Spec help

[MrScott]

Hi there all,

My 2-ish year old Athlon64 setup is beginning to show its age now, so I'm looking to partially rebuild it. I haven't been following all this new Intel stuff that closely though so I thought I'd ask for some help with the spec.

I need:

-CPU: Low end C2D that will clock well, I was thinking E4300

-Cooler: This may be asking a lot, but ideally I'd like something which can provide decent cooling but only stands about 9cm above the motherborad (space limitations).

-Motherboard: Needs to be stable, fast and clockable, but doesn't need extras like SLi / crossfire / lots of media extras, etc (Was thinking DS3?)

-Memory: I was thinking 2GB, I'm only going to be running XP on it for now but I will be working with big files in photoshop. I have thought about 4GB for photo editing but that's gonna be dependant on price. Ideally something with reasonable latencies and headroom for clocking, the GeIL on this week only looks promising.

-Power Supply: Just need something reliable / stable and around the 500W mark.

I'll be re-using from my current rig:

-Optical drive
-Hitachi 7K250 hard drive
-X-Fi
-7800GT

Budget is ~£400, would be nice if it was cheaper but can go a little over if it will be worth it.

Thanks all.

 

[Alex UK]

This looks good...

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)
(£72.84) £61.99

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA663)
(£64.61) £54.99

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
(£96.34) £81.99

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775)
(£17.61) £14.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£111.61) £94.99

Sub Total : £308.95
Shipping : £8.95
VAT : £55.63
Total : £373.53

Unless you've got 64Bit XP, you wont be able to use 4GB RAM. XP 32Bit only makes use of about 3GB. Corsair PSU is the best around at the moment. Motherboard is P35 based and will support future Penryn CPU's, along with DDR3 RAM. Ballistix RAM is highly overclockable and quite cheap. I managed to fit an E6320 in there, with a decent CPU cooler.

 

[stickroad]

Here hows this:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

Total : £385.28

The height of that CPU cooler is 9.2CM so slightly over, if thats fine go for it. Its a nice Medicore Cooler.

 

[MrScott]

Right thanks guys, good point about the 4GB RAM, if I went for that I'd probably go Vista x64 then.

Those specs look pretty good, one question about the CPU though: if I'm going to be clocking quite heavily, which I intend to, is it really worth getting a chip with a higher stock FSB? Since I'll be raising it anyway, wouldn't that make it more likely that I'll hit the limits of the board? Also I didn't realise the Freezer 7 was so small, should just fit snugly I think.

Edit: Also, how are C2Ds affected by memory speeds? In both specs you've specced 667MHz memory, will the Ballistix clock further than the 800MHz GeIL on this week only? Or is there another reason to avoid that stuff?