Proposal for new comp

[Viper22]

Ok, this is what I think I am going to buy

Thermaltake Shark Case

Thermaltake

[MWISimmer]

Why not SATA150 (at least) HD  ???
And you'll need DDR2 memory for that board.
Rob.

[GeForce]

If you want to save a bit of $, the E6300 will clock high and the 2mb cache instead of the 4mb apparently does not make a huge difference.

The motherboards for the Allendale/Conroe often top out on FSB (450-500) before the CPUs hit their max clock speed, so buying a good board is essential if you want to overclock. Personally I'd recommend the Gigabyte DS4 for the E6600/6700 or the Gigabyte DS3 for the E6300/6400.

As far as PSUs go, go for Seasonic, Enermax or Hiper. If you want a specific, I (and ctjoyce I should think) will recommend the Hiper Type-R 580W. Fantastic piece of kit. However, get the black version. The red and blue have LED fans which are fairly noisy.

Don't get a UDMA/IDE drive, go for SATA. IDE is just completely redundant now.

As CD says, DDR2 will be necessary, go for PC6400 if you're overclocking.

Maxtor harddrives aren't known for their reliability and performance, to say the least. Go for a Seagate Barracuda 200Gb 7200.10, they're nearly as quick as the raptors, bigger capacities and run much cooler.

To sum up:

Thermaltake Shark (down to preference)
Hiper Type-R 580W
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Gigabyte DS4
OCZ 2GB PC2-6400 Dual Channel DDR2
Asus 7900GT (eVGA or BFG possibly?)
SoundBlaster

[Viper22]

thanks, i was questioning the ram, and i wanted advice for the mobo.  thanks for the help.

also im getting the asus vid card because it is cheap and will tie me over for a while until a dx10 card comes along.  I listened to you advice and changed my ram to pc6400ocz and a gigabyte mobo.

how are these?

mobo
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=4881

ram
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=4618

hdd
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=2202

[cheesegrater]

thanks, i was questioning the ram, and i wanted advice for the mobo.  thanks for the help.

also im getting the asus vid card because it is cheap and will tie me over for a while until a dx10 card comes along.  I listened to you advice and changed my ram to pc6400ocz and a gigabyte mobo.

how are these?

mobo
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=4881

ram
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=4618

hdd
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=2202

That hard drive is ATA-100. This is old technology. You should get a SATA2 hard drive.

Also, Thermaltake isn't the best PSU manufacturer. I think Coolermaster, Enermax, Forton, Hiper, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, and Silverstone are all good choices. This is the Hiper PSU they were talking about.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... ture=HIPER

Otherwise everything looks good. I don't think there is anything wrong with the Asus board. Asus usually has better BIOS features for overclocking than Gigabyte.

I find that Asus video cards are usually more expensive than other manufacturers. If you found a cheaper one, good for you.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... chnologies

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... cture=ASUS

[ctjoyce]

DON'T BUY NOW!

Yes Conroe is great, but wait until November when NF5 comes out. Then buy. Also your not going to need the X-Fi. 1st off it has some major problems with NF4, and secondly you don't need a deadacated sound card unless you need a MIDI joystick, onboard sound is good enough.

Other than that I would suggest everything GeForce did, however change the HDD to a Western Digital Caviar 250GB and the DVD+/-RW to a Samgsung 18x insted of the Sony.

Cheers
Cameron

[Viper22]

great because I probably wasn't going to end up ordering this until next month anyways  and what is the Nf5 anyways?  oh wait nforce5...

[congo]

You shouldn't be a guinea pig for NF5 mainboards, it's not out yet, unproven, unknown, unsupported etc, unless you feel like being a hardware tester of course.

I read some reviews on NF5 and it looked a bit weird, a lot of useless features just to provide more features ?

I wouldn't get the E6300 or the E6400 cpu, there just isn't enough price difference between them and an E6600 cpu. The E6600 has a cpu multiplier large enough to be a useful overclocker, the lesser conroes are going to be limted in their stock performance and won't be nearly as easy to overclock to useful speeds for future apps.

Only a very few mainboards will clock 450-500mhz successfully, and that is with experienced people as well. Joe Bloggs might not be as successful.

The OCZ ram is high priced and old hat. Until OCZ release ram with tighter timings, they are only going to catch the "sucker market".

Look for something like G.Skill PC6400 4-4-4-12 "PK" designated ram or "HZ" if you have a few spare dollars. Ram prices just went crazy so I'm not sure what the damage is going to be.

The 7900GTX/GT series of graphics cards has been plagued by problems with high return rates and some users are on their 5th warranty card, just be aware of that with some manufacturers having more than their fair share of problems. I'm not sure about the Asus card you chose, maybe some research is prudent?

Recently, the 7900GS was released, and this card is substantially cheaper, it fills the market slot that the 7900GT was meant to provide, a high end card at a cheap price. Demand, supply problems and profiteering killed the hopes we had for the 7900GT as the "card for everyone", perhaps the associated hardware problems with the series is just so much payback by Karma?  

The 7900GS looks like it's a solid performer that sits just under the 7900GT performance wise. Let's hope it doesn't have the problems the big sisters had.

[cheesegrater]

Yeah, looking at a reviews of 7900GS, the performance difference between 7900GS and 7900GT is really small. In the bechmarks GT is faster than the GS by only a few frames per second. I don't think it worth buying 7900GT over 7900GS.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/384/1/

[Bindoe]

You will need DDR2-533, 667 or 800 for that board / processor.

Get a Hyper Type R.

I'd get a newer Western Digital 250gb. They are whisper quiet while fast.

And I'd wait for NF5

[Viper22]

Ok this is what I think I am going to go with.  I will not wait for the nForce 5, I think I will just go ahead with the Gigabyte board.  And for the asus card, it is good enough for me.

(not official names and specs)

Conroe E6600
Hiper Type R PSU
Asus 7900GT
2GB OCZ PC 6400 xtc ddr2 800mhz
Thermaltake Shark
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, Socket 775, Intel

[ctjoyce]

I like what I see. Just change to a WD hard drive. And that gigabyte board is a good choice. Your not going to have to flash the BIOS for the CPU to work.

Cheers
Cameron

[cheesegrater]

Don't most new hard drives have 16MB cache instead of 8MB? Western Digital would be my first choice but I don't know if it's that big of a deal.

[GeForce]

Just change to a WD hard drive.

I wouldn't. The 7200.10s are just as reliable and much faster.

Jon

[Bindoe]

I wouldn't. The 7200.10s are just as reliable and much faster.

Jon

And about 3 times as loud  ::)