Sorry guys, another spec request ....

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Talk about the most active and educated comp forum around ! This place really rocks !

Anyways, I'm posting for some help as with all the other poor souls that come here to bug the experts :p

I'm looking to build a new rig to replace my current one. Lately my PC has really ground to a halt and seems to be slowing down despite a recent full format and some minor tweaking.

My current PC's main specs are: -

San Diego 4000+
ASUS A8 something deluxe (the skt939 board) with AGP
1Gb decent Corsair low latency memory
1 250gb SATA drive
1 60gb really old IDE storage drive
Radeon X800 XT AGP

There are some things I plan to keep from this build like the NEC writer and the new sound card but other than that its getting binned. It does seem a shame its performing so poorly as I fitted my gfx with a new silent fan, just replaced the power supply and sound dampened the whole case :(

I'm looking to spend around £1,500 on the new build.

I'd like the PC to be pretty close to silent through air-cooling. I'm only gaming on a 19" TFT monitor so don't think I'll need SLI or xfire just yet but would like to be future proof if possible with the mobo purchase. I'm defo getting a Conroe chip but couldn't justify the X6800's price tag. I'm not a hard core gamer (and if I was its at 1200x1000 res anyways) but I do a lot of video conversation and winrar packing and extraction and find this is killing my PC at the moment (strangely it never used to though). I know the Conroe’s don't have hyper threading technology but I do really want the best multi-tasking set up for my money which I believe to be Conroe’s.

Well I know I'm being lazy wanting so much help but any recommendations or advice you can spare the time to give will be very much appreciated. I’ve done a lot of reading but as always there is so much conflicting advice.

Thanks

p.s. Just noticed the 24” Dells are reduced again this week, perhaps a re-think is in order :)
 
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hmm this is excluding a lot of things, such as case, quiet fans etc, but im thinking maybe you can re-use yours atm if you have just gone to the trouble of dampening it all etc, anyway i squeezed in the 24" dell so pretty much everything else is out the window :P
anyway its an e6400, 2gig 800mhz ram, 2*320gig hdds, 7900GTO and 24" dell, oh and a 600w quiet psu



- Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN) 1 £139.99 £139.99
- Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) (HS-003-SY) 1 £29.99 £29.99

- Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI) 1 £91.99 £91.99
- GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL) 1 £173.99 £173.99

- OcUK MSI GeForce 7900 GTO SILENT 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-041-OK) 1 £153.99 £153.99
- Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey (MO-009-DE) 1 £479.99 £479.99

- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE) 2 £62.95 £125.90

- Seasonic M12 Modular 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-006-SS) 1 £99.99 £99.99

Subtotal £1,295.83
VAT £226.78
Total £1,522.61
 
Thanks a lot mikeymike

If I go for the monitor I'd like to get that seperate of the budget.

I'd really like a Conroe chip with the 4mb cache to help the multitasking so I guess I'm talking 6600 or 6700. Does the DS3 board only support SLI ?

I was looking at the 7950 range and was considering pushing out for a GX2? Is this worth the extra cash?

Well I have a fair idea but what would anyone recommend excluding the monitor still in the £1,500 range ?

Thanks
 
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well lose the monitor and youv'e instantly got £565 extra to spend, so swapping an e6300 to an e6600 is an extra £102, im pretty sure the 4meg cache chips werent working so well with 965 boards like the DS3, but i think BIOS updates are elliminating that factor now, obv if you want SLi anyway maybe get an Asus P5W64-WS Pro as its on deal this week :] that would cost you £187.99, thats £80 extra than the DS3, maybe someone else can suggest a better cheaper 975x mobo that you could go for instead

anyway revised buylist:

-Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN) £194.99 £194.99
-Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler (478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA755) (HS-003-SY) £29.99 £29.99

-Asus P5W64-WS Pro Intel 975X (Socket LGA775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-180-AS) £159.99 £159.99
-GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL) £173.99 £173.99

-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE) £62.95 £125.90

-Seasonic M12 Modular 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-006-SS) £99.99 £99.99

Subtotal £784.85
VAT £137.35
Total £922.20


that leaves you 580 to buy a graphics card, although you should think about spending loads on one now, when DX10 is not so far away, thats why i plumped for a 7900GTO the 1st time around. its really upto you though so this time ive just left the Gcard out totally :]
 
Top man, thanks again.

I reckon I may now sell my old rig so I would need to consider a case plus anything else I may be forgetting not including what is listed below.

So say £500 for: -

GFX
CASE
+anything else

Might even think about an extra raptor drive for the OS?

Not sure if thats money well spent though.

Would the 600W be a high enough rating to support SLI etc going forward?

Also, with such a set up should I be looking for some silent cases fans ?

Does anyone know if this mobo/mem/cpu combo would be a good overclocker?

Thanks again
 
Sorry just been playing in the cart.

How would this set up perform?

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST
HS-015-ZA Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower (Socket 939/754/478/775) CPU Cooler (HS-015-ZA) 1
£26.99 £26.99
HD-069-WD Western Digital Raptor 150GB WD1500ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-069-WD) 1
£135.99 £135.99
MY-058-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL) 1
£173.99 £173.99
GX-044-OK OcUK Galaxy GeForce 7950 GT OC SILENT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/HDCP/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-OK) 1
£169.99 £169.99
MO-009-DE Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey (MO-009-DE) 1
£479.99 £479.99
CP-128-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN) 1
£194.99 £194.99
MB-191-AS Asus P5WDG2-WS Professional Intel 975X (Socket LGA775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-191-AS) 1
£169.99 £169.99
HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE) 1
£62.95 £62.95
CA-007-TT Thermaltake VA8000BWS Armour Super Tower - Black (CA-007-TT) 1
£79.95 £79.95
FG-002-ZA Zalman ZM-F3 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin (FG-002-ZA) 2
£5.50 £11.00
CD-044-NE NEC AD7170A 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-044-NE) 1
£19.95 £19.95
CA-014-TG Tagan TG700-U25 700W ATX2.0 Dual Engine Silent SLi Compliant Silent PSU (CA-014-TG) 1
£97.99 £97.99
Subtotal £1,623.77
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £24.95
VAT £288.53
Total £1,937.25


Its not so easy to read so sorry about that.

Is this overkill or am I missing something etc ?

Advise much appreciated.

Thanks
 
to be honest with that much money to throw around all your decisions are really about personal taste, not about scraping together for parts, the only thing with that spec youve posted is id have atleast two big drives, these days any system with less than 500gigs of space of going to get crowded before long, if youre wanting a raptor for windows/games etc and only one 320gig drive for data, that just sound too small to me
 
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