Please check my configuration :)

Associate
Joined
20 Jul 2009
Posts
21
I wonder if anyone might be able to have a quick check through this and see if anything needs attention.

The PSU in my existing computer decided to give up last week, taking the motherboard with it. The core of the system (motherboard, cpu, and RAM) is quite old so there's not much to salvage.

I have these working components left:

Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 850W Power Supply
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5830
Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB SSD
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB HDD

The PSU was purchased with the hope that nothing more was cooked but it wasn't to be.

These are the components I thought might complement those above:

Corsair Dominator 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz)
Asus Crosshair IV Formula AMD 890FX (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz
Coolermaster ATCS 840 Classic Case - Black
Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler
Samsung SH-B083L/RSBP 8x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Drive
Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm Fan * 6 (to replace noisy fans)

Any thoughts? :)

Thank you in advance!

Chris
 
do you really want 8Gb of ram? whats this pc used for?

and there are cheaper motherboards that have symmetrical crossfire, just not at 16X/16X.

and what noisy fan do you think you need to replace, the stock AMD cpu one is the worst, but the corsair H50 will kill that problem.
 
Hey stulid,

Thanks for the reply. Please yell if this doesn't cover everything.

Games will be the biggest job it has, although it might actually spend more time transcoding my DVD collection.

I had original intended to go for 6Gb RAM, but it's sold in 4Gb blocks here so I ended up with 8Gb. I quite like playing X-3 Terran Conflict and found that the extra RAM I fed my previous motherboard helped tremendously (8Gb there as well).

Regarding the mainboard, I liked the built-in sound device, the number of USB ports, and I quite liked the orientation of the SATA ports and that it has some favourable customer reviews :)

Fans, potentially the fan tray in the top of the new case, and potentially the fan on the H50. 6 is possibly overkill, avoiiding repetative delivery costs :)

The pile above is currently kicking in at £934 against a budget of £1200. However, I wasn't aiming to push it to the limit although whatever I end up with must last; ideally at least 3 to 4 years.

Chris
 
the fans in the top of the case are bigger than 120mm, trust me, mine are. (think they are 240mm)

and there is already a quiet 120mm fan at the back of the case, that can substitute for the H50 one.

memory, triple channel kits are only used for Intel i7 setups do to them having a triple channel memory controller.

buy two lots of this memory, with its really low timings- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-201-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517
 
Last edited:
Ahh okay, I'll pop those off. I only added the 120mm because the specification noted they could be replaced for.

The existing fans are nice and quiet?

Chris
 
yeah, I got those, just makes for a neater route, the sata cables that come with the motherboard are to short, and so will straddle across the case in a bad way.

the only issue with those cables, is that the connector head is large, so you cant put them next to each other, but that motherboard has enough sata ports to avoid this problem
 
Do you really need Crossfire / SLI? If not you could shave off nearly £100 with the Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 I've got one myself with 4gb DDR3 1600MHz and its a champ. Bios confused me a little bit as you have to use the Numpad +- keys to adjust bus speed etc but it overclocked my 1055t to 4ghz easily.
 
Added those, thanks :)

The case will be a bit of monster compared to my current Cooler Master Praetorian 730. I felt a new one was necessary since the graphics card intrudes on the drive bays, and my new PSU cannot be secured properly. It'll be nice to have it neat and tidy inside this time.

Chris
 
At the moment, no, I don't need CrossFire. However, I decided I'd rather have it available as an option for later.

I'm pretty sure I said the same about my last mainboard. Ended up skipping SLI there and upgrading to the ATI 5830 from an NVidia GTS 8800.

Chris
 
I have that motherboard, rest of my kit in my sig.

Makes overclocking a doddle, even for a noobie like me. The onboard sound is actually better than my creative soundcard I had, so I was able to sell it.

Lovely looiking thing as well. :D
 
Back
Top Bottom