Hi,
Just finished building my new Conroe and thought i'd share some of my experiences, as making mistakes on component selection can be time consuming with distances to and from suppliers etc.
Anyway,
Check the case dimentions of the case you are buying and that your current PC Desk is big enough to accomodate it, PC cases seem to be getting pretty big these days.
for this reason i ended up swapping an Eclipse 62 case for a Lian li PC7.
The Lian Li's fans and air flow are spot on by the way, my first Lian Li and i love it.
Check that your current PSU is up to the task, I was convinced that my OCZ Powersteam 520 was gonna be up to the job.
In terms of power the OCZ from my 478rig had plenty but the new ATI graphics cards require 6 pin connectors and more amps.
I ended up buying a Tagan TG580-U15 580W. and I am well pleased.
The HIS X1900XT i opted for is a corker of a card, Butter smooth, i am upgrading from an X850XTPE and i must say the image quality is even better
It's also quiet which is a must for me, that goes for all my components by the way. Except HD's of course.
The Asus P5W DH had me worried, what with all the horror stories an all.
I had set myself an O/C target of 3.4 and so far i'm up to 3.2 without even touching the voltages. Mobo shipped with 701 bios.
Mobo Chipset temps from 43-48c.
I'm running two raptor150's in raid0 on the ICH7r and getting sustained transfers of 163mb/sec in HDTach 3.0.
I also have a 250gb WD sata II drive as a backup also on the ICH7r controler with no problems.
I am using a Pioneer PATA optical DVDRRW on the ICH7r also with no problems.
Sound card is an X-fi Fatality and sounds really good just like my Audigy2 did. Still i'm pleased with my upgrade.
The CPU is E6600 Step6.
I am so pleased i went with this CPU & Memory Combo.
Memory is the GEIL PC6400 2 Gig kit and it flys with this board, I had it at 7500MB/Sec at 2.2v while testing earlier. The guys at OCUK who reccomended this memory have pulled a blinder, cheers fellas.
The Memory booted fine at 1.8v.
Cooling is thanks to the Skyth ninja, 27c Idle, 34 load with the accompanying fan. All case panels on and fans at silent
Be carefull fitting this beast, the retension clips require quite a lot of pressure.
All in all having sold my last rig at probably the right time i am very happy with my current build.
Three days in, i can honestly say, that coming from a 3.4 northwood on a P4C800E i have never experienced a bigger jump in performance in all my experiences right back from the days of the Vic20 which is where it all started for me.
Hope i manage to help a few out there.
PS My X1900XT seems fine with this Mobo, PEG enabled, thinking of dissabling for now though.
Just finished building my new Conroe and thought i'd share some of my experiences, as making mistakes on component selection can be time consuming with distances to and from suppliers etc.
Anyway,
Check the case dimentions of the case you are buying and that your current PC Desk is big enough to accomodate it, PC cases seem to be getting pretty big these days.
for this reason i ended up swapping an Eclipse 62 case for a Lian li PC7.
The Lian Li's fans and air flow are spot on by the way, my first Lian Li and i love it.
Check that your current PSU is up to the task, I was convinced that my OCZ Powersteam 520 was gonna be up to the job.
In terms of power the OCZ from my 478rig had plenty but the new ATI graphics cards require 6 pin connectors and more amps.
I ended up buying a Tagan TG580-U15 580W. and I am well pleased.
The HIS X1900XT i opted for is a corker of a card, Butter smooth, i am upgrading from an X850XTPE and i must say the image quality is even better
It's also quiet which is a must for me, that goes for all my components by the way. Except HD's of course.
The Asus P5W DH had me worried, what with all the horror stories an all.
I had set myself an O/C target of 3.4 and so far i'm up to 3.2 without even touching the voltages. Mobo shipped with 701 bios.
Mobo Chipset temps from 43-48c.
I'm running two raptor150's in raid0 on the ICH7r and getting sustained transfers of 163mb/sec in HDTach 3.0.
I also have a 250gb WD sata II drive as a backup also on the ICH7r controler with no problems.
I am using a Pioneer PATA optical DVDRRW on the ICH7r also with no problems.
Sound card is an X-fi Fatality and sounds really good just like my Audigy2 did. Still i'm pleased with my upgrade.
The CPU is E6600 Step6.
I am so pleased i went with this CPU & Memory Combo.
Memory is the GEIL PC6400 2 Gig kit and it flys with this board, I had it at 7500MB/Sec at 2.2v while testing earlier. The guys at OCUK who reccomended this memory have pulled a blinder, cheers fellas.
The Memory booted fine at 1.8v.
Cooling is thanks to the Skyth ninja, 27c Idle, 34 load with the accompanying fan. All case panels on and fans at silent
Be carefull fitting this beast, the retension clips require quite a lot of pressure.
All in all having sold my last rig at probably the right time i am very happy with my current build.
Three days in, i can honestly say, that coming from a 3.4 northwood on a P4C800E i have never experienced a bigger jump in performance in all my experiences right back from the days of the Vic20 which is where it all started for me.
Hope i manage to help a few out there.
PS My X1900XT seems fine with this Mobo, PEG enabled, thinking of dissabling for now though.
