Final Check

Antar Bolaeisk · 7 Jan 2007 at 11:58

After ages perusing the vast wealth of knowledge contained in these boards I've finally decided on what components to get. I was wondering if anyone could take a quick glance over it and spot any problems or improvements, thanks.

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATAII
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2
Sapphire X1600 Pro 512MB DDR2
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS
NEC ND7173 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter
Belinea 1925S1W 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming case

The Graphics card is just to hold me over until DX10 cards come down in proce a bit.

I was hoping to clock the CPU a goog bit higher (who wouldn't) so I was wondering what sort of extra cooling I might need?

With cooling would a Scythe Kama-Meter, or something similar to measure temperature and control fan speeds, be recommended?

Finally, would it be worth going for the next step up PSU?

Cheers

semi-pro waster · 7 Jan 2007 at 12:44

I'd just buy the 256mb version of the X1600pro, it gives you an extra £15 to put towards a DX10 graphics card.

I doubt I'd bother with a Kama-meter at the moment or any sort of drive bay controller, for most people it isn't necessary and as long as you pay a bit of attention to the system temperatures initially and get it all sorted you should find no problems. An Arctic Freezer 7 is a good and cheap CPU cooler, a Tuniq Tower or Scythe Ninja are a bit more expensive but both a bit better.

The PSU is fine and offers easily enough power for DX10 cards also.

Good luck with the build.

agnes · 7 Jan 2007 at 14:35

seems like a sporty rig to me that will server well and has some attributes for upgradeing later on, but like the previous post said, i wouldnt bother with the 512, go for 256.

your money though

ags

Tetras · 7 Jan 2007 at 15:52

I wouldn't get it all, X1600 Pro is a pretty nasty card, get this 7600 GT on this week only @ £84.59 (inc VAT) if you can stretch your budget (well worth it):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-019-BG

Or this 7600 GS @ £69.31 (inc VAT) for slightly less money than the X1600 Pro 512MB:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-082-LT

Finally, would it be worth going for the next step up PSU?

Stick with the HX520, it has some 40A / 480 Watt +12v power, you aren't gonna get past that without SLIing GTXes and having a hefty rig.

Dark_Angel · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:04

semi-pro waster said:
I'd just buy the 256mb version of the X1600pro, it gives you an extra £15 to put towards a DX10 graphics card.

That is what I am doing. The 1950 pro can last me till march/april then I will sell it on the members market or something, and grab either the R600 OR G80 based GPU.

I was tempted to get the XT 512MB, but I figure that the pro 256MB should run even Oblivion pretty well, and I would rather save the extra money to a DX10 card. Hopefully NV or ATI will reduce the price by march or april too

Tetras · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:26

That is what I am doing. The 1950 pro

He wants to buy an X1600 Pro 256MB and it certainly won't play Oblivion very well, playable perhaps but a 7600 GT would grind it into the dust. An X1950 Pro is so much faster than an X1600 Pro it isn't even funny and it is quite a bit faster than a 7600 GT too

Antar Bolaeisk · 8 Jan 2007 at 19:49

Thanks semi-pro waster for the tip, the Artic Freezer 7, might eventaully look for something a bit cooler, seems like it would be up to the task.

Thanks Agnes, Tetras and Dark_Angel for the GPU info, think I'll go for that BFG 7600GT you recommended Tetras not too much of a stretch and should do me for a while yet.

One last thing, thinking of possibly getting the Abit AW9D-MAX 975X socket instead of the DQ6, would this be a good move, heard there might be some problem using the pci slot on it.

Also, Might get the OcUK Value Hanns-G 19" Widescreen for the DVI input.

Thanks again everyone for the valuable help.

semi-pro waster · 9 Jan 2007 at 09:17

The main problem with motherboards based on the 975X chipset and the lower Conroes in the range (6300+6400) is that that chipset is generally not as good at hitting high FSB speeds as the 965 chipset is so overclocking isn't as assured (albeit no overclocking is guaranteed of course).

I don't know too much about monitors so I'll refrain from advising other than to check in the Monitors sub-forum and see what the recommendations are on there.

Antar Bolaeisk · 9 Jan 2007 at 22:57

Actually, it's a bit silly me spending too much on a motherboard as what I intend to do is upgrade in 2-3 years time to a quad-core (or better

), when they're at a more reasonable price and also get an RD600 board (i think that's the term for it anyway, one that'll run dual ATI DX10 cards at 16x anyway or whatever the equivalent will be by then and a PhysX, card if they ever take off) besides this won't be a multi GPU set-up till then.

Will just stick with the DS4 and be more than happy. :cool:

Thanks for all the help and info Semi-Pro Waster and everyone else, much appreciated.

Antar Bolaeisk · 16 Jan 2007 at 14:38

Right, so that final check was meant to be the final check but just about the time when i was about to press buy word came through on a new processor, the e4300 and so I decided to wait a while until the reviews started flooding in across these boards about them before commiting to either the 6300 or the 4300.

In this time frame different RAM came to my attention;

Team Elite 2gb 6400

Does anyone know how this stuff performs as I can find very little information on it and specifically, would it be better than the Geil RAM, which I'm after reading a very scathing review about putting it at the bottom of the list for most of the benchmarks, (not sure if I'm allowed to mention the website that review was on though) or the OCZ Platinum?

Getting DS3 instead of DS4 because I won't be using dual graphics with this set-up and as far as I can see that would be the only difference between them though correct me if I'm wrong.

Finally, getting the Artic Cooling 7 but would it be a good investment to get a heatsink for the Northbridge as well especially when i'm overclocking it. I was considering the Zalman Blue Flower Northbridge Heatsink (Zalman ZM-NBF47 Fanless Northbridge Cooler) but would this fit on the DS3?

Sorry, hopefully this should be the final check, thanks.

semi-pro waster · 16 Jan 2007 at 18:11

Antar Boaleisk said:
Getting DS3 instead of DS4 because I won't be using dual graphics with this set-up and as far as I can see that would be the only difference between them though correct me if I'm wrong.

The ability to Crossfire graphics cards is a major difference but you also miss out on firewire, 7.1 sound (it has 5.1) and it doesn't have quite such a good cooling system on the motherboard but still more than adequate for most uses.

I don't imagine the Northbridge will get all that hot but possibly worth it anyway.

For the Team Elite the best suggestion I can give is to search the Memory sub-forum as there is bound to be a few users in there who have it.

Dark_Angel · 16 Jan 2007 at 19:15

Tetras said:
He wants to buy an X1600 Pro 256MB and it certainly won't play Oblivion very well, playable perhaps but a 7600 GT would grind it into the dust. An X1950 Pro is so much faster than an X1600 Pro it isn't even funny and it is quite a bit faster than a 7600 GT too

I know, I was just saying that I was doing the waiting game too

Antar Bolaeisk · 16 Jan 2007 at 21:42

Thanks again for all the help guys, noticed the firewire and 7.1 sound (or lack therof) but neither are a problem as I'll be getting an X-Fi and I don't use firewire at all, I just have no hardware that makes use of it so neither would be a loss. As for not crossfiring, I intend to be it will be a good bit down the line when there are boards to support dual DX10 cards that don't cost the same as a small planet.

Thanks again.

Antar.

(P.S. That's the final, final spec! (definately))