E2180 whats best board/mem combo

[wiggyuk]

Hi all as the title says really, I am looking to upgrade my PC I currently have a P4 3.2 on a P4c800-E Deluxe I interested in the E2180 because they are cheap and I have heard you can get good overclocks on it, I will also need to upgrade other parts of my PC too can you guys take a look at my PC specs and tell me what I would need.

My PC
P4 3.2 (Northwood)
Asus P4c800-E Deluxe (M/Board)
2 x 256mb PC3200 Corsair CMX256A-3200C2
2 x 512mb PC3200
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
Pioneer DVR-110
Sony DVD Player
Zalman (CNPS7000B-CU) Super Flower Cooler AMD and P4
PSU Jeantech 300w Peak Power
I will also need a new case

I am hoping to upgrade to watercooling in the future so I would need a case that I could fit all the watercooling kit in, cheers guys.

 

[Participant]

Budget.

 

[wiggyuk]

Budget.

Not sure yet to be honest, can you give me a couple of alternatives and the pros and cons between them can you spec me a high end one and a cheaper one ?

 

[DanF]

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (MB-086-GI) £82

And

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (MY-072-OC) £44 per 2gb

Or

OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit (MY-013-OK) £58 per 2gb

The 8500 stuff will give you more future options for OCing, the newer cpu's coming out are pretty much all 1333fsb so the 6400 ram may limit you a little if it doesn't OC well.

The Gigabyte P35 mobo is very solid and good for overclocking on a budget.

4gb of ram is nice if your thinking of going for Vista x64, otherwise 2gb ram is fine for xp 32bit.

 

[fabkat]

You cant go wrong with this combo either...got it delivered the other day including the e2180.
Gigabyte GA_P35_DS3P (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £88
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804) £64

straight in at 3ghz @ 1.328v

 

[wiggyuk]

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (MB-086-GI) £82

And

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (MY-072-OC) £44 per 2gb

Or

OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit (MY-013-OK) £58 per 2gb

The 8500 stuff will give you more future options for OCing, the newer cpu's coming out are pretty much all 1333fsb so the 6400 ram may limit you a little if it doesn't OC well.

The Gigabyte P35 mobo is very solid and good for overclocking on a budget.

4gb of ram is nice if your thinking of going for Vista x64, otherwise 2gb ram is fine for xp 32bit.

You cant go wrong with this combo either...got it delivered the other day including the e2180.
Gigabyte GA_P35_DS3P (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £88
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804) £64

straight in at 3ghz @ 1.328v

So which setup would be best out of these, also what PSU & graphics card would you recommend ?

what's the difference between the two boards listed above ?

 

[str]

You need to replace everything you've listed so you're looking at getting:

case
psu
motherboard
cpu
good cpu cooler as you will be overclocking
memory
graphics card

Depends on your budget but seeing as you're going for the E2180 you're probably looking at buying 2GB DDR2 and a reasonable quality PSU with perhaps the X1950Pro or equivalent graphics card. Your motherboard choice is varied so do you need RAID, Firewire, silent cooling? Is DX10 something you'll want to use?

Do you need a new HDD and will you want to upgrade the system in a year or so with a newer 45nm CPU or more/faster memory?

 

[wiggyuk]

You need to replace everything you've listed so you're looking at getting:

case
psu
motherboard
cpu
good cpu cooler as you will be overclocking
memory
graphics card

Depends on your budget but seeing as you're going for the E2180 you're probably looking at buying 2GB DDR2 and a reasonable quality PSU with perhaps the X1950Pro or equivalent graphics card. Your motherboard choice is varied so do you need RAID, Firewire, silent cooling? Is DX10 something you'll want to use?

Do you need a new HDD and will you want to upgrade the system in a year or so with a newer 45nm CPU or more/faster memory?

Yes this is what I need to upgrade, not sure if I need firewire as I don't know what it is, not sure about silent cooling not that bothered to be honest but I suppose it would be nice also not sure about DX10 what is the advantage of this ?

I probably would be upgrading to a quad in a year or so ?

 

[str]

Firewire is what you use to connect DVi camcorders and the like.

What will you be running on the new PC? Windows Vista and the latest games?

As for DX10 it's the latest DirectX and is only for Windows Vista and while some new games use it and others coming will use it it's not exactly a necessity as they can run on DX9 too.

Also what's your TFT's screen resolution and what resolution will you be using in games?

For upgrading to quad in the future you're best to go for a motherboard that natively supports the 1333 FSB such as a X38/P35/G33/P31 rather than the older P965/975 etc motherboards.

 

[wiggyuk]

Firewire is what you use to connect DVi camcorders and the like.

What will you be running on the new PC? Windows Vista and the latest games?

As for DX10 it's the latest DirectX and is only for Windows Vista and while some new games use it and others coming will use it it's not exactly a necessity as they can run on DX9 too.

Also what's your TFT's screen resolution and what resolution will you be using in games?

For upgrading to quad in the future you're best to go for a motherboard that natively supports the 1333 FSB such as a X38/P35/G33/P31 rather than the older P965/975 etc motherboards.

I'm not sure what I will be running I am running XP at the moment and the things I have heard about Vista are not that great so I am not too sure probably be sticking with XP until I hear positive things about Vista, I am looking to replace my monitor too but not sure which one too yet, I am also not too fussed about upgrading my motherboard when I do decide to upgrade to quad ?

 

[str]

Well what is it you want the new computer for? Ie why are you upgrading and what programs or is it games making you want to upgrade? Need to know what you'll be using it for before can give a clear indication of what your options are.

A good clocking E2180 CPU will run fine on just about any recent Intel 775 board and DDR2 memory is easy to choose based on what overclock you expect to get so it's down to what else you want and why.

 

[wiggyuk]

Well what is it you want the new computer for? Ie why are you upgrading and what programs or is it games making you want to upgrade? Need to know what you'll be using it for before can give a clear indication of what your options are.

A good clocking E2180 CPU will run fine on just about any recent Intel 775 board and DDR2 memory is easy to choose based on what overclock you expect to get so it's down to what else you want and why.

Ok one of the main reasons to upgrade is my current PC is too slow at Exstracting 4gig + RAR files, encoding AVI files and just general use also I cant play any of the latest games on my current PC I am not a hardcore gamer but if a new game came out that I liked the look of I would like to be able to give it a try without my PC saying NO WAY !!!!

I would like to be able to overlock the new setup to the chips maximum stable potential.

 

[str]

You might want to go with a raid setup so how about:

With that setup you could do 3GHz, 3.2GHz, 3.33GHz or 3.6GHz and still have the memory run at it's rated speed. All depends on how well the E2180 you get overclocks.