Spec Me UP !

memphisto

memphisto

memphisto

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Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
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well i have had this pc now for a good 2-3 years and she has served me well, however i feel the time has come for her to be replaced :(

Current Spec = AMD 64 @ 2.2ghz, 1GB Ram and a Gforce 6800

anyway I will mainly be using my PC for playing Football manager, Encoding, Web and watching movies etc.

I do play the odd game but normally things along the lines of supreme commander, Im not into FPS or anything like that as i have my 360 to play them sorta games on :)
so I am looking at spending around £400-£500 on a full new base unit.

My current selections are as follows

AMD Phenom Quad Core 9500 (Socket AM2) - Retail £109.99
(£129.24) £109.99

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864AA804) £29.99 (£35.24)

Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 AMD 770 (Socket AM2/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £49.99 (£58.74)

Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £66.99
(£78.71)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD4000AAKS) £47.99 (£56.39)

Samsung SH-S203D 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99 (£17.61)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £11.99 (£14.09)

PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO SCS3 SILENT 512MB DDR2 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £43.99 (£51.69)

Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin £4.99 (£5.86)

Total including shipping £460.

the pc has to be as furture proof as possible and will have to last approx 2 years. I can Overclock so looking at reviews expecting 2.8 - 3GHZ from the phenom (is that reasonable ?)

any improvements or other suggestions ?
 
Any particular reason you are going for an AMD? Intel chips offer better value for money and performance for the most part at the moment and usually overclock further.

This is roughly the same system but an Intel, it is faster at stock and should be capable of going to over 3ghz quite comfortably, however you might need to spend a bit extra on an aftermarket cooler.

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £134.99
(£158.61) £134.99
(£158.61)
G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400C5 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400 £24.99
(£29.36) £24.99
(£29.36)
PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO SCS3 SILENT 512MB DDR2 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £43.99
(£51.69) £43.99
(£51.69)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD4000AAKS) £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Samsung SH-S203D 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
(£17.61) £14.99
(£17.61)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £54.99
(£64.61) £54.99
(£64.61)
Sub Total : £388.93
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £69.98
Total : £469.86

//edit neocon, if memphisto isn't gaming much then why an 8800GT? It isn't as if Football Manager is particularly demanding graphically.
 
i was thinking more along the lines of the quad from intel TBH, but i didnt think the motherboards were as cheap. should have checked that TBH.

will that memory allow me to overclock the Q6600 to the 3-3.3GHZ levels ?

also the only other reason i went for the phenom was because i had heard it was better at crunching data ? therefore i assumed would be better for FM ?

I also forgot to add, I will probably be buying Vista as well.
 
The memory is guaranteed to run at 400mhz (but could go higher depending on how lucky you are) so a 9x multiplier on the Q6600 would allow you up to 3.6ghz without running the Ram outwith specification, however you'd need both a good chip and good cooling for that so set your sights a bit lower and aim for 3ghz (ish) as a starting point.

Not sure about the Phenom being better at crunching data, that may be in selected applications only so a bit more research would be wise I suppose.
 
cheers semi pro, new spec :p

hows about getting this ram instead ?

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Reaper HPC Enhanced Bandwidth Edition Dual Channel DDR2

takes the price to just under £500 but with vista would the extra 2 gig be worth it ?

also if i needed to upgrade the CPU Cooler what would be best and easiest to fit in this mobo ?
 
AC freezer 7 pro is realy good value for money, not the best out there but u only pay ~half what you'd pay for tuniq and it will do the job
 
The heatsinks look stupid but other than that it is pretty decent Ram, the only point to note then is that they need 2.1v but the Abit still supplies 1.8v by default I believe. I don't have the motherboard so I'm not sure if you can boot into bios regardless and change the supplied voltage or if you need another stick of DDR2 to do so. One way round it would be to buy some G.Skill 4gb that works from 1.8v up or you could consider changing the motherboard.

From what I know of Vista I think the extra couple of gb would probably come in handy.

The Arctic Freezer 7 Pro is pretty decent at around £15 and I think fits that motherboard fine but you may want to double check on that.
 
i would go for semi pro's spec, for the price your getting a lot, nearly everybody who has bought the q6600 has praised it, i have had mine running 3.6 with a scythe ninja cooler (now watercooled :) )
 
hmm i assumed i woudl need vista to run a quad core system ? however reading the web it seems XP home 32 bit has quad core support ?

is it worth upgrading to vista or sticking with XP ? I ask as mainly all i want is a PC that works once its up and running i really dont want to be fiddling about all the time trying to get drivers to work etc.
 
If you've got a copy of XP then you might as well use it, the confusion here probably stems from the fact that you can't have more than one physical processor in XP Pro without requiring a licence per CPU (Microsoft source). Then of course there is the fact XP Home supports only one physical CPU while XP Pro allows two physical CPUs. Most important point though is that multiple cores are fine in either.

If you were going with 4gb of Ram then a 64bit OS (such as Vista) would be better in that it fully supports it rather than with a 32bit OS which looks to all available physical Ram so that includes graphics card Ram i.e. you will get about 3.5gb usable system Ram. One of the benefits of XP is that it is rather less memory hungry than Vista though so if you wanted to run with 2gb it is less of a disadvantage.
 
semi-pro waster said:
If you've got a copy of XP then you might as well use it, the confusion here probably stems from the fact that you can't have more than one physical processor in XP Pro without requiring a licence per CPU (Microsoft source). Then of course there is the fact XP Home supports only one physical CPU while XP Pro allows two physical CPUs. Most important point though is that multiple cores are fine in either.

If you were going with 4gb of Ram then a 64bit OS (such as Vista) would be better in that it fully supports it rather than with a 32bit OS which looks to all available physical Ram so that includes graphics card Ram i.e. you will get about 3.5gb usable system Ram. One of the benefits of XP is that it is rather less memory hungry than Vista though so if you wanted to run with 2gb it is less of a disadvantage.
Click to expand...


thanks for the info Semi Pro, Im thinking of sticking with XP for now, so dropping the Ram to 2GB and maybe upping the Gcard to something like the

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR3

or possibly stretching to

OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3

or as absolute max

OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB GDDR4

which should mean a PC that can last a tad longer with a Gcard powerful enough to run pretty much anything today and obviously better for the future ?
 
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