putting together P4C800-E Deluxe system - recommendations

[Jason]

Hey all,

like a lot of gamers, I'm gearing up for Half-Life 2 at the end of
September and i'm about to upgrade my P4 1.6 P4T-E to the following:

P4 2.6GHz (800 FSB)
P4C800-E Deluxe
512MB RAM (possibly more)
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
Plextor 48x CD-RW
Soundblaster Audigy 2 (most likely)
430W Enermax power supply
some Antec case, probably

unless my local shop can match the prices that I'm getting the
components for separately from vendors through PriceGrabber, I'm
going to build this myself.

I haven't built my own system since my P3 500Mhz system about 4 years
ago (it was an Abit board - no problems with it; in fact i sold the
system to my boss and one of my co-workers is using it). My P4T-E
system was put together for free by my local shop (since I spent so
much money).

since i've been using RDRAM for the last couple of years with the
P4T-E, I'm new to 400 MHZ Dual Channel DDR.

I've seen Corsair memory recommended in several places, and I've also
read that a certain type of Corsair Twin doesn't work very well with
the P4C800 boards.

1) What recommendations can you give me for dual channel DDR RAM? I
want to go with 512MB, but would 2x256 be better, or 2x512?

--

When I built the P3 system, it was very easy putting the P3 chip in
and then the stock fan over it. With the P4, I'm reading about
thermal paste and thermal pads. I'm not an overclocker.

2) Do I need to worry about this stuff? How easy is it to install the
P4 chips nowadays? Does the stock fan not cut it anymore with P4s?

Thanks for your help in advance..

 

[R Sparks]

One good example is Ubi's flight sim Forgotten Battles. Fire her up and she
sucks up somewhere around 600 to 650 megs. I had to go with one gig and the
vcache setting (using 98SE) in order to get it to work. Don't have the link
handy but it was a comparison of 4 flight sims on either SimHq, or Frugals.
RS

 

[David Neill]

Hey all,

like a lot of gamers, I'm gearing up for Half-Life 2 at the end of
September and i'm about to upgrade my P4 1.6 P4T-E to the following:

P4 2.6GHz (800 FSB)
P4C800-E Deluxe
512MB RAM (possibly more)
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
Plextor 48x CD-RW
Soundblaster Audigy 2 (most likely)
430W Enermax power supply
some Antec case, probably

[stuff deleted]

I've seen Corsair memory recommended in several places, and I've also
read that a certain type of Corsair Twin doesn't work very well with
the P4C800 boards.

Corsair CMX256-3500C2/CMX512-3500C2 work fine with a P4C800 Deluxe

1) What recommendations can you give me for dual channel DDR RAM? I
want to go with 512MB, but would 2x256 be better, or 2x512?

You definitely want 2 sticks... dual DDR (so-called 800Mhz) uses
two memory channels, one to each pair of sticks, so your final x2
(more like x1.3) of memory bandwidth comes from installing 2 sticks.

--

When I built the P3 system, it was very easy putting the P3 chip in
and then the stock fan over it. With the P4, I'm reading about
thermal paste and thermal pads. I'm not an overclocker.

If you don't overclock, the stock fan is fine... but why buy this
motherboard if you're not interested in overclocking? Anyway, there
are several choices for fan upgrades, any of which will give you
5-10 degrees C lower cpu temp at full bore, if you want to try oc.