Final Check

[Antar Bolaeisk]

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

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

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.

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

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.

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

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

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.

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

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))