Thinking of building an AM2 Rig... Need some advice

[Aidoscuz]

I know... I do feel weird paying so much for RAM but I'm not planning on upgrading any time soon so I want to get the best now. The low latencies and EPP and such all make a big difference so I'm just going to bite the bullet and do it.

 

[Blackhorse]

Over £300 is still a huge price to pay for 2GB.

How long before this becomes reasonable? ie £200?

 

[Indy500]

How long before this becomes reasonable? ie £200?

I can buy 2GB of Geil Value DDR2-667 for £129 on special @ OCUK. 2GB of DDR is cheaper, by how much is dependant on if I buy a kit or 2 seperate 1GB modules of the same type.

I really wouldnt stretch beyond that price, given its ram, and other components give a far bigger boost.

 

[Mr Jones]

Over £300 is still a huge price to pay for 2GB.

That DDR2 6400C4 sounds good, with EPP, under £220.
Not the cheapest but not as high priced as the 8000.

 

[Aidoscuz]

I’ve decided to drop the £350 RAM and go for the £210 stuff (DDR2 6400C4). In the end I thought it just wasn’t worth £140 to get a few extra frames per second… It should still be a really nice rig though.

I’ve just got one more question before I order though. Will I have to get a new copy of windows? My current one came with a Dell I bought ages ago, and I’ve reinstalled that three times without any problems. When I installed it on my current setup I had to activate it over the phone but it was fine when I did that. Should I be able to do the same thing this time or will I have to get a new copy?

 

[Aidoscuz]

CP-167-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-167-AM) 1
£199.95 £199.95
MB-142-AS Asus M2N32-SLi-DLX nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-142-AS) 1
£119.95 £119.95
GX-038-OK OcUK GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-OK) 1
£259.95 £259.95
HS-021-ZA Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 Aero Flower (Socket AM2/939/754) CPU Cooler (HS-021-ZA) 1
£29.95 £29.95
HD-000-AB Abit Serillel 2 (HD-000-AB) 1
£12.95 £12.95
MY-108-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-108-CS) 1
£174.95 £174.95
Subtotal £797.70
Shipping (Parcelforce Euro 48) £22.00
VAT £143.45
Total £963.15

Ordered

Hopefully it won't take too long to arrive. The X2 says 1-3 days and the Zalman is still on pre-order, so they might slow the order down a bit. I'll post back with some benchmarks when it arrives.

 

[adf]

Good move with the RAM. It seems to be the general consensus that it is the best of the bunch with that board. From my experience any other memory could be a false economy.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Damn it, this processor is taking ages to come into stock The 3800+ and the 4200+ are in stock, but neither have 1MB of L2 Cache which is annoying. I sent a webnote to OcUK and they said that the don't have any due date on the 4000+ either. I'll give it a few more days and see what happens. How much difference does 1MB of Cache make in games anyway?

 

[gamesaregood]

Yes you will need a new copy of windows as the one on your dell will be OEM and tied to the dell.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Well, the order finally arrived. I changed the 4000+ to a 3800+ since the 4000+ looks like it'll never be coming into stock. Everything seemed fine at first, and I spent ages setting up and optimizing windows. I ran 3DMark05 yesterday and guess what? Turns out I've got a dodgy 7900GTX I'm going to RMA it on Monday, but it's so annoying that I still can't use the computer after waiting ages for the processor...