Hello! I am new to the forums and could use a bit of help.
I am in the process of planning a new pc build but I am a bit unsure about a few things and so I could use some advice from those more clued up on the subject if possible. I am looking to build a pc that will do quite a bit of gaming at 1680x1050 resolution and an awful lot of video encoding, for that reason I am looking to go with the quad core Q6600.
The problem I am having is choosing between a couple of budget motherboards, why budget you ask? Well overclocking isn't a major concern for me, a couple of hundred extra mhz on the Q6600 will be plenty for me and both the boards I am considering should easily manage that. The boards are...
...the Abit IP35-E and the EVGA nForce 650i Ultra.
My concerns are the following, firstly will the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme fit on either of the boards with no problems? Why such a top end cooler you ask? Well I want to stick a slow and ultra quiet fan on it to keep the thing close to silent as well as very cool, it also gives me a bit of room for a small overclock. My second concern is the cooling on each board, the EVGA northbridge gets quite toasty by all accounts because it has no fan and the southbridge has no cooling fullstop. The Abit has a heatsink on both but the northbridge sink doesn't look like it can have a 4cm fan fitted due to the 'funky' styling of it's design. I have read that the P35 chipset is a lot cooler than the nForce 6xx series anyway so do I need to be worried by the lack of a fan on the Abit northbridge? Also how easy is it to fit a fan to the EVGA boards northbridge and would a heatsink on the southbridge be adviseable? Oh and the EVGA doesn't seem to have any sinks on the board power circuitry either, unlike the Abit.
I know a few people might point me towards other boards but unless they are priced in the same range of these two then I won't be choosing anything else, I don't need SLI and will never be considering it. I don't need a ton of overclocking options, as long as I can get the Q6600 to at least 2.8ghz with my 4gb of Geil 800mhz DDR2 memory I will be happy. Graphics will be a 640mb 8800 GTS which should be plenty powerful at 1680x1050 for at least year in most of the games I will be playing.
So, I need some advice really. On the boards and the system in general. If anyone sees problems with the spec or the cooling then please post, the last thing I want to do is spend the money and then walk into a problem that I don't have the money to put right straight away. Here is a recap of the spec....
Q6600 Kentsfield
4gb Geil DDR2 800mhz
EVGA nForce 650i Ultra or Abit IP35-E
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
640mb 8800 GTS
Any feedback would be most welcome, thanks in advance.
I am in the process of planning a new pc build but I am a bit unsure about a few things and so I could use some advice from those more clued up on the subject if possible. I am looking to build a pc that will do quite a bit of gaming at 1680x1050 resolution and an awful lot of video encoding, for that reason I am looking to go with the quad core Q6600.
The problem I am having is choosing between a couple of budget motherboards, why budget you ask? Well overclocking isn't a major concern for me, a couple of hundred extra mhz on the Q6600 will be plenty for me and both the boards I am considering should easily manage that. The boards are...
...the Abit IP35-E and the EVGA nForce 650i Ultra.
My concerns are the following, firstly will the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme fit on either of the boards with no problems? Why such a top end cooler you ask? Well I want to stick a slow and ultra quiet fan on it to keep the thing close to silent as well as very cool, it also gives me a bit of room for a small overclock. My second concern is the cooling on each board, the EVGA northbridge gets quite toasty by all accounts because it has no fan and the southbridge has no cooling fullstop. The Abit has a heatsink on both but the northbridge sink doesn't look like it can have a 4cm fan fitted due to the 'funky' styling of it's design. I have read that the P35 chipset is a lot cooler than the nForce 6xx series anyway so do I need to be worried by the lack of a fan on the Abit northbridge? Also how easy is it to fit a fan to the EVGA boards northbridge and would a heatsink on the southbridge be adviseable? Oh and the EVGA doesn't seem to have any sinks on the board power circuitry either, unlike the Abit.
I know a few people might point me towards other boards but unless they are priced in the same range of these two then I won't be choosing anything else, I don't need SLI and will never be considering it. I don't need a ton of overclocking options, as long as I can get the Q6600 to at least 2.8ghz with my 4gb of Geil 800mhz DDR2 memory I will be happy. Graphics will be a 640mb 8800 GTS which should be plenty powerful at 1680x1050 for at least year in most of the games I will be playing.
So, I need some advice really. On the boards and the system in general. If anyone sees problems with the spec or the cooling then please post, the last thing I want to do is spend the money and then walk into a problem that I don't have the money to put right straight away. Here is a recap of the spec....
Q6600 Kentsfield
4gb Geil DDR2 800mhz
EVGA nForce 650i Ultra or Abit IP35-E
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
640mb 8800 GTS
Any feedback would be most welcome, thanks in advance.
Thanks for that.