Is this spec OK?

NathanE · 17 Feb 2007 at 12:20

x2 Seagate 500GB (intend to RAID1 them)
x2 XFX 512MB 7600GS Dual DVI Passive Cooled
x1 NEC 7170 DVD/RW
x1 E6400 CPU
x1 Gigabyte DS4
x1 Enermax Liberty Modular 400W PSU
x2 OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)

Comes to £917.17

Anything I'm missing?

Thanks!

NathanE · 17 Feb 2007 at 12:52

I chose the two 7600's as I'm not really a hardcore gamer and require at least 3 DVI outputs. I won't be SLI'ing them either. They are passive cooled which I like. And 512MB each will give a total of 1GB for Vista to store window textures.

I also don't fancy buying a 1st generation DX10 card - I'd rather wait a year for some DX10 games to come out and see what the cards are like then. I read some reviews of the 8800GTS but the power consumption at idle ruled them out for me. Then I can just buy one to replace one of the cards and I'd only have wasted £80

The 3 hard drives is a good idea but I'd rather stick with just two (for noise reasons). Also I just could not bare to lose 500GB of data.

I might go for the E6300 though as they are more overclockable ain't they?

NathanE · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:20

I didn't realise the Gigabyte problems were so severe, I thought it was just people who were OC'ing past the recommended limits?

How about the Asus P5B-E Plus? Does this have RAID like the DS4? I think it has 2x PCI-E graphics card slots as well?

Definate no-no to Nvidia-based motherboard.

NathanE · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:38

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)

How about these?

NathanE · 17 Feb 2007 at 14:03

Thanks for the input guys. Guess I'll stick with the OCZ sticks then as people are reporting success with them.

I don't need 8 SATA ports, but I do need the DS4's two PCI-E 16x slots. Also the DS4 has Intel RAID whereas AFAIK the DS3 has some taiwanese RAID chipset?

I'm sure the P5N is a great board but I really need to run Vista on the day. Can't be waiting months for Nvidia to get their act together. I also prefer Intel chipsets as you just know they could survive several nuclear wars unscathed

I might bump the PSU up to a 500W Liberty Modular. Apparently the two 7600GS's will draw about 200W when idle and around 250W at a load. So add 65W for the Conroe and another 50W for everything else and I suppose you're right that 400W PSU is going to running a bit close to its limit for comfort.