The New PC Build - Agree?

[jrodga2k5]

Hey guys, going for the whole small format PC upgrade and going Core 2 Duo! So at the moment the spec I am aiming for will be...

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN) £117.49
G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5400 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS) £170.36
2xSapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-134-SP) £135.11 each so £270.22 tot
and finally the case etc will be a
Shuttle XPC SD37P2 Aluminium Barebones System - Intel Pentium D (LGA775) (FS-072-SH) £310.19
------------------------------------------------------
So the total will be around: £868.26

Already have an HDD and DVD RW in my old system ready to go in.

Thoughts? Comments?

Also I doubt anyone has XFired on this board already if so working ok?
Since it will take either 2 single slot cards or one dual slot card

RodgA

 

[melbourne720]

A few points (I also have a SFF machine so hopefully can advise):

You've picked an overclockers CPU, but it will get pretty warm in your shuttle if you start pushing it as far as it can go. If your set on a shuttle build, I'd go for a E6600 (I'll explain how I'd pay for that later).

Why only 5400 RAM? I'd go for the Geil 6400 kit. Again if you are planning to OC your RAM it could get pretty toasty in there.

2 x1950 Pros? Is there enough space? Enough power? If you want to OC the card, I'd go for a 7900 GTO, or if you got an X1900XT from the clearence section of OCuk then that would probably match the performance of your 1950 Pros whilst being £70 cheaper (they can go much faster, but then only if you OC and they might melt in the shuttle).

I'm assuming the case is Conroe compatible... It is but I see why you went for that RAM now. Bit of an early compromise to go for slower RAM than your CPU can handle.

All that said I'm sure it will be a very good rig, but if you went for a standard case you could have a cheaper build cost, more overclocking due to the better ventilation, more room to upgrade and faster RAM.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

also take into account that the psu in a shuttle case is usually not up to much so be careful in your component selection.

 

[jrodga2k5]

A few points (I also have a SFF machine so hopefully can advise):

You've picked an overclockers CPU, but it will get pretty warm in your shuttle if you start pushing it as far as it can go. If your set on a shuttle build, I'd go for a E6600 (I'll explain how I'd pay for that later).

Why only 5400 RAM? I'd go for the Geil 6400 kit. Again if you are planning to OC your RAM it could get pretty toasty in there.

2 x1950 Pros? Is there enough space? Enough power? If you want to OC the card, I'd go for a 7900 GTO, or if you got an X1900XT from the clearence section of OCuk then that would probably match the performance of your 1950 Pros whilst being £70 cheaper (they can go much faster, but then only if you OC and they might melt in the shuttle).

I'm assuming the case is Conroe compatible... It is but I see why you went for that RAM now. Bit of an early compromise to go for slower RAM than your CPU can handle.

All that said I'm sure it will be a very good rig, but if you went for a standard case you could have a cheaper build cost, more overclocking due to the better ventilation, more room to upgrade and faster RAM.

The rams the compromise, was ideally looking for something small and wanna go conroe! I will have another look around however at larger format cases.

See the the x1950pro performance does look pretty good, but your probably right about the airflow and power problem, it is a 400w psu with the system however so its actually pretty good for a shuttle.

Oh yeah operating system is sorted because I have just discovered Windows Media Centre Edition (with a free upgrade voucher to Vista Premium through Microsoft) which aint too bad at all!

 

[melbourne720]

Yeah, those shuttle PSUs do what they so on the tin (unlike most other PSUs). I have 250W that does 1hd, 1dvd, a 6800GT, seperate GPU cooler, and 8 usb ports without a problem.