New PC Spec Check Please

[Bobcat]

Hi All

Was wondering if anyone can cast their eye over the following spec for me and comment there are any possible incompatibility’s etc, things have come on a long way since i built my last PC (about 4 years ago) so just wanted to have someone else check over things for me if possible.

I already have a 19" TFT (DVI), The PC will be used for Gaming, Playing MP3's, DVD Writing, a little Video encoding, downloading and just general use.

I have up to £600 to play around with, i have come up with what is listed below (prices include VAT), if anyone has any other better options i am open to suggestions

OS Will be Vista Home Premium 64bit (already purchased)

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Motherboard - Abit AB9 WiFi iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX (£92)

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600, S775, 2.40 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB Cache, Retail (£168)

Memory - 2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP (£78)

Graphics Card - 512MB Sapphire RX1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1400MHz, GDDR3, GPU 580MHz, 36Pipes CrossFire Master/Slave (£96)

HDD's (X2) - 250 Gb Western Digital WD2500JS Caviar SE, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.9 ms (£76)

DVD-RW - LiteON DH-20A1S-18C Black 20x 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8 / -RW x 6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA Black (£21)
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Total = £531 (leaving a little spare for delivery)

Will a 500w Power supply be enough to power the above?, i will have numerous external devices hooked up via USB (Mouse/Keyboard/USB HDD/Printer)

Thanks for reading and any comments would be great

 

[Boah]

Memory - 2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP (£78)

No incompatibilities as far as I can see, but you won't need 800MHz DDR2 RAM. You could get yourself some "Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA663) £57.99 (£68.14)" and save yourself a tenner Even if you overclock that Q6600 that will leave more than enough room for the memory to keep pace.

Motherboard - Abit AB9 WiFi iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX (£92)

I'd probably get a P35-based board rather than a 965 one. The Abit IP35 Pro gets good feedback on these forums, as does the other P35 boards available from OcUK.

Will a 500w Power supply be enough to power the above?, i will have numerous external devices hooked up via USB (Mouse/Keyboard/USB HDD/Printer)

That should be fine.

 

[galactiko]

A couple of things worth considering:

I would go for a E6750, you lose 2 cores, but the E6750 is cheaper (~£115) and has faster performace for gaming and other non-multicore supporting applications (basically eveything expect encoding, its about 35% slower than a Q6600 for encoding).

This frees you up £50.

Your current memory is okay and would alow you to take the E6750 upto 3.2ghz, tho the E6750 can reach 3.5-3.6 without any fuss, so pay £10 extra for some OCZ PC6400 Reaper Ram (88.11 from here) and it get to 480mhz with ease allowing you to reach 3.6gz on the CPU with some overhead on the ram.

Get yourself a Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R for 88.11 (on offer from here) and save yourself almost £5 whilst future proofing youself for an uypgrade to the new Penryn processors and/or DDR3 ram in 8 months time.

This leaves you with £45 to spare on top of the £70 you had saved from your build, which you could spend on a 8800 GTS (costs about £190) or buy a good HSF (Tuniq Tower) or buy a bigger Screen (tho your 1950 could hold you back on newer games)

 

[Jaffa_Cake]

Get the Crucial Ballistix PC5300, it hits 1100MHz no problems

 

[Bobcat]

Hey all

Sorry to bump this thread, and thanks to the previous replies, i have revised the shopping-cart and was wondering if anyone can cast their eye over this lot to make sure its all correct before pressing the buy button.

I went for the P35 MB as suggested for future-proofing as much as possible, i have had Abit before with AMD Chip so thought i would go for the Abit again to see how it is with a Intel Chip.

What do you all think, is this setup ok and all compatible ??

Inc Delivery it comes in just over my £600 budget, which i can cope with

 

[OutpostCommand]

I would actually go for a Q6600 if I were you. Its more future proofed, and it has very large overclocking potential. Its not that much more expensive either. Sure, the E6750 will show some slight bonus performance over the Q6600, but with more and more multithreaded applications and games coming out, the extra 2 cores will come in far more useful.

Thats my opinion, anyway (unless you plan to shortly buy a new CPU, in which case go ahead, and stick with the E6750)

Overall though, nice configuration

 

[Bobcat]

I would actually go for a Q6600 if I were you. Its more future proofed, and it has very large overclocking potential. Its not that much more expensive either. Sure, the E6750 will show some slight bonus performance over the Q6600, but with more and more multithreaded applications and games coming out, the extra 2 cores will come in far more useful.

Thats my opinion, anyway (unless you plan to shortly buy a new CPU, in which case go ahead, and stick with the E6750)

Overall though, nice configuration

Thanks for the reply

At the moment i need to stick to as close to £600 as possible, so cannot justify the extra for the Q6600 right now, but i guess that with the P35 board i can upgrade the CPU at a later stage to a quad-core, with possibly faster speeds that are on the market at the moment ?

I will place this order tomorrow so that i can get to build it next weekend, but if anyone has any other comments or suggestions, please post

 

[truebluecfc]

If i was you I'd get the E2160, it will overclock to 2.8GHz fairly comfortably and more and will save you a fair bit or fork out the extra for the Q6600.