Upgrade Help - The All Rounder!

[Weaver]

Hi all, I’m looking to upgrade/build a new rig hopefully salvaging some parts from my existing setup.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium nForce4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+@ 2400 MHz Toledo (JH-E6, 939)
2 x 1 GB OCZ ECM Platinum ( DDR-SDRAM PC-4000 (250 MHz) - [DDR-500] )
2 x 200 GB Samsung SP2004C HD SATA 2.0 (SATA 300)
1x300GB Maxtor HD (back up)
Corsair 620 HX PSU
XFX 7800gtx
2xLG Electronics L226W
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D
SAMSUNG TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203P

All housed in a Thermaltake Xaser case.


I built this rig, with a few tweaks here and there, 3-3.5 years ago and it’s really beginning to show its age, the CPU cores are tending to overheat, which results in a shutdown, so I suspect it’s on its way. Being out of the loop for 6 months these days can leave you lagging behind and so I’ve been more or less looking at some sort of bundle deal with a good GPU thrown in but tbh my head is fried with it all.

I use this rig mainly for sound production with some amateur video and animation in addition to some online gaming. (Would like to keep an eye on components noise lvl)

Will be running Win XP as most of the apps I use are 32 bit apps with a view to upgrading to vista at a later date when apps and CPU prices for high-end components drop. The Apps include Photo Shop, After Effects, Fraps, Premier Pro, Cubase, Pro tools, filters and resource hungry plug-ins. Finally, online gaming, EVE-Online is my preferred choice and would be nice to be ready for ambulation. Ideally I would be looking to squeeze maybe 1.5 to 2 years out of this new spec.

I’m not a big fan of nforce, however if I’m quoted an nforce board I would be grateful if the choice were explained. All in all though any help would be appreciated.


My budget is £400 but its elastic enough to stretch to £500ish.

 

[jak731]

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £46.99
(£55.21) £46.99
(£55.21)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £98.99
(£116.31) £98.99
(£116.31)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Sub Total : £360.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £64.73
Total : £434.63


if your 7800GTX does you fine, then the 4850 wont be needed, however it would be a huge upgrade

i know you wont get to use all 4GB of RAM, but it will be there if and when you go 64bit

quad core to help with encoding time.

assuming you will not be crossfiring, a p35 chipset MB should serve you fine, oyu may want to look at P45 MBs as well

if you are not overclocking ,you can save money on the motherboard by not getting such an high end board.

the tuniq tower is to give you good air cooling with little to no noise

 

[Weaver]

if your 7800GTX does you fine, then the 4850 wont be needed, however it would be a huge upgrade

i know you wont get to use all 4GB of RAM, but it will be there if and when you go 64bit

quad core to help with encoding time.

assuming you will not be crossfiring, a p35 chipset MB should serve you fine, oyu may want to look at P45 MBs as well

if you are not overclocking ,you can save money on the motherboard by not getting such an high end board.

the tuniq tower is to give you good air cooling with little to no noise

Thanks for the reply mate.

What you’ve recommended is more or less along the lines of what I was thinking myself. I also had a look at both the 4850 and the 4870 paired with a P45 MB for the PCI-E 2.0 compatibility but wasn’t sure if it would be a necessity.

Again thanks for the input mate much appreciated.

 

[Weaver]

Finally decided on a build selection so updating this thread and asking what you all think about how these components would sit together?

 

[sniffy]

It seems the guys around here don't recommend the "guaranteed to run at" CPUs so stay away mate. There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between the P5Q deluxe and the P5Q-E (which is cheaper) so maybe give that some thought. I would also go with some geil black dragons instead of the OCZ sticks. I don't think you'll need PC2-8500 sticks for anything less than around 3.7GHz but I'm not entirely sure.

 

[PhillyDee]

Save yourself 6 quid and go for the bog standard OEM Q6600. It will still most likely do 3Ghz, and you will not be left with a cooler you dont need.

 

[jak731]

well until this week only changes, i would say get the guaranteed to overclock to 3GHz cpu especially if you are looking at a retail chip and will be overclocking (especially if its your first time) as its only £1 more and it will give you some peace of mind knowing that you can swap it if it doesnt do 3GHz. you are unlucky if it doesnt though

OEM is an option as well, but think about how long you want your pc for before upgrading and how important warranty is to you.

OEM = 1year

retail = 3years

 

[Weaver]

It seems the guys around here don't recommend the "guaranteed to run at" CPUs so stay away mate. There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between the P5Q deluxe and the P5Q-E (which is cheaper) so maybe give that some thought. I would also go with some geil black dragons instead of the OCZ sticks. I don't think you'll need PC2-8500 sticks for anything less than around 3.7GHz but I'm not entirely sure.

Point taken about the lack of recommendations the ‘Guaranteed to run @’ CPU’s get mate. There are two reasons I went with this though, as Jak731 says

…… its only £1 more and it will give you some peace of mind knowing that you can swap it if it doesn’t do 3GHz. you are unlucky if it doesn’t though

The second reason is for the warranty. I’m looking to get at least a year and a half possibly two years out of this CPU which takes it just the wrong side of the OEM warranty.

I do get what you’re saying about the OCZ sticks being a bit on the overkill side though. Again couple of points especially when clocking I like to have as much head room as I can, too much is better than not enough. (Except when it’s voltage )

I’ve been following the P5Q-E thread here in the MB section that Cob and a few others hijacked with their DLX results stats n read outs. Both Cob and W3bbo ran 8 GB of this kit stable in their rigs with no problems which seems as good a reason as any to pick it since I will be up grading to Vista sometime in the not too distant future and will need the 8 GB for the apps I use.

As for the board itself both here and over at XS there are considerable threads with extensive work done on it. I chose the DLX over the –E because of firstly better cooling and secondly the 16 phase set up which if I’m not mistaken has more potential to hold the CPU stable at lower voltages. The thinking is based around stability more than bells n whistles. I want this thing to be a sturdy B*$%^&ard!

Cheerz for the comment tho.

 

[rjk]

the p5q-e is a great board to work with

i wouldnt bother with the 'will run at *GHz' chips either tbh