please spec me in the region of £700 (not full spec)

snow patrol

snow patrol

snow patrol

Soldato
Joined
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Hi all, i'm considering a little upgrade to treat myself before the second baby arrives and PC upgrades become a thing of the past ;)

any way, my current spec is in the sig. I basically would like a 8800gtx for 1920x1200 res gaming, but primarily i use the pc for hd movies and encoding stuff.

I want something nice and quiet (can't be bothered to get new water cooling bits, so it'll have to be air). I'd like a motherboard with more than 4 sata ports as well, if possible. Not interested in SLI at all. Any thoughts? I'm thinking £700ish, maybe slightly more, and that must include a new:

motherboard, ram, cpu, cooler, 8800gtx and maybe PSU?? (i currently have a 600w seasonic, non modular).

I know a little about the newish intel chips, but i'm afraid i really haven't kept up with motherboards or ram at all, so i'll need some expert advise there. Thanks :)
 
:) Have quad-core thrown in here too, very good price on the Kentsfields!

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit
(£93.99)

Gigabyte GA_P35_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£91.64)

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
(£176.24)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775)
(£17.61)

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retai
(£370.11)

Sub Total : £637.95
Total : £760.11

A little over budget but worth it for quad-core! Your 600w psu will be absolutley fine, its seasonice aswell, very good build quality!
 
snow patrol said:
hi mate, thanks for that. isthat cooler good and quiet then? And the EVGA - Any reason to spend the extra over the ocuk gtx?
Click to expand...

Spec is reasonable from Thermaltake - not certain on the choice of RAM. The Ballistix PC5300 will clock easily to 1100MHz and is cheaper. It has a somewhat iffy record with reliability and i'm starting to go off it. I would get some of the nice G. Skill HZ ram which also clocks beastly.

The cooler won't be any good for any overclocking on the quad core and I would get a Noctua or Tuniq for a quad core especially.

The EVGA is slightly higher clocked at the factory and comes with a 10 year waranty unlike 1 year on the OcUK one. Not much difference in performance.
 
I would have picked the Noctua, but i was trying to keep it to 700 quid. But yeh the Noctua is definatley the best choice cooler! As for the Evga, comes with a nice 10yr warranty, which is always nice.

As for the ram, it works very nicely with that certain P35 chipset, thats why i chose it!
 
sounds like you know your stuff. I don't think i would begrudge spending a little extra for a better cooler really.

As for the quad core - is it really worth it? I heard they don't over clock as well? What speed would i likely get from it. How do the newer duo cores (the ones coming out next week is it??) clock?

Also, percentage wise, how much of a speed bump am i likely to see from my current rig?
 
The reason i picked this quad-core out is due to the fact that its a hell of a deal at the moment for quad-core. Obviously things arent optimized for quad fully. But looking at your rig, you seem to upgrade every1/2 yrs rather than every 6 months, so going for a quad will keep your rig up to date for quite a while. And the GTX will still be a stormer of a card come end of nxt year.
 
hi again, the particular mobo you recommend seems to be out of stock. There are similarly priced / named gigabyte mobos available. Should i get something else?

Any other mobo you'd recommend?
 
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