Postill's New Rig

[ChristopherP]

Ok - so i have had my main rig for about 2 years and 11 months all told. Served me well - the 2.8GHz HT P4, the Abit IC7-G 578 Motherboard, the 512mb of OCZ PC4200 2.9v RAM, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb... Done me well... cost me about a grand to build, and that was a good 3 years ago. £300 a year for a good system - thats not too bad. It did everything i asked of it... until it blew up a month ago.

So lets face it. It's old hat - not going to run Flight Simulator X or Vista and it was starting to show its age.

Time for a new set up i think.

I have been mulling over my finances and have come up with the following option.

- I use £500 of my £1468 student loan installment due in January
- I use the £500 grant i receive from the university for good attendance
- I work quite a bit over the month and a half i have off for christmas

Thats going to give me a budget of about £1200/£1300... and i hope i can sell some stuff from my old system to get back some cash on that.

I have been looking at my options and have come up with the following:

Motherboard: Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X £135.11
Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) £199.66
RAM: OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Dual Channel ATI Crossfire Series £211.00
Graphics: Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI £446.49
HDD1: Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB £42.88
HDD2: Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB £42.88
Bay 1: Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 £17.61
PSU: Need a juicy one... Suggestions? lets say £90.00
Case: Thermaltake Tsunami Dream £Own
CD/RW: Samsung 52x £Own
DVD/RW: Sony DWU-14a £Own
TV Card: Leadtek 2000XP Delux £Own
Monitor: LG L1730P 17" 12ms TFT DVI £Own
Speakers: Logiteck X-210 2.1 System £Own

Total Cost of Above components:

£1185.63 + Delivery

What do you guys think? Any suggestions for better components/prices/combinations? I'm out of touch with the latest stuff...

I also need to know what a good choice of PSU would be - needs to be at least 600w for the chosen GFX card

Cheers

Chris

Edit: If i go ahead with this, it is likely to be about mid january - lets say a month on friday... I have a £3300 interest free overdeaft availiable to me which i dont use and dont plan on using... apart from for this. Hopefully prices will have dropped a tad/faster stuff out by then!

Edit 2: The purpose of this machine will be Games and Photo editing. I haven't looked into the AM2 X2 AMD chips, but if they are better suited and better performing, then please let me know

 

[floppybootstomp]

All good apart from the Abit board.

Ever since one of their main men left to form DFI their boards haven't been very good at all.

Consider DFI, Asus and there's a Gigabyte board that everybody's raving about, supposed to work well with the 6600, although the model number escapes me for the moment.

As you probably know I upgraded similar to your specs a short while ago and although it burnt a hole in my pocket, it is just great playing games maxed out and being able to multi-task without any hiccups.

 

[TriplexDread]

Sounds good. I still think the AMDX2 5200 PiB for a smidge over £229 at ebuyer is a better deal tho?

 

[Adywebb]

Consider DFI, Asus and there's a Gigabyte board that everybody's raving about, supposed to work well with the 6600, although the model number escapes me for the moment.

The Gigabyte Mobo to go for is the DQ6 at around £145, but if you want one a bit cheaper then go for the DS4 at around £120 - both OC really well

I'm using a OCZ PSU with my C2D rig - have a look at the OCZ GameXStream 700w

 

[Anon_F]

- I use the £500 grant i receive from the university for good attendance

You get £500 for good attendance, er i'm
Never had that in my day!

 

[itsme]

You get £500 for good attendance, er i'm
Never had that in my day!

Is that because you missed the lectures

 

[ChristopherP]

The Gigabyte Mobo to go for is the DQ6 at around £145, but if you want one a bit cheaper then go for the DS4 at around £120 - both OC really well

I'm using a OCZ PSU with my C2D rig - have a look at the OCZ GameXStream 700w

Does the DQ6 not use an older chipset than the newest ones?

Looks like a good PSU - expensive though!

 

[Adywebb]

Both Gigabyte boards use the excellent P965 chipset Chris, DQ6 also has passive cooling and solid state capacitors which makes it very reliable.

If the 700W PSU is too much - go for the 600W OCZ PSU which is £76

 

[floppybootstomp]

Both Gigabyte boards use the excellent P965 chipset Chris, DQ6 also has passive cooling and solid state capacitors which makes it very reliable.

If the 700W PSU is too much - go for the 600W OCZ PSU which is £76

Yes & yes

 

[ChristopherP]

Isn't the 975X the best chipset out?

Would the 600w be enough to run this system and USB peripherals comfortably?

 

[Me__2001]

give this a read, mainly page 2

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/941/intel_p965_chipset_examined_with_gigabyte_965p_dq6/index.html

 

[ChristopherP]

Do ATI have an equivalent graphics card to the 8800GTX - with *identical* performance or better, and crossfire support?

That Gigabyte board looks mean. very mean. might have to have one of them!

 

[Adywebb]

Isn't the 975X the best chipset out?

Would the 600w be enough to run this system and USB peripherals comfortably?

I think Me_2001 covers your first query very well in his post Chris - as regards the PSU I suggest you total it up, but if you feel you want a quality 700W or more PSU then you will have to pay the price

 

[ChristopherP]

Yes - the link Me_2001 gave was superb, that will definatly be the board i get if there isnt a better one out mid january.

I will probably get the 700w version as its not *THAT* much more money to be honest.

What is the deal with the different memory speeds for DDR2 - i know that my current system needs DDR400 (PC3200) memory and the FSB is 200 Quad pumped...

If i get the memory i suggested in the 1st post how much mhz will i have to play with for overclocking?

 

[Alf]

why not shoot for one of the 1 kilowatts PSU?

 

[ChristopherP]

They are WAY overbudget...

I don't really want to spend more than £100 or so on a PSU...

1Kw PSU's are a good £160. I dont think i would need the extra 300w... unless i was to add another graphics card in, which i wouldnt because i'm going nVidia and unfortunatly the board is only Crossfire and not SLI

 

[Adywebb]

What is the deal with the different memory speeds for DDR2 - i know that my current system needs DDR400 (PC3200) memory and the FSB is 200 Quad pumped...

Chris the Gigabyte boards can be quite picky about RAM - I am using DDR2-800 Corsair XMS with no problems and it OC's quite well - but I read on some other forums I frequent some great reports using OCZ DDR2-800 Platinum

 

[phicksus]

Chris the Gigabyte boards can be quite picky about RAM - I am using DDR2-800 Corsair XMS with no problems and it OC's quite well - but I read on some other forums I frequent some great reports using OCZ DDR2-800 Platinum

I'm using the same OCZ memory and not having any luck at all. I know one of the Teddies has the same setup as mine and he is having no luck either. Always possible the problem is elsewhere but neither of us have been able to find it yet.

 

[Adywebb]

In which case Chris, I can recommend the Corsair XMS 6400C4 as it works well with mine

 

[ChristopherP]

Cool - is CAS4 reasonable latency - or should i look for CAS3 memory?

What speed meomory does the Core 2 Duo require in order for it to be able to run 1:1 with the FSB?

And finally, would it be worth waiting for quad core to become more mainstream at all? Will they launch one that is going to be around the £200 mark and outperform the E6600 any time soon?