New System _ Check My Specs Please ?

phartars

phartars

phartars

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I haven't built a system for a few years so I'm unsure what's hot and what's not.

I know the Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 gives good bangs for the bucks but I'm not too sure about Motherboards and Graphics cards.

Do the specs below look ok ?

I'm hoping to get the CPU to ~2.8Ghz on the stock cooler with a water cooled upgrade later.

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 Retail
MSI P35 Neo2-FR Mobo ? <-------------Is that board ok ?
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3
Thermaltake ToughPower 750W PSU
WD Raptor 36GB (I wish OCUK had these in stock !)

Questions:

1/ Will the ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 take a water cooling block ?

2/ Is the Thermaltake ToughPower 750W a decent PSU ?


Thanks for any help you feel you can give.
 
Welcome to the forums. That should all go together nicely, the PSU is possibly overkill but Thermaltake PSUs are decent enough from what I know of them.

I don't know much about watercooling but I don't see any obvious reason why the 3850pro wouldn't take a waterblock.

I'd personally not bother with the Raptor as for less money you can get a good 7200rpm drive which won't be much slower but has a lot more space.
 
Hi, welcome to the forums :)

That spec looks fine to me, the mobo as it happens is the same one im buying this weekend, and should be 100% compatible with what you have there. I probably would have bought some different bits perhaps, but for no good reason other than individual choice and taste.


1. yes the 'EK FC3850 CF Full Cover VGA Waterblock' is just one of the few blocks (google my man) you can get for that card and....
2. Yes i personally think that its a fine and stable PSU, of course there is always a few that go AWOL... thats electronics but you should be good... and its plenty powerfull enough to last a good while too. Most people will steer towards the Corsair range, but I think there are more than one reliable manufactuer out there :P
 
Thanks for the welcome and the replies.

Couple of q's

The Raptor isn't much faster than a 7200 PRM Drive ? Does anyone have a link to some comparison benchmarks ?

edit: just found some speed tests - am surprised ! Thanks for the warning

Space isn't an issue, speed is, but if there's not that much in it I'll stick with what I've got and save a few quid.

The plan is to have the OS and a few essential apps on the 36GB drive on SATA 1 and everything else on a partitioned
(existing) 80GB (SATA2) with another 160GB drive on SATA3 for storage. I've got 1 x 500 and 1 x 300 external drives.

The PC will be used mostly for processing lots of RAW files using DPP and Photoshop with a bit of HDR & some gaming.

The Thermaltake: I prefer to over spec a PSU. I did with my current Tagan 480W which is still 100% but doesn't have
the PCI-e outputs, but if anyone can suggest a comparable PSU which can save me a few quid please go ahead :)

Thanks.
 
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Just because I'd hate to disappoint Foehammer2003 :p here is a recommendation for the Corsair HX 520w which is easily sufficient for any single graphics card system.

However if you want the extra capacity for watercooling and/or don't care too much about spending £20 for the extra wattage then the Thermaltake is still fine as well.

I'd also have recommended PC Power & Cooling PSUs but OcUK seem to be messing about with their PSU selection at the moment so they don't have as much choice - there was a 610w in there recently that was pretty good.
 
If you are planning on Crossfiring in the future (your only option with that motherboard) then I should point out that only one of the PCI-E slots will run at 16x and the other at 4x, whether that makes any real world difference is up for debate but it is something to note anyway.

I'd stick with the Thermaltake PSU then, no harm in having extra capacity just in case. I suspect the Corsair would easily cope but I wouldn't want to recommend it if I wasn't absolutely sure.

For the hard drive I'd either go with a Western Digital AAKS series drive or a Seagate 7200.10 250gb - the newer single platter model as it is very quick.
 
Thanks, after running some benchmark apps on my current drives I've decided to stick with what I've got but buy
the 500GB version of the AAKS series to mirror internally an existing external 500GB drive. Thanks for your help :)
 
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