First Intel build advice appreciated

Plec

Plec

Plec

Soldato
Joined
19 Apr 2003
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Ok, fatherhood has taken me completely out of the hardware loop for 3 years. From reading the forums it seems that Intel is now the dominating chip for ‘bang-for-buck’ but as for the motherboard side of things I’m still a little confused as there seems to be so many variances around the same boards.

I’m thinking along the lines of the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz
A P35 chip set possibly – I normally buy Asus but people on here seem to favour the Gigabyte – but which one?
Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT 256MB GDDR3
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit

My understanding is that the P35 boards are the more future proof – someone please correct me if I’m wrong. My only real concern is the SLI factor. Is it worth buying an SLI ready board with the view that in 6 months time the 8600GT will be cheap enough to warrant a 2nd indulgent buy or is it wiser to buy a single slotted pci-e board & wait for the 8800 to drop in a year or so?

Any advice appreciated. I must stress I like stability. I like clocking, within reason, but stability & silence is key for me these days. I use my rig for work & gaming - Crysis and Vista being the reason for this upgrade.
 
Hello there.

There is nothing wrong with the chip you have chosen, and should be able to reach a decent clock with that chip providing you have a good heatsink.

As for motherboard, the Gigabyte boards are indeed good, and the majority of people opt for the DS3. My personal fav is the Asus P5N32 deluxe, but if you want a P35 board, then the DS3 is the best bet.

I'd recommend checking out the motherboard forum for their opinions, and get a feel for what people are saying.

As for the rest, seems fine, although, if you could stretch to £200 a 8800GTS is probably a better bet than an 8600.
 
Twinblade said:
My personal fav is the Asus P5N32 deluxe
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Oh Nooo! Not those P5N32's. They have horrible memory issues and sometimes don't even post with 4 sticks at certain speeds.

I would go for the P35C_DS3R, it supports BOTH DDR2 & DDR3 memory and is about as future proof as you can get at the moment + the P35 suppots the new Intel 45nm processors.

You would probobly be wanting to look at the Ballistix PC5300 for the RAM, it clocks well above 1000MHz at very tight timings indeed, I beleive it clocks the same as the PC6400 stuff and is cheaper.

The 8600GT will be just fine if you don't have a huge budget, however. I would avoid SLI because the improvement isn't massive and its much easier and in some cases cheaper, to sell your existing card and get a new one such as a 8800GTS.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys.

Looks like it's a P35 board – single PCI-E. Is the Gigabyte P35C_DS3R best value for money?

I would love an 8800 gfx, Twinblade, but unfortunately funds restrict me to a 8600 – but thanks for the info.

Jaffa_Cake, thanks for the tip on the memory – I’ll definitely look into that.

Would the 'Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro' CPU Cooler enable me to get the most out of the CPU – on a budget?
 
Would the 'Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro' CPU Cooler enable me to get the most out of the CPU
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I would have said no if the sentance was like that, but since you added " – on a budget?" too, I'd probably say yes :)

Got one myself, can reach 3.2 Ghz (with a 6400) and on a normal day I get around 43c idle / 55c load, but my room is kinda hot constantly since the boiler for the house is in the loft directly above my room. I've seen people reaching 3ghz - 3.3 ghz using a e63xx chip with the same cooler. Albeit there are better coolers out there, but for the price the AF7 Pro is very nice.
 
Whats your total budget?

I would say the AC7 would be fine, but overclocked and on a hot day it does tend to get a little bit too hot.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys.

Total budget - 350 ideally. For MB, CPU (intel), 2 gig mem, & 8600 gfx.

The only reason i've thought about extra cooling is because during my forum searches i've noticed that the 'Intel Core 2 Duo E6320' is apparently great for clocking. So for the sake of another £20 (370) I’d be happy to up the budget. Obviously the MB would need to be a clocker too - but the Gigabyte, in all its guises, seems to be a winner?

This total upgrade has only come about because I wasn't prepared to pay £150 for an AGP 7900 card. But I’m trying to reign myself in from spending too much as i know from past experience it's easy to spend an extra 100 more than you planned.

Having said that - if the speed or future add-ons warranted it i would spend an extra £50.

Thanks for the input, appreciated.
 
Heres my attempt at a spec, although you could probobly drop the CPU to a E6320 to keep in budget. You can still expect 3.2GHz clocks from them easily enough.

379spec.jpg


That ram will clock to PC8500 speeds 1066MHz+ at very tight timings.
 
i've just this minute (4am yaaawwwnn) finished building up a gigabyte based P35C_DS3R matched up with some geil 800mhz Ultra low latency ram (2x 2gig kits), nice and cheap and not many threads about them running burning hot and dying coughballastixcough and she's running sweet as a nut, everythings at default volts and at the mo and no ctd's yet and just ran some 3dmark and she sailed through. using a scythe ninja rev b (tight around the caps with 1/4 mm clearance) with a scythe s-flex 1600rpm (at 1500 and still quiet) fan the e6600 is idleing at 29c and loading at 50c, so not bad so far? did'nt fance that ugly noctua thingy blurrgh

the bios looks completly alien coming from a 3year old? abit-nf7 xp barton but i'll just have to read the manual.

need to install more stuff....coffeeeeeee! :p
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

I have value geil memory in my present rig and have been very pleased with its performance so will probably substitute DDr2 geil for that of the crucial.

I'll be very interested in your total build 'dunker' & how easy it was to get stable etc. What gfx are you putting in it?

Best of luck with it.
 
woah sore eyes long day yesterday, i'll just get a cuppa then i'll edit this with the full build spec and some notes...

ok here's the full build specs
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £127.99
Scythe S-FLEX 1600RPM Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3/4 Pin £10.99 x3
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £224.99
Akasa AK FC-03 Fan Controller Pro £24.99
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £59.99
NEC MultiSync® LCD20WGX2 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver £289.99
Razer Mantis Control Mat Precision Gaming Surface £13.75
Cherry G83-6105 PS2 Keyboard - Black £11.99
Akasa Rounded Floppy Cable (0.45m) - Black £1.99
Enermax Infiniti 650W EIN650AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU £99.99
Akasa AK-TK-01 Cable Tidy Kit £3.99
Akasa Eclipse 62 Window Side Panel £12.99
Akasa AK-TK-02 Cable Tidy Kit £2.49
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £5.99
Acousti Ultra-Soft Arrowhead Fan Mounts - 8 Pack £2.99
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) £24.99
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £61.99
Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard £81.99
Akasa Eclipse 62 Aluminium Case - No PSU £79.99
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB 4000AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £56.99
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1 Soundcard - OEM £41.99
Sony Floppy Drive - Black £4.99

i think that was everything.

as for building it, no big surprises really everything went together as it should, the hsf bracket was a very tight fit with only about a hairs gap between the north row of caps and the cpu but it seems okay so far. only things that went wrong was the power led connector on the mobo does'nt have the positive marked so of course i put that in round the wrong way so no led with first switch on and no floppy either as the sony floppy drives socket had a upper and lower notch doh so again that went in upside down, but quick easy fixes :)

the modular psu cables were very tight to get into the actual psu itself, a lot of wiggling around resisting the urge to just force them in, got there in the end.

it's been running stable since i switched it on (no overclocking yet) the geil rams spd is pretty loose for 800mhz 5-5-5-18 but considering this mobo defaults the ram to 1.9v and the geil is rated for 4-4-4-12 at 2.1v that's prolly good that the spd is that loose or maybe it would'nt have booted? i havnt messed around much with the ram other than given it +0.1v for now so it's at 5-5-5-18 2.0v and once i figureout this bios i'll start playing with it a bit but i prefer 24/7 stability over speed really.

run of 3dmark passed without errors and a 30min blend test on orthos passed without errors.
 
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I'm going to be keeping an eye on this thread. Your budget is what mine be, but for the middle of next year. :o

Will a PCI-E 8600 outperform an AGP 6800GS? Or will it be the same?
 
I'm putting togther that exact system now albeit with a 3d aurora 570 (so beautiful in my opinion, lol).

e6320, scythe infinity Ga-P35-DS3R, Geil ultra low latency 6400, This is all to accomodate my 8800gtx and i hope to also overclock the cpu to about 3ghz.

Ive heard nothing but good things about that motherboard (future proof for penryn quads and ddr3 aswell) and i wanted a cheap (got the cpu for £85) cpu which is good for overclocking.
 
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some quick low quality pics, need to do a wee bit more tidying...

new_build_01.jpg

new_build_02.jpg

new_build_03.jpg

new_build_04.jpg

new_build_05.jpg


need to do something with that power wire from the rear case fan it's bugging me!
 
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