New Build Advice. Which Mobo and memory?

DevilBoy916 · 23 Jan 2008 at 16:17

Hiya guys

I am ordering the below on monday next week (28th):

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £124.99
Abit IP35 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £109.99
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB6400C5DC) £49.99
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) £26.99
Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin £11.99
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £74.99
CoolerMaster Stacker 832 - Black Trim (No PSU) £135.99
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £174.99
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £5.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) £65.99

Has anyone got any thoughts about what I should avoid from this list?
I will be mostly gaming, and planning on keeping this PC for the next year at least...

I've already got another HDD, and the cables needed to connect everything up, from my old PC.

Also, I am planning on overclocking this CPU to 4GHz. Is this RAM ok to do this? I'm not quite sure what I need to do to the ram timings etc, to make it stable... :|

Cheers for any advice!
DB

Admiral Huddy · 23 Jan 2008 at 16:50

iirc, isn't the 8800GT a better card.. I'm loosing track myself with this new branding of the GTS.

As for memory, the PC2-6400 will run syncronously with an FSB of 400MHz (800Mhz effective) so an overclock of 9 x 400MHz is short of your 4GHz target. You may get some decent overclocks on some PC2-6400 but its not guaranteed. So you might be best off with PC-8500.

schumi84 · 23 Jan 2008 at 17:16

The new rev GTS is almost on a par with the GTX as far as i know, but only up to 1900x.... resolution, then the GTX pulls away.

The GT was far better than the original GTS (320 and 640 flavours), going by that price i would say stick with the GTS.

DevilBoy916 · 23 Jan 2008 at 17:19

I am sticking with the GTS. I think thats the best card, appart from the GTX.

I am confused about the Ram though. Most people seem to go for the 6400.
Do I really need to go for 8500 if I wanna overclock to 4GHz?

Also, i've checked the Abit website, and it doesn't mention this processor in the list of compatible processors for the IP35 pro! Whay is this?

schumi84 · 23 Jan 2008 at 17:30

With regards to the RAM, it depends on the manufacturer tbh. The stuff i am using is the Ultra Low Latency :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-GL

Which i have had running fine at 450 FSB (900MHz effective) even though it is 800 MHz rated. If you look at the Ballistix stuff that Crucial do, the early stuff was hitting 1000 FSB, and that was only the 5300 rated stuff.

If the RAM that you had listed was available when i built my pc then i would have gone for that as it looks quite nice and i think i have read a few reviews that it can clock quite high.

It comes down to the speed at which you will be going up to and whether you want to overclock the RAM when you overclock on your CPU.