Spec advice

[mortonfan]

The recent hot weather has taken its toll on my current pc, and being a bit long in the tooth anyway, coupled with the Conroes hitting the market, I'm looking to upgrade my setup a bit.

So far my current plan is:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1800 GTO ICEQ3 SILENT TURBO 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-054-HT)
Seasonic S12 430W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-000-SS)
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-054-LL)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS)

Was wondering if anyone had any comments on the above? Is the memory ok, or would I perhaps be better off looking at a GSkill alternative? Should I be adding any case fans to the above, and if so what ones? I've not listed a CPU cooler either, whats the best options for an air cooler for a Conroe? Other than that, have I missed out any other essentials? (HDs/etc will be canibalised from the old system).

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[fenderbass86]

I think you're better off getting an E6400 with the Gigabyte motherboard, the E6300 and E6400 seem to work better on it than the E6600 upwards. Then you could fit an X1800XT into the spec as it's a lot better than the GTO. Maybe a PSU with a larger wattage too.

Here's what i'd get:

CP-127-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN) 1
£154.95 £154.95
MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI) 1
£94.95 £94.95
MY-092-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS) 1
£124.95 £124.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) 1
£136.95 £136.95
CA-054-LL Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-054-LL) 1
£48.95 £48.95
CA-005-SK FSP Sparkle AX500-A Blue Storm 500W ATX2.0 PSU (CA-005-SK) 1
£49.95 £49.95
Subtotal £610.70
VAT £106.88
Total £717.58

it's cheaper than what you initially put too!

 

[mortonfan]

Thanks for the advice. Ideally I thought about getting the DFI 975X, but the prospect of it not working out of the box with my cpu has me worried. Seems like it would be a lot of hassle to get it sorted too, as I don't have any other chip I could use in it. In all honesty if I had more patience I'd wait maybe a month for the motherboard market to grow a bit, but I don't think I'll last that long.

 

[fenderbass86]

The 965 motherboards were specifically designed for Conroe, so it'll work out of the box with a conroe cpu. They offer better value for money aswell, that Gigabyte board is ripping it up so to speak.