Uber Vista rig advice

subfaction · 8 Oct 2007 at 13:17

Hi guys,

I'm about to drop a grand on the following kit, it's an upgrade from an aging p4 system, using it mainly for hi-end dtp and general multimedia and of course mabye a bit of crysis.

It's going to go in my existing case along with my hiper 580w psu, which should be enough according to a psu calc I did the other day.

Looking for advice, especially re: cpu cooler choice, i want it to physically fit to mobo!, and ensure that its as quiet as possible in the £50 price range...

Ram good choice? I want to go with 8gb, not sure on best ram to use though.

Also not sure on the overclocking side, would like to dable in that so advice on that would be ace!

thanks in advance, spec below:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838) £101.99
(£119.84) £101.99
(£119.84)
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £151.99
(£178.59) £151.99
(£178.59)
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £139.99
(£164.49) £279.98
(£328.98)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS) £63.99
(£75.19) £127.98
(£150.38)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £159.99
(£187.99) £159.99
(£187.99)
Zalman CNPS9700-NT nVidia Tritium CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £43.99
(£51.69) £43.99
(£51.69)

Stelly · 8 Oct 2007 at 13:21

I would go with the Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler.. your Hyper will be good enough

Stelly

semi-pro waster · 8 Oct 2007 at 13:29

You've got a slight problem unless I'm mistaken, your Ram is DDR2 but the motherboard is DDR3. Other than that it should be fine.

stickroad · 8 Oct 2007 at 13:34

Im afraid your DDR2 wont work with a DDR3 motherboard.

Quick question, is their any need for Vista Ultimate? If you dont know the difference between Ultimate and Home Premium, stick with Home Premium.

I would also be inclided to go for the 8800GTS 640 version, the 8800GTS 320 will start to struggle in the upcoming months.

subfaction · 8 Oct 2007 at 16:23

thanks guys, didn't realise that ddr3/2 wasn't backwards compatible. Thought i would be future proofing, guess not though. Can you recomend a good ddr2 board, 8gb of ddr3 as is way too costly. Only real requirements I have for a board is plenty of sata ports and gigabit Lan.
As for vista, yeah I want the whole thing, i'll take a look at the 640GTS, understand what you mean.

thanks guys.

.sub

semi-pro waster · 8 Oct 2007 at 18:10

You could go for the Gigabyte P35C DS3R as that supports either DDR2 or DDR3, is cheaper than the Asus and has 8 SATA ports it appears.

You could also consider OCZ PC5400 4gb kits as they come in about £80 cheaper than buying the PC6400 versions and would still offer you 3ghz from the Q6600 when running them at stock speeds.

subfaction · 8 Oct 2007 at 23:39

thanks for the advice all, I've ammended the spec a little based on comments above:

OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
x2 Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
x2 OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1 Sound Card - Retail
OcUK Value 3-Port Firewire Controller
Noctua NH-U12F CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)

Can anyone see any problems with the above as im itching to order!

BTW. semi, you mention that i'll be able to oc the cpu and the ram will keep up, any chance of me breaking 3ghz with the above?

thanks

.sub

semi-pro waster · 8 Oct 2007 at 23:57

Can't see any obvious problems there although you may need some thermal paste for the heatsink. I was going to ask about the firewire ports but it looks like they might have been dropped from the soundcard as standard which is odd as my Audigy 2 has them. I see you haven't gone for the 640mb 8800GTS? You could consider the 2900pro, most can take the mild overclocking to get to 2900XT speeds but this may delay your order while you work out which suits you best.

You might well be able to break 3ghz, however this does rely on the Ram working above its rated capacity (667mhz or 333.5mhz actual), I suspect it will but I can't guarantee it of course.

subfaction · 9 Oct 2007 at 08:48

thanks for all the advice, with one ammendment I think im ready to order:

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail BFG
x2 Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
x2 OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1 Sound Card - Retail
OcUK Value 3-Port Firewire Controller
Noctua NH-U12F CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)

shout now if you see any issues,

thanks all

.sub

subfaction · 9 Oct 2007 at 12:45

right then last min, ammend, gonna order tonight:

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66R-00838) £101.99
(£119.84) £101.99
(£119.84)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS) £63.99
(£75.19) £127.98
(£150.38)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £154.99
(£182.11) £154.99
(£182.11)
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK) £104.99
(£123.36) £209.98
(£246.72)
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - OEM £254.99
(£299.61) £254.99
(£299.61)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
OcUK Value 3-Port Firewire Controller £8.99
(£10.56) £8.99
(£10.56)
Noctua NH-U12F CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £33.99
(£39.94) £33.99
(£39.94)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1 Sound Card - Retail £76.99
(£90.46) £76.99
(£90.46)

subfaction · 12 Oct 2007 at 12:39

Right then, this is really annoying me,

Got the stuff next day, thanks ocuk!

But getting it to work correctly isn't proveing so easy, after setting up the raid, i managed to install vista, but i'm getting random blue-screens, and occassionaly the machine wont even post, just runs through a loop of me pressing on, powering up for a couple of seconds, powering off, then it powers itself on after about 10 seconds, and repeat, very odd!

I've stripped it down to the raid, gfx and ram, the problem remains.

Tonight im going to do memtest on one stick of ram at a time, if that dosn't work, im a little stuck with what to do, as i dont have access to another gfx card.

I'm suspecting the psu might be to blame, its a hiper 580w type-r had it running my previous rig for a while. I'm thinking it should be enough but mabye not?

any help/bios settings would be appreciated, i've tried both fail-safe and optimised, also tried the settings that i would have expected to be normal, but finding a tried and tested solution would be great, not bothered about OC'ing until the stock system is stable...

thanks in advance

.sub