Mobo help

Nex-Necis

Nex-Necis

Nex-Necis

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Joined
20 Apr 2007
Posts
13
Hi all,

May I say, I have learnt absolutely loads from reading all your threads and for that, many many thanks :)

I am buying a new pc and building it myself, the last time I built one was based on the following specs;

AMD64 3700+
ASUS A8N SLI Delux board
BFG 6600GT
1x 250 WD HDD (Master)
1x 250 WD HDD (Slave)
1GB DDR400 Kingston Ram

That worked well. Now however, I am buying part by part roughly every two weeks as and when can afford as her indoors raids my account :mad:

Now the spec I am looking at is;


Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-
(£75.19)
Intel Extreme D975XBX2KR BAD AXE 2 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - Retail (£164.49)
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case (£65.79)
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (£43.46) x 2 RAID0 (Slave)
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 NCQ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (£35.24) x2 (Master)
HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro ICEQ 3 V2 TURBO SILENT Heatpipe 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (H195PRQT256DD-R) (£117.49)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (152.74)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (£140.99)
OCZ GameXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply

Now that is costing as quite a lot, my question(s) are;
A:) Is it worth getting RAID or saving the cash for something better (ie only getting 2 HDDs one master one slave)
B:) The board, I was toying with is 975X chipset, is this good? as I usually stick (and prefer) AMD but the FX series has gone and the world seems to have gone C2D mad!

Any help or recommendations on what specs are best, the better, budget wise, I am hoping for 1k ish and I want a CRT monitor (sad I know)

Many thanks all!
 
Do you already have a CRT monitor or are you about to get one?

Will you be overclocking the machine?

What are you using it for? Games?

You can have the same performance for a lot less £ I think - Would probably switch that mobo for a more value for money option like the DS3/P or the P5B series for £80 less, and change that RAM to a Crucial Ballistix with the same spec for £35 less. Put the saved cash towards a 8800 if you intend to play games.

Also I think the PSU is a bit overkill unless you intend to run 2 graphics card for SLI or xfire.

975X is good but 965P is overclocks better and supposedly has better performance.

My experience with raid 0 told me that the difference is small and for the risk of losing all data on both raid drives it's probably not worth it IMO, especially when you have large capacity drives.
 
With the Raid, you've got to ask yourself what you'd be happy with.

With 4 hds you can get Raid 5 going (depending on chipset, or ext card) which will lose you 25% of your storage space as opposed to 50% if you do a raid1. (unless you just want the speed of a Raid0, but then if one hd goes you lose both HD's worth of data).

Worth looking at the 320gb HDs as well as they're decently enough priced to be chosen above the 250gb ones (about £11 more per HD for 28% more space).

No ideas on the chipset, not paid attention to them for a while, hth :)
 
Greatly apprichaited (sorry div-lectic :confused: )

In a nut-shell, I want it purely for Games. I will be getting CRT, again to reallocate the money used to buy TFT to increase spec. I wanted to stick with Nvidia, but that board, and other 975X only support ATI Crossfire.

An alternet spec would be great, I do very much like the case. And the RAM has to be low latency and mint as the first machine I showed that I built had cheap RAM and it really suffered.

Many thanks once more for your help, you guys are very patient considering most the posts ask the same question as me!
 
mojojoejo said:
With the Raid, you've got to ask yourself what you'd be happy with.

With 4 hds you can get Raid 5 going (depending on chipset, or ext card) which will lose you 25% of your storage space as opposed to 50% if you do a raid1. (unless you just want the speed of a Raid0, but then if one hd goes you lose both HD's worth of data).

Worth looking at the 320gb HDs as well as they're decently enough priced to be chosen above the 250gb ones (about £11 more per HD for 28% more space).

No ideas on the chipset, not paid attention to them for a while, hth :)
Click to expand...

Oh and I was thinking RAID0 for the speed factor. But not sure on the heat effect and additional cost. So wanted advice on maybe just getting 2 HDDs maybe Raptor for Master and 500GB WD for Slave. Also, Windows Vista is losing me as its all the same jargon but as a gamer which is best XP or Vista, and if Vista, which version :confused: oh my head hurts :confused:
 
Well from personal experience I would recommend these HD's:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

They're a little more than the ones you specced, but they're really rather good, and you get 2 more years warranty on them than the Hitachi's you specced.

Some of the new mobos will do Raid5, so check if they do, then you have that option to go with.

Ballistix is decent stuff, although I did find it a bit akward to use with a few MSI boards - I think corsair was testing partners with loads of manufacterors (someone can and will correct this if it's wrong) which makes them the safer option with compatibility in my opinion. Neither brand is bad though.

Does it have to be a Crossfire board? are you defintly going to be putting 2x cards in there, or is this a "keep options open" idea?


/edit don't go with Vista for games yet, drivers aren't mature enough for certain vendors.
 
mojojoejo said:
Well from personal experience I would recommend these HD's:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

They're a little more than the ones you specced, but they're really rather good, and you get 2 more years warranty on them than the Hitachi's you specced.

Some of the new mobos will do Raid5, so check if they do, then you have that option to go with.

Ballistix is decent stuff, although I did find it a bit akward to use with a few MSI boards - I think corsair was testing partners with loads of manufacterors (someone can and will correct this if it's wrong) which makes them the safer option with compatibility in my opinion. Neither brand is bad though.

Does it have to be a Crossfire board? are you defintly going to be putting 2x cards in there, or is this a "keep options open" idea?


/edit don't go with Vista for games yet, drivers aren't mature enough for certain vendors.
Click to expand...

This is def a open to all ideas, I am ordering the case this week and then going to PSU, then HDDs, then RAM, then GHX then finally board and CPU so I just need machine that is purely for games. I like ASUS boards, and would love an Nvidia board, I dont mind paying a lot for the board, mem or graphics (although the 8800 seem a lot).
 
I can't say I've been too impressed with ASUS boards and the way they deal with SATA stuff - maybe I've just been lucky ;)

if it's for games, then you'd be better off getting a raptor as the OS drive and then doing a Raid1 on 2x 320gb drives. Although SATA-II drives with the NCQ do give you some quite nippy performance as well, so it's really up to how you want to do it.

With the board - if you're not fussed about getting 2x cards then that opens up a load of options as you can go either SLI or Xfire really.

Here's my current rig to give you an idea of what you could do:

4x Seagate HD's in Raid5 running off a highpoint Rocket raid card pcie 4x in the 2nd 16x slot.
1x WD Raid edition 250gb drive for OS/Scratch
HIS x1950 pro
2x 1gb Corsair Value Stuff
Opteron 165
Gigabyte NF4 SLI Pro board

Plays games fine, though the CPU is creaking a bit, all my data is safe, and it's pretty nice and cool in my case. (Antec 900 jobbie, with all fans on low).

Kind of depends how you want to prioritise what you build, if it's just for games, data security, or a combination. How bigs the budget :p
 
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB ST3500841AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
£57.99
(£68.14)

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788)
£63.99
(£75.19)

Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
£45.99
(£54.04)

Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK)
£84.99
(£99.86)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
£54.99
(£64.61)

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£157.99
(£185.64)

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£69.99
(£82.24)

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
£126.99
(£149.21)

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804)
£91.99
(£108.09)

Sub Total : £754.91
Shipping : £12.95
Vat : £134.38
Total : £902.24

Leaving £100 for a CRT screen (not sure how much they cost?) and a decent air cooler maybe. The only CRT on OCUK is out of stock atm.

I've specced a 500Gb and a 320Gb drive which is cheaper than having 4.

The P5N-E is a Nvidia based mobo that supports SLI as well.

You can also wait for the OCUK Value 8800GTS for £170 which it's currently out of stock.

*EDIT* assuming you are reusing your current optical drive of course
 
Last edited:
id denfinitly get a 8800 i got my x1950 then a few weeks later the 8800 came out its a far better performing card
 
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