Possible new build - opinions please

Werewolf

Werewolf

Werewolf

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17 Oct 2002
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Panting like a fiend
Hi

I'm looking at possibly building a new system up, my first for about 3 years.
Can anyone see any problems with this setup

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) £62.99
(£74.01) £62.99
(£74.01)
Asus ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB GDDR4 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail Asus ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB GDDR4 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £124.99
(£146.86) £124.99
(£146.86)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £109.99
(£129.24) £109.99
(£129.24)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3750330AS) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3750330AS)
2x 4gb Crucial DDR2 800 memory kits. @ £88 each.

Basically a whole new build (apart from my optical drives), I may end up adding another hard drive from my existing machine (250gb).

Can anyone see any obvious problems with this setup?
I really want to try and get it to last at least 2 years, hence the oodles of ram now (I'm personally expecting ram to go up in price).
 
I think you're probably spending too much on the RAM. You could get two 4 GiB PC2-6400 kits for £58.74 each (retail inc. VAT) that will work just as well for you, even when overclocking that Q6600.
 
I can't see any obvious problems aside from the fact that you are double quoting the title of each product twice and it confused me for a second. :p

Slightly more helpfully I hope - I probably would bother with Crucial Ballistix as I'm guessing from the price that is what you've selected, it is great when it works but can be temperamental, something like this G.Skill is both cheaper and works happily with lower voltages. I'd definitely consider the Samsung F1 750gb in place of one of the 7200.11s as they should be as fast or faster and about £10 cheaper than the 750gb Seagate to boot.

Will you be overclocking? If so you might want to consider an aftermarket cooler and buying the CPU as an OEM instead.

Finally you might want to consider if you need the features of the Asus Premium over the model one down, I think the main differences are dual gigabit LAN and eSATA ports.
 
thefishdude said:
is that 8gb of ram you have chosen ? think 4 is plenty could save a bit there and notice virtually no difference.
Click to expand...
It is, but he explained that he's getting an overkill amount now as he expects the price to go up.

If the past is any indication I'm inclined to agree, at least in the long run. DDR3 will take off in the next year or two. At the point at which AMD and Intel are both supporting DDR3, DDR2 prices will increase greatly, just as DDR(1) prices did when AMD and Intel both started using DDR2.
 
Re the ram price, aye I would be paying a bit of a premium, but Crucial are great about returns/replacements so I'm fairly happy to pay a bit extra to be guaranteed no serious problems over the next few years if a modle goes wrong (especially once prices go up and it starts to get hard to find).

As for the quantity of ram, it's as billy says i'm expecting ddr2 to die fairly soon (certainly within the time i expect to be using the machine for), as i've had the same thing happen to me with EDO, PC100/133 and DDR.
I could go for a DDR3 motherboard and ram to ensure I could upgrade the ram in a year or so without any problems, but that would cost as much as going with the 8gb (overkill I know) of DDR2 ram now (it's about £180 for 8gb of Crucial DDR2 800, or about £250+ for 4gb of cheap DDR3).

I'm probably going to be doing a lot of high res photo work on the machine, as one of the things i've been putting off (due to the time it takes with my current system) is scanning in a lot of our old photos and trying to colour correct the faded ones etc.
 
You have thumbs up from me, Considering your spec is nearly identical to the one I spec'd for myself. Although I've gone western Digital for my hard drives. :p
 
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