Help me spend my money on a C2D Rig please.

[andrewnorth98]

Hi all, i know i posted a spec about a week ago, but i've been reading more reviews nad other peoples posts and could really do with advice from people more knowledgeable about computers than myself...
I'm looking to spend up to around £1200-£1300 on the base unit..i could go a bit higher if it will make a big difference,
No monitor/keyboard/mouse etc needed
And yes, i am going to try and overclock it

Processor
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £182.99
(£215.01)
I've pretty much made up my mind about the processor, it seems to be a good balance between price and performance. hoping to overclock to maybe 3.5-3.6GHz ? sound do-able?

Motherboard
This is my main problem area as i dont know what to go for, is the 680i worth the price premium (and wait) over a 975 or 965 motherboard, the main 3 boards im looking at are:
Abit IN9 32X-MAX nForce 680 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £199.99(£234.99)
Or
Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £104.99 (£123.36)
Or
Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £114.99 (£135.11)

RAM
As PC's are obviously not my area of expertise do i need something like
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2N1066SR2GK) £249.99 (£293.74)
Or would say..
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Tenth Anniversary Dual Channel Kit (TY2KIT12864AA663) £179.99 (£211.49)
Would this do the same job and give me good overclockability? (is this even a word? )

Graphics
At the minute just looking at
OcUK Galaxy GeForce 7900 GS OC SILENT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £134.99 (£158.61)
But i will deffinatly be upgrading to a DX10 card when they become a little more mainstream, and SLI i think may be a big possibility

Hard Disk
As i've had 3 Western Digital drives fail on me over the last 4 years im looking at
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £59.99 (£70.49)
To start with i think just the one drive, but may look at going Raid 0 at some point in the future, i cant really bring myself to pay the price of a Raptor for the Gb available from the disk

CPU Cooler.
i dont know about this, i've heard good things about all of there so looking for real oppinions from you all out there..
Thermalright Ultra-120 (Socket 754/939/940/LGA775) Heatsink £34.99 (£41.11)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) £32.99 (£38.76)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler £28.99 (£34.06)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) £13.99 (£16.44)

Sound, well an X-Fi card of some sort, be it Xtreme music/Xtreme Gamer, or Xtreme gamer Fatal1ty

Case
Another area i dont have a clue although im hoping to not go over £100 if possible
Thermaltake VA8003BWS Armour Super Tower £89.99 (£105.74)
Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU £77.99 (£91.64)
Any other i should look at, i dont really care about looks, just want a good case with the best cooling possible.. and needs to have space for a Big SLi set up, maybe 8800GTS/X or whatevers out when DX10 comis in

PSU
something with power for SLI and overclocking, and be stable etc
Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply £79.99 (£93.99)
Antec TruePower Trio 650W PSU £74.99 (£88.11)

DVD-RW
probably some SATA drive of some type

I hope some of you will look at this for me and advise me if im going totally wrong, any advice and suggeestions are welcome,

If im forgetting anything please let me know

Thanks
Andy

 

[p4radox]

This is what I'd get:

Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Akasa Mirage 62 Aluminium Case - No PSU £83.99
(£98.69) £83.99
(£98.69)
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Tenth Anniversary Dual Channel Kit (TY2KIT12864AA663) £179.99
(£211.49) £179.99
(£211.49)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM £177.99
(£209.14) £177.99
(£209.14)
Thermalright Ultra-120 (Socket 754/939/940/LGA775) Heatsink £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
Papst 4412 F/2 GLL Silent 120mm Fan - 3 Pin £11.95 ( X3)
(£14.04) £35.85
(£42.12)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £254.99
(£299.61) £254.99
(£299.61)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)

Sub Total : £1,012.77
Vat : £179.50
Total : £1,205.22

plus the DVDRW of your choice.

I don't think there's much point in SLI unless you have a massive monitor.

 

[EffBee]

I'm very good at spending other people's money!

I've just tried to spec out a list of components to build a new base unit for myself. Came in at about 1600.

I haven't actually assembled it yet so don't know if I got the spec right and problem free. I'm not into overclocking SLI Crossfire or such things. I did try to go for quiet components. I did try to keep an eye on long term investment with some components like case and power supply.

6600

Tunic Tower 120 cooler
AS5 thermal grease

MSI P965 Platinum Mobo - not an overclockers board. SATA. Has IDE, Parallel Serial. Limited crossfire support. Please accept a bit of advice - 620 is new and very expensive. Loads of overclockable boards around cheaper. Also see www.anandtech.com (I don't think they are a supplier so I think I can mention them.) Look at ASUS P5B - almost bought that one.

Crucial Memory 2Gb Kit PC 6400 (Not overclocking so basic stuff OK)

HIS ATI RADEON X1950 XT ICEQ 3 Turbo Silent Heatpipe GDDR3 etc
(1950 XT probably best bang for buck just now. DX10 cards can wait 6 months or so)

Creative SB x-fi Platinum (good headphone support)
(Creative's line of soundcards seem to be a confusing mess. )
(I hate Creative for their software support record - but no real altrnative)

2 * WD Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache OEM HDD
(Not the fastest. I've never had trouble with WD. Quiet tho')
(Latching SATA cables extra few £)

Floppy - still worth getting as a trouble shooting tool

Samsung SH-W183 SATA DVD-RW (el cheapo - hopefuly will be bootable))

Lian-Li PC-A10 Case. (A beautiful extravagance please google some reviews before you make up your mind)

Seasonic M12 Modular 700W ATX2 PSU (bit over the top maybe)

Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard - blue/red/purple
(Useful at night - you know it gets dark and you can't be bothered to get up and switch the light on)

MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0

Cheap Belkin wireless card - but I wish I went other than Belkin now. Small Point.

MS Windows XP Pro SP2 OEM
(God - I actually paid real money for a MS OS!)

 

[andrewnorth98]

Thanks for the replies so far.. even more to think about,
Really wanna get the best performance i can without going ott on cost, like the graphics, i wanna get a card that'll handle current games, but intend to upgrade to a DX10 card + Vista (dare i say that) when it comes out and is starting to take off.
I dont really wanna spend £175 on a case though as nice as it is..

it seems what im thinking is rather unusual to what everyone else thinks..
you all seem to be looking at (more) expensive graphics cards now, but cheaper MB/ram etc..

Is this a better way of doing in than i was planning? should i go for the more mid-range components and upgrade the whole lot again in 6-12 months ?
Would stuff like 680i board + PC2-8500 ram etc be too far out of date by that time? or can it be expected to still be competative performance wise?

I never realised spending money was this difficult... its easier to choose a car

Andy.

 

[EffBee]

Graphics comes down to a compromise between cost eye-candy and performance. Gameplay and graphics are different things. I actually spent 700 hours playing oblivion on a Nvidia 6200 card. The visuals were a bit sub- standard but the gameplay was a killer. This is a personal thing. The new 8800 series offers cards pretty much as powerful as an sli setup of any other pair of cards currently available. But are the games in the shops really ready for that power yet. I think it best to get a top notch DX9 card now, save some money, and wait 6-12 months. Let vista, dx10, the nvidia/ati battle all settle down a bit.

No way would I go to Vista till the first service pack at least. Let others have the hassle of bug fixing it.

There is a lot of wise advice in these forums about overclocking. You can get a very fast PC with very moderately costed components if you don't set your overclocking targets too high. This would be overclocking to save money. You can buy very expensive components and overclock very high. This is overclocking as an obsessive hobby chasing benchmarks. I just want fast reliable PC with no hassle so if I want a faster processor i'll buy one and won't consider overclocking. You need to be clear about what you want and make sure people advising you know where you are coming from.

Also remember a pc is bag of components. Some like cases age very slowly. Some like graphics are very fast to get old and go redundant. I like to get god quality long term stuff but find it difficult to spend a lot on the more dynamic stuff.

And yet another edit - the most important thing is to ask yourself what you want the pc to do now, Buy NOW for that usage. Don't try to pre-empt too much. The future is not easy to plan for in the weird and wacky world of PCs.

 

[Trusty]

^^ no, i think some1 buying a dx9 card would be wasting their money. As dx9 is definatley gonna be out the window performance wise in 6 months. I would definatley suggest the gts or gtx if there into gaming. The power of these dx10 cards are far superior to dx9 cards for £100 more.

 

[andrewnorth98]

I would definatley suggest the gts or gtx if there into gaming. The power of these dx10 cards are far superior to dx9 cards for £100 more.

But saying this how do we know these 2 cards wil be able to run DX10 games well, last i saw DX10 specs were not totally finalised
Yes they are great now, but in 6 months when developers start releasing DX10 games they may be somewhat slow and need replacing again.. i think id rather spend £150 now, and then again when i need to, rather than buying brand new Tech, that is at the Top end of the price scale when i dunno if it will 100% run DX10 games..

Now if i've missed somemthing about DX10 being finalised and the GTS/X run it 100% compatibly then I guess i'll have to dig deep into my pockets

Andy