New Comp Spec, Anything Ive Missed?

[Sweeney]

Hey there, just needing some clarification on a spec ive made for a new pc im going to build... Been almost 3 years since i last tinkered with any hardware and its certainly changed a lot , lots of new toys etc so im unsure as to what to get/avoid...

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~rsweeney/pcspec.PNG

Ill be looking to run the ram at 1:1 ratio with a little overclock, hence getting the 800 rather than 677. Raid 0 for the hdd's, graphics wise ill probably get another ultra in due course (more than likely a week after running it ) although im quite interested in this Physx card thats out, seems like a gimmick to me though?

Want it to be as futureproof as can be, so once im fed up with the e6850 i can upgrade to a newer cpu, 2 x 16pci-e slots, psu with new 8pin SLi power connections etc

As you can tell ive taken heed of some suggestions to upgrade the mobo cooling as the stock seems to run quite hot and limits oc potential... Anything else you can suggest i get/change etc?

Cheers in advance!

 

[yantorsen]

I doubt the mobo cooling will limit oc potential when air cooling with just DDR 800 ram, unless u oc the ram aswell. and for future proofing I'd get a p35 chipset mobo. Plus two 1GB 2900XT's are better than two 8800GTX's.

 

[Sweeney]

Its an ultra, 655 2250, every benchmark ive looked at the 2 gtx's/ultras severly whoop ati's arse

 

[yantorsen]

yeh the Ultra does, and I'm talking about the 1024MB version. In MOST games or certainly a LOT of games the 1gb 2900xt in xfire wins, and it means you can get a p35 mobo which will support next gen cpus, and oc better then 680i boards.

 

[yantorsen]

also I don't know what monitor u intend on using but it's certainly overkill unless you have anything bigger than 1920x1200. If you don't then ust buy one card, and save the money for upgrading to the next gen cards that are out soonish.

 

[mp260767]

swap the western digital 500gbs for the AAKS versions, maybe drop the 2 raptors for 2 more 500 AAKS's.

maybe swap the titan for the noctua or Tuniq Tower 120 depending on which p35 mobo you go for.

unless you're totally set on the stacker, maybe have a look at the P182 or the Akasa Eclipse 62.

power supply wise, spending that sort of money go for one of the PC Power & Cooling Silencer ones.

 

[Sweeney]

At the mo it'll just be a 17" tft (but i want as best performance as i can get), and im swayed on getting another 8800 or waiting till nvidia release new high end cards (although the 9x series is only going to be more mid range cards from what ive read) hence just buying one for the time being...

CPU Cooler wise i wasn't sure, those other two look a bit better as well.

Case wise, ive heard good reports of the stacker, i currently have an eclipse which i have hacked away at and has 2 intake 120 and 2 outtake 120 but i fancy something new

Again with PSU i wasn't sure what was the better one to go for, however theres no mention of it having the 8 pin sli leads?

 

[yantorsen]

At the mo it'll just be a 17" tft (but i want as best performance as i can get), and im swayed on getting another 8800 or waiting till nvidia release new high end cards (although the 9x series is only going to be more mid range cards from what ive read) hence just buying one for the time being...

CPU Cooler wise i wasn't sure, those other two look a bit better as well.

Case wise, ive heard good reports of the stacker, i currently have an eclipse which i have hacked away at and has 2 intake 120 and 2 outtake 120 but i fancy something new

Again with PSU i wasn't sure what was the better one to go for, however theres no mention of it having the 8 pin sli leads?

tbh I think that you're wasting you're money on the gfx, just get ONE 2900xt 512mb for that res will be more than enough.

 

[Sweeney]

I know the ultra is the expensive option but its the better from everything ive seen hence why im going for it... My budget isn't tight by any means so i dont think i should count pennies between the 2

Also, why swap the raptors? Im using the raptors for the os (xp pro), games, music etc and the other 2 for storage + backup

Don't get me wrong, i may OC just a tiny bit with the cpu but it wont be anything worth talking about, ive done the overclocking thing... Even had Prometeia, was expensive and dont think worth the grief involved

Ive always sworn by Arctic Silver 5, someone suggested arctic coolings MX (non conductive) thermal paste, somehow i think im best sticking to what i know?

 

[yantorsen]

I know the ultra is the expensive option but its the better from everything ive seen hence why im going for it... My budget isn't tight by any means so i dont think i should count pennies between the 2

Also, why swap the raptors? Im using the raptors for the os (xp pro), games, music etc and the other 2 for storage + backup

Don't get me wrong, i may OC just a tiny bit with the cpu but it wont be anything worth talking about, ive done the overclocking thing... Even had Prometeia, was expensive and dont think worth the grief involved

Ive always sworn by Arctic Silver 5, someone suggested arctic coolings MX (non conductive) thermal paste, somehow i think im best sticking to what i know?

are you aware that raptors are a lot noisier than standard drives


and even if u are made of money it's still an object to be fair.

and if you have so much money then why not get a 30" dell to go with it.

 

[Sweeney]

Yeah i am aware of how noisy they are, currently have 2 74gb's in raid 0 on this. I'd rather stick with what i know and like, which is 17" 1280x1024 never been a fan of big monitors.

 

[Sweeney]

PSU wise, the pc power one seems to have only 2 6 pin SLi leads, so if i was to go down the SLi route with the 8800ultra i wouldn't have enough

 

[stickroad]

Please Ignore.

 

[stickroad]

Your whole machine is a bit of a overkill to be honest. You can spend the money so much better.

Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler
Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin
Abit IP35 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit X2
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache X3
Samsung SH-S183ABEBN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Akasa Eclipse 62 Aluminium Case - No PSU
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

Total : £1,919.63

Not including the Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor.

Total : £1,435.60

Now you only have a 17inch screen and your thinking about going SLI? Thats bonkers period. Get a nice 24inch screen, its far better to game on and genrally use than a 17inch screen and with that budget theirs no reason not to get a nice screen.

You should be able to overclock the Q6600 to 3.4GHZ+ pretty easily and with good temps since i have put one of the best air coolers in their for you, the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler, brilliant CPU Cooler and will keep that chip of yours nice and cool. Since it dosent come with a fan i have just added the Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan which will do the job just fine.

The E6850 is a waste of money esepcially since you can get a Quad for the exact same price regardless of the clock speed.

The Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound is great thermal paste and should help with temps.

The Abit IP35 Pro is one of the best P35 Chipset boards out in my eyes, very reliable, fantastic overclocking potinal, just a great board all around. Highly recomend it. Drop the EVGA board, all it offers over a p35 chipset based board is SLI which isnt worth going down that route at this point in time.

The Crucial Memory is fantastic. Overclocking potianl is amazing. These sticks are well known for overclocking past 1000MHZ with ease.

The 8800GTX is a monster of a card and paired along with the Dell Screen, gaming will be amazing. SLI at the moment is not a good investment at all at the moment. Not enough games take advantage of a SLI configuration and by the time they do your SLI ready motherboard and your Graphics Card will be old tech. Ultra's are also a waste of money, they are not worth the extra over a perfectly good 8800 GTX.

The Western Digital Hard drives are fast, quiet and very reliable. The Western Digital Raptor is a lot of money and is certainly not worth the extra cost over the Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000AAKS series.

Soundcard, you just have to have a soundcard in that spec. The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional 7.1 Soundcard is a fantastic card and will be a million times better than the onboard sound. You will hear things that you never thought were their. If you have some kind of surround sound system it will be even better.

The DVD Drive connects to your motherboard via SATA connetion, this means yu can cancel the onboard IDE controller which will equate to slightly quicker boot times. Most of all though you can get rid of them fat, ugly IDE cables.

The Akasa case is great. Build quality is second to none and cooling is of a very high standard. The stacker case is a lot of money for what it is.

The Corsair PSU is one of the best Power Supplys around. They are built to the very highest standard, very reliable and very quite.

Now you may not want to make the switch to Vista yet, if not fair enough but i highly recomend dual booting along with XP. Its a great way to experiance Vista fully but if you do come across programs that do not fully work you can easily swtich to XP.

 

[Sweeney]

Im really hesitant on going for bigger screen, therefor bigger resolutions for games. Im perfectly happy with 17", maybe in the near future curiosity will win me over and ill purchase a bigger monitor but can you see where im coming from?

Vista is a big no no for me at the minute, all ive done is hear all the problems people around me are having. Those who invested in vista have went out and purchased xp as they got fed up with all the complications they experienced... Again maybe in future, i waited a couple years before i got xp and turned out for the better so think ill give it time with vista yet.

In regards to SLi it is looking to be a no brainer to avoid atm, i still would rather the ultra over GTX, id crave that little bit extra performance. Especially in games like stalker (im looking for 75fps solid, seems the ultra is better option over gtx for that) and crysis & farcry2 when they are released.

Ram wise, ive never used crucial, always stuck to kingston ocz or corsair although i was going with pc6400 as it gives me decent enough timings and a lot of headroom for stable performance and 1:1 fsb/ram ratio.

I already have an eclipse 62 case which i have cut holes in and put more 120mm silentx case fans with filters on, id be a bit daft buying another with less fans , although i wanted to build this over the period of a week and give it a good check over and test whilst still using this so how would you suggest i do that, build the new one but just dont mount in a case?

As for the cpu, the quad has sat in the back of my head but im really only using it for top notch performance gaming, plus the q6600 is *only* 1066fsb, 1333 is surely a much better option?
The higher clock speeds of the e6850 seem much more attractive than stretching a 2.4ghz quad to overclock, im not really looking to overclock much if at all. The days of breaking graphics/cpus/ram/mobos and RMA's are done with for me

The raptor hdd's are surely better (discount the cost factor on this one) than standard 7200rpm drives? Ive seen that the raptors and the aaks drives get top marks in vista, so surely what im intending to do is ideal for fast and responsive gaming?

Thanks for the effort you;ve put in there, i know i can seem stubborn but im really hesitant in a lot things until i see the facts and numbers of it all

 

[stickroad]

Im really hesitant on going for bigger screen, therefor bigger resolutions for games. Im perfectly happy with 17", maybe in the near future curiosity will win me over and ill purchase a bigger monitor but can you see where im coming from?

Bigger resolutions = A much better, sharper image quality. A 24inch screen is well worth having espeiclaly if you have the money to spare. A GTX will be a complete waste of time paried along a 17inch screen.

Vista is a big no no for me at the minute, all ive done is hear all the problems people around me are having. Those who invested in vista have went out and purchased xp as they got fed up with all the complications they experienced... Again maybe in future, i waited a couple years before i got xp and turned out for the better so think ill give it time with vista yet.

Some people love to exagerate about Vista. (God knows why) Its a fantastic operating system and well worth trying it out. Like i said you can Dual Boot XP and Vista. Their is absoutly no reason not too. You may find that Vista works flawlessly for you. You wont know until you try it.

In regards to SLi it is looking to be a no brainer to avoid atm, i still would rather the ultra over GTX, id crave that little bit extra performance. Especially in games like stalker (im looking for 75fps solid, seems the ultra is better option over gtx for that) and crysis & farcry2 when they are released.

The Ultras performance is not worth the extra £100 over a 8800 GTX which is a perfectly good card.

Ram wise, ive never used crucial, always stuck to kingston ocz or corsair although i was going with pc6400 as it gives me decent enough timings and a lot of headroom for stable performance and 1:1 fsb/ram ratio.

Crucial are one of the best Memory maufacturers out their. Their service is of a very high quality standard. The Crucial maybe only rated at 5300 (667MHZ) but are able to hit 1000MHZ + very easily. 800MHZ no problem at all. Well worth getting.

I already have an eclipse 62 case which i have cut holes in and put more 120mm silentx case fans with filters on, id be a bit daft buying another with less fans , although i wanted to build this over the period of a week and give it a good check over and test whilst still using this so how would you suggest i do that, build the new one but just dont mount in a case?

Get all of your components in one go. Not worth the hassel and extra delivery charges of getting bit by bit.

As for the cpu, the quad has sat in the back of my head but im really only using it for top notch performance gaming, plus the q6600 is *only* 1066fsb, 1333 is surely a much better option?
The higher clock speeds of the e6850 seem much more attractive than stretching a 2.4ghz quad to overclock, im not really looking to overclock much if at all. The days of breaking graphics/cpus/ram/mobos and RMA's are done with for me

Firstly what do you primiray use your pc for?

The chances of actually damaging your hardware due to overclocking is extremely low. The Q6600 is the better choice, theirs not many applications that can take advantage of 4 cores but in the upcoming months their will be. Crysis for instance will.

The E6850 is a waste of money. It may beat the Q6600 in most of the current games that are out now but the difference is very small. Its not like if you get the Q6600 games will be running like a dog compared to a E6850.

Q6600 all the way.

The raptor hdd's are surely better (discount the cost factor on this one) than standard 7200rpm drives? Ive seen that the raptors and the aaks drives get top marks in vista, so surely what im intending to do is ideal for fast and responsive gaming?

The Raptors were quite a bit better than the standard 7200 RPM drives when they first came out, they still are but 7200 RPM drives have caught up and are not far behind the Raptors in reality.