First build and first overclock

JamFace

JamFace

JamFace

Associate
Joined
1 Sep 2006
Posts
32
Hi all, this is gonna be my first build and first overclock too. My initial plan was to build the whole case for as near to £400 as I could get, however after talking to a few mates and trawling some forums, I am considering the following spec:

CPU - Intel core 2 duo E6300
MB - Gigabyte DS3
RAM - Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x512MB)
GFX - XFX GeForce 7600GT 256MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI HDTV OUT
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB
Optical - NEC DVD+-R/RW 16x Dual Layer Beige
Case - Aplus Trooper Mid Tower Case - Piano White With 120mm Front Fan - No PSU
Monitor - HannsG 19" Widescreen TFT Monitor

I am looking at purchasing from a couple of competitors as OCUK don't have all of those things, that little lot comes to £602.90 without P&P

I know I haven't put a CPU cooler or PSU in there, as I am unsure of what to get, I was considering the arctic freezer 7 but couldn't find it on the competitor's site, what's the thermaltake golden orb II like?

Can anyone recommend a PSU?
I came across a Sansun Arctic 500W PSU, it's outputs are:
+3.3-----28A
+5.0-----39A
+12.0----19A
+12.0----20A
-5.0-----0.8A
-12.0----0.8A
+5 VSB--2.5A
Is this any good? I don't know what all that means tbh

The other things I am unsure of are the RAM, is it good enough to get a decent overclock? And the graphics card, as I don't know much about graphics cards.

Any help would be much appreciated
 
if you want to overclock 2gb will be better, much better infact


Also are you going to be playing games? if yes then a better gfx card is needed but that may put you over budget
 
Last edited:
I think if I were to get 2Gb RAM it would need to be the cheapest I could find, would this still give an improvement? I was thinking I could stick another Gb in in about a years time or something to upgrade it.
I'm not heavily into gaming, will be using it mainly for uni work, playing music, videos etc, but do also enjoy playing NFS:MW and GTA:San Andreas now and again
 
semi-pro waster said:
The only problem with 4x512mb Ram is that you have filled all the Ram slots on the motherboard which means you can only run at 2T rather than 1T. If you can I'd wait and save up for a full 2gb kit but if not then Geil Value or maybe Corsair is where my money would go.
Click to expand...


Better to have 2gb but 1gb of good mem is better then 2gb mem i suppose.

Also for those games that card should be fine
 
2GB of ram will be much smoother in the current gen of games, you may get lower clocks on your CPU and thus slower benchmarks, but windows, games and just about everything in the real world would be considerably faster.

2GB of ram is a must for any rig aimed at gaming built today.
 
Ok, so would I see a 40 quid improvement by putting this in instead?
Kingston ValueRAM 2x1G 240Pin DIMM PC2-4300 Non-ECC DDR2 CL4

Bear in mind that I'd be looking to replace/add more RAM in future. Would it be better to get 1gb decent ram now and add another gb later, or get 2gb cheap ram now, and replace it later?

Thanks for the help so far guys, any ideas about that PSU too?
 
I can't really justify spending much more on this machine, that was just the cheapest 2gb kit I could find after a quick look, if anyone knows of any others that are not much more than 100 quid and will give a boost in performance, please say :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom