New Rig

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:30

Short description of why I'm buying new componants:

2 years of using a Sempron 3100+ 754 machine, x2 512MB PC3200 Crucial Dual Channel, 9550SE HIS Radeon and the frames per second on anything are somewhat lacking nowadays.

Stuff I'll be buying:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS)
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-CO)
Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-095-WD)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) (HS-003-SY)

Stuff I've bought recently:

Coolermaster Stacker 830
Enermax 620W Liberty PSU
Saitek Illuminated Keyboard
Razer Copperhead 2000DPi mouse
Samsung 930BF 19" TFT

I'll be salvaging the CDROM/DVD combination drive and x2 76GB WD Caviar HDD's from my previous machine, plus the soundcard.

Thoughts and suggestions please?

kmistry · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:39

Seems like a good setup to me, only thing I would say is, perhaps you should go for the E6300 instead, as I understand they both have the same amount of cache, and the E6300 clocks very well, so why waste money ?

Everything else looks good

Macabre · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:43

TomL said:
Short description of why I'm buying new componants:

2 years of using a Sempron 3100+ 754 machine, x2 512MB PC3200 Crucial Dual Channel, 9550SE HIS Radeon and the frames per second on anything are somewhat lacking nowadays.

Stuff I'll be buying:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS)
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-CO)
Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-095-WD)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) (HS-003-SY)

Stuff I've bought recently:

Coolermaster Stacker 830 (PLZ SPARE ME THE CRITICISM)
Enermax 620W Liberty PSU
Saitek Illuminated Keyboard (blue)
Razer Copperhead 2000DPi mouse (blue)
Samsung 930BF 19" TFT

I'll be salvaging the CDROM/DVD combination drive and x2 76GB WD Caviar HDD's from my previous machine.

Thoughts and suggestions please?

Well if you didn't spend so much on the mouse and keyboard and you no doubt would have been cheaper to get a 150-250 GB 7200 RPM hd. Therfore saving you like 100 notes or something, meaning you could have got the E6600. Standard keyboard and mouse = £10.

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:44

kmistry said:
Seems like a good setup to me, only thing I would say is, perhaps you should go for the E6300 instead, as I understand they both have the same amount of cache, and the E6300 clocks very well, so why waste money ?

Everything else looks good

My possibly flawed logic behind deciding on the 6400 was that it had a higher base clock speed than the 6300 for an extra £42, therefore I assumed it'd be able to clock higher if I were to OC it regardless. Not that I am a fan of OC'ing anyway, meaning the higher base clock speed benefits me there if I didn't OC.

But if it isn't worth the £42 then f' it I'll buy the 6300!

edit: included quote

Macabre · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:49

TomL said:
My possibly flawed logic behind deciding on the 6400 was that it had a higher base clock speed than the 6300 for an extra £42, therefore I assumed it'd be able to clock higher if I were to OC it regardless. Not that I am a fan of OC'ing anyway, meaning the higher base clock speed benefits me there if I didn't OC.

But if it isn't worth the £42 then f' it I'll buy the 6300!

I still think you should go higher then that, what I would have done was bought all your other stuff later when I got the money e.g the good mouse and keyboard. Now that you have bought that still nothing wrong with going for the 6400. If you have the money just go for the better one.

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:50

Macabre said:
Well if you didn't spend so much on the mouse and keyboard and you no doubt would have been cheaper to get a 150-250 GB 7200 RPM hd. Therfore saving you like 100 notes or something, meaning you could have got the E6600. Standard keyboard and mouse = £10.

I'd gotten tired of using the standard keyboard and mouse, the Saitek keyboard is meant to be good anyway (peoples opinions of it on here anyway), and the Copperhead I feel enables me to play Counter-Strike: Source better

I could just wait for next months wages and cash in on the E6600, it is an extra £78 compared to the E6400 just for the extra cache and slightly higher clock speed though...

EDIT: I'm not very good at prioritizing, at all. If I had common sense I wouldn't have gone for the expensive peripherals and saved up for the better hardware first. Unfortunately I didn't seek anyones opinion on that matter before I spent over £400 on the PSU, case, keyboard and mouse... plus I bought Windows XP Professional aswell

Macabre · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:53

TomL said:
I'd gotten tired of using the standard keyboard and mouse, the Saitek keyboard is meant to be good anyway (peoples opinions of it on here anyway), and the Copperhead I feel enables me to play Counter-Strike: Source better

I could just wait for next months wages and cash in on the E6600, it is an extra £78 compared to the E6400 just for the extra cache and slightly higher clock speed though...

Ya I get what you mean, I wouldn't mind a copperhead myself but after buying a new gfx card and power supply and soon 2GB of RAM lol.

Its up to you, like I said the E6400 is fine, but if you have the cash there is no reason you shouldn't go for the 6600.

Saitek is fine, if im right it has a 5 button pushdown keys like the G15? where on standard keyboards if you push 3 or something it bleeps lol. I was gonna get the G15 but I have a pull out desk so it would be to wide.

The copperhead is fine but the diamondback would have done you fine, you wouldn't use 2000dpi in fps games anyway, 1600 is usually the limit for the 'experience'. 2000dpi is usually for RTS games, but either or.

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:56

Macabre said:
The copperhead is fine but the diamondback would have done you fine, you wouldn't use 2000dpi in fps games anyway, 1600 is usually the limit for the 'experience'. 2000dpi is usually for RTS games, but either or.

I have it set on 2000dpi all the time, I just turned the sensitivity down to about 1/3 of the highest setting and it seems to work alright like that. My mouse sensitivity on CS is 3.0 so that's quite low aswell.

kmistry · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:02

TomL said:
I have it set on 2000dpi all the time, I just turned the sensitivity down to about 1/3 of the highest setting and it seems to work alright like that. My mouse sensitivity on CS is 3.0 so that's quite low aswell.

lol my mouse sense in ut2004 is 0.5 :eek:

as for the E6600, tbh if you have the money definitely go for it, it has more cache and is definitely worth the money. As for the E6400 having a higher clock speed, yeah its really up to you, if you're not going to overclock then just get the E6400

Macabre · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:04

TomL said:
I have it set on 2000dpi all the time, I just turned the sensitivity down to about 1/3 of the highest setting and it seems to work alright like that. My mouse sensitivity on CS is 3.0 so that's quite low aswell.

Well I have CS:S and pretty much every other Steam game. However even though I have the discs I can't log into my account due to some crappy error even though my account works at friends house. So I haven't played CS:S on my own comp since October 2005. Oh yeah Valve support is a :rolleyes:

.

All gamers usually have different settings, just I thought 2000DPI would be way to sensitive for a fps lol.

Macabre · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:09

kmistry said:
lol my mouse sense in ut2004 is 0.5

as for the E6600, tbh if you have the money definitely go for it, it has more cache and is definitely worth the money. As for the E6400 having a higher clock speed, yeah its really up to you, if you're not going to overclock then just get the E6400

Tbh, even if he has never overclocked like me. I never overclocked anything incase it broke lol. But I still say if hes got the money then why not, I mean hes got everything else in his system thats needed, good graphics card, good memory 2GB is goof (what I need) etc.

So if you do buy the E6600 then go to the overclocking part of the forum and ask them whats safe to overclock it to etc, but at the end of the day make sure your system is cooled enough. I haven't overclocked anything in my system or I doubt the new graphics card because my case is small and somewhat cramped, there is a vent at the back for the powersupply and a vent on the side of the case to let the CPU air out so it doesn't overheat. Good thing about my system is that the CPU has a tube ontop of it so it extends up to that vent on the side of the case, which allows the CPU to blow out of the case rather than spread heat around the case.

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:18

I appreciate the feed back Macabre and kmistry, about cooling Macabre:

I'm using a CM Stacker 830 case, it's very large and houses 7 120mm fans iirc. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep my CPU at a suitabley cool level, if it isn't then it's not worth the noise it's making :mad:

TomL · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:48

I'll check back on this later in the evening

TomL · 20 Oct 2006 at 13:13

Does anyone else have any thoughts about what I'm buying before I click purchase?