Spec me up - silent pc

battlex

battlex

battlex

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1 Aug 2004
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Hi, I'm after a new pc, so far I've come up with the following specification:

Asus P5E Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £140.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £119.84
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA1065) £82.24
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - OEM £299.61
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-620HXUK) £93.99

Total: £736.67

I've got an operating system, harddrives and optical disc player so I suppose I only require a case. Usage will consist of photo/video editing and gaming. The whole rig has to be silent.. I don't wanna hear anything at all other than the hard drives. Help me out! Thanks. :)
 
That motherboard's too expensive and it's silly to spend that much and not get a C2Q. I suggest the Antec P182 for the case. It's big and heavy and should nicely dampen the sounds. You should also get a Tuniq Tower to cool it since it's much quieter than the stock cooler.

I'll have a go at an improved spec for you.

EDIT: Will you be overclocking?
 
Well I wanted that motherboard because I may upgrade to the new 45nm Intels once they're out, and with regards to getting a C2Q I don't really see any performance benefit of having 4 cores as opposed to 2 - that and also the £50 premium. And yes, I'll probably be overclocking as well - although I'm not really bothered that much if it'll result in increased noise.
 
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As above, P35 is a better choice since it's a lot less expensive and will also support 45nm CPUs. You'll find that the quad makes a huge difference when doing video editing. If that's a priority I suggest you get the quad.

I only have the LED CPU cooler here because it's on sale. It should perform the same as the unadorned version.
 
just get a p35 motherboard and a q6600 imo rather than wasting money on the x38 - from what i can see the only advantage of x38 is dual 16x slots (rather than 8x only, but 16x size) for crossfire, and although not many current games use quad core, future games will use it a lot, and quite afew video editing etc programs already use it.
 
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In terms of overclockability, How good is the Q6600 on air? And won't I be needing faster ram if I'm going to overclock? - hence the ballistix choice.

How loud does the 8800gtx and that tuniq heatsink get? and is it worth waiting a few weeks to see what nvidia has to offer?
 
The Ballistix is overkill. It's good RAM but it'd be a waste of money. Only if you clocked the CPU up to 3.6 GHz would you be running the FSB at the RAM's rated speed. Unless you're doing extreme overclocking any PC2-6400 will be underclocked for its whole life.

The GTX is pretty quiet. I wouldn't call it silent, but anything with moving parts is going to emit some sort of noise. The same goes for the Tuniq. I think you'll be very happy with them. If you get them and decide they aren't good enough, you could always get a new fan or whatnot.

The Q6600 can be overclocked without much effort to 3.2 GHz. You could probably take it higher if you wanted.
 
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