ballistix) than a single pair of the £130 G.Skill.

 

[jigger]

You do realise that unless you have mega-monster graphics power you'll get no performance increase in games, right?

At least with a quad you'd get extra cores but E6750 from a 3 Ghz Opty 180? Seems to me how to spend £300 and be dissapointed.

I wasnt planing on upgrading the Opty setup any time soon, im more than happy with it , only doing it because my nephew needs a faster system( xp 2000+).
I was planning to build him a cheap e21** rig for xmas but now looking to give him the Opteron and build this.