Spec Check plz :)

TopGear

TopGear

TopGear

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Joined
10 Mar 2007
Posts
41
Hi all, im looking at purchasing the following:

suggestions, recommendations / advice appreciated.

Also I'm not sure what PSU to go for any suggestions or links to some good reviews on the latest power supplies would be good

Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 S775 Mobo X38
x2 Crucial 2GB Kit (1GBx2) Ballistix DDR2 PC2-8500
Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0
768Mb 8800GTX PCI-E (x16), Mem 1800MHz, GPU 575MHz
Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 Ch Soundcard PCI
Lite-ON LH-20A1S-11C LiteOn 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8 / -RW x 6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Retail
x2 150 Gb Western Digital WD1500AHFD Raptor X, SATA150, 10000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 4.6 ms, NCQ
750 Gb Western Digital WD7500AAKS Caviar SE16, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775)
Thermalright HR-03-PLUS (8800 GTX) VGA Cooler
Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy (7g)
ArctiClean Thermal Material Remover and Surface Purifier - 60ml Kit

Total is approx ~£1250 ex vat

Thanks in advance

oh and i might add another gtx to sli at a later date.
 
The raptors aren't really worth the additional cash either, they may be a little faster but the benefits are nominal and the noise increase noticeable.
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775)
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You need to buy a fan for that heatsink too, have a look at something like this to use with it, or switch to something like a tuniq 120 if you don't want to buy a fan seperately.

RAM that speed is overkill, especially seeing as the lower crucial ballistix (5300 for example) will overclock to the same speed. The only time you would see the additional speed as an advantage would be if you were overclocking anyway. Seeing as your after 4gb of ram though, id suggest getting 2x2gb sticks instead, this would allow future upgrading too.
 
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TOTALLY agree with not having raptors, I have one and I think that I would have been better off spending my money on other things :(

Stelly
 
BillytheImpaler said:
X38 does not support SLi. If you're looking to potentially move to a second GPU later on you'll need a SLi board like the nVidia i680 series.
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oh, well i was reading a few articles on this, one said it would support SLI, the other said it wouldn’t officially but could with a hacked driver. If it does it does, if it doesn’t well then I guess I won’t buy another card.

DavidB said:
The raptors aren't really worth the additional cash either, they may be a little faster but the benefits are nominal and the noise increase noticeable.
You need to buy a fan for that heatsink too, have a look at something like this to use with it, or switch to something like a tuniq 120 if you don't want to buy a fan separately.

RAM that speed is overkill, especially seeing as the lower crucial ballistix (5300 for example) will overclock to the same speed. The only time you would see the additional speed as an advantage would be if you were overclocking anyway. Seeing as your after 4gb of ram though, id suggest getting 2x2gb sticks instead, this would allow future upgrading too.
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I was under the impression that if I was overclocking I would need ram that could handle it, ideally I would like 2x2gb sticks but they don’t make them in PC2-8500. With regards to the raptors, I was under the impression that apart from SCSI drives (too expensive for me), that they were good for fast access and especially in gaming.

Any thoughts on a PSU?

Also, how many of those fans would I, I read something on here about push and pull, and do I need them on my gfx cooler aswell?
 
TopGear said:
With regards to the raptors, I was under the impression that apart from SCSI drives (too expensive for me), that they were good for fast access and especially in gaming.
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Spend the extra money on RAM then. With 8GB of RAM you should need to wait on the hard disk during game play. Hell, with 4GB you shouldn't but it's always good to be safe I guess.

RAID 5 will also speed up sequential read and write to disks so it depends on the kind of accesses the game is making I guess.

If money is no object get a small solid state drive as they'll be uber fast for gaming.
 
I was under the impression that if I was overclocking I would need ram that could handle it, ideally I would like 2x2gb sticks but they don’t make them in PC2-8500.
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Well, ideally you want the FSB of the ram and that of the processor to match, otherwise one is always holding back the other.
The FSB of ram is whats stated /2, the fsb of the processor is whats stated /4.
For example the q6600 has a stated fsb of 1066 thats a fsb of 266.5, the clock speeds calculated by the multiplier (9 in the case of the Q6600) multiplied by the FSB speed.

If for example you wanted a 3.6ghz clock speed (400mhz*9) then you would need 800mhz ram, as the standard crucial ballistix 5300 ram can easily overclock to this speed(uses the same chips as the more expensive versions) it might be worth using, but even the 800mhz version would get you to 3.6ghz. The 1066 version is looking at overclocks of 4ghz+ which most chips wont manage.
But if neccessary the crucial ballistix will manage 1000mhz+ even with the basic 5300 version. Though the 4 sticks may limit your overall overclock anyway.

Any thoughts on a PSU?
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Corsair 520w or 620w
 
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