Help on a new build..

imyashy

imyashy

imyashy

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Joined
3 Oct 2007
Posts
27
Hi everyone,

I'm currently upgrading the main parts of my PC. I'm aiming to buy the following:

HD - 2x SATAII 500GB Drives
RAM - 3-4 GB - Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 DHX PC2-6400C5DHX TwinX (2x1GB)
PSU - Corsair HX Series 520W Modular PSU CMPSU-520HXUK
Mainboard - Asus P5K Premium WiFi
Graphics Card - 256MB or 512MB Nvidia
CPU - Core Duo E8650 OR Core Quad Q6600

I mainly use my PC for multimedia. Photo editing/Audio & Video encoding/Internet/Downloading/Managing Music/DVD authoring. I consider myself quite an experienced user. I do abit of overclocking however I do NOT play any games on my PC. I like performance.

I Currently have the following setup:

MSI Mainboard, 2.5 GB DDR RAM, P4 2.66 Running at 3.2Ghz on a Tuniq Tower with a 500GB IDE Hard Drive. Yup quite old lol.

After doing countless hours of research i'm still in 2 minds about some of the parts I plan to buy. I thought the best way would be to ask you chaps. I need some guidance on the following:

Hard Drives - I've Chosen 2 500GB 16MB Cache Western Digital SATAII drives. I currently have an IDE and it runs nicely. Anything better?

Mainboard - I heard the P35 chipset is best to go for especially for Overclocking. Is the Asus P5K Premium a good mainboard?

RAM - I aim to go for 4GB of RAM however I have read reports that XP Pro 32 Bit will not support 4GB. I may just go down to 3. I've been advised to use Vista Ultimate but I'm unsure about its compatibility and robustness. Is this corsair I've chosen a good choice? Will 3GB run just as good? Should i opt for Vista?

CPU - This is the biggest decision. I'm not sure whether to buy the E8650 and OC it or to just get the Q6600 and OC it to 3.2 Ghz. Based on the type of tasks I do, will Duo or Quad be best for me? I have checked charts on a quite a few websites but still cannot decide.

Graphics - I'm looking to get a 256MB-512MB HD Nvidia graphics card which must have a DVI output and TV-out. Because I don't play games 256 should be ok right? I'm looking to spend around £50 on graphics. I have a 20" Widescreen Dell monitor to use it on.

Please advise!

Ok Guys. Thats about it. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I trust you'll guide me in the right direction :)
 
Hi there.

I'll try to address each of your queries in order if I can. Firstly, if you've not decided to already, keep your tuniq tower.

Hard Drive - Those will be fine, use raid to stripe them for performance, or if you're worried about your data you can mirror them. Either way, those are decent drives

Mobo - That is a decent choice of mobo. I'd have to suggest an Abit IP35 as a cheaper option that should overclock just as well (if not a little better) if you can do without the extra functions on the asus.

Memory - Go for 4Gb with Vista x64. Most stuff has half decent driver support now unless you have some old or obscure hardware. Certainly all new stuff is well supported. Service pack 1 is being released soon that will fix most of the relatively minor issues people have reported so I'd see no reason not to. As for the product there is some nice 4gb OCZ stuff on this week only, or the Corsair for 4 quid more runs a lower voltage which should allow more space to overclock.

CPU - Definately get the quad. They overclock well, its far more future proof and a lot of image editing/ video encoding software is multi threaded which will make use of all 4 cores.

Graphics - this is the area I cant really comment on since I havnt bough a grphics card for years now. Since you dont game I doubt it will really make any difference what you get, they will all run vista aero fine, so just go for the best you're willing to pay for.

Hope some of this helps
 
As an alternative to the WD 500Gb you could try the Seagate 7200.11 500Gb 32Mb Cache drives?
 
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