New PC

[mark_a_scott]

I have finally bitten the bullet and decided to build a new rig. I wish I could afford the 5 figure sum to buy a Vadim but thats not possible yet

but what I can afford is around £2k and have come up with the following:

Antec P182 Tower
OCZ 850 Watt PSU
Asus Striker Extreme
Core2 Quad Q6600
8gb Crucial DDR2 (4x 2gb)
4x WD Caviar 1TB SATA HDDs
2x nVidia 8800GTX Cards
2x Samsung SATA DVD Writers

I will be putting 64bit Vista on this and maybe reuse sound, wireless and TV Cards from my old PC.

Any (serious) comments or suggestions?

[jimbouk]

Wow! Looks sweet. If you've got 2k to play with then get a great monitor, keyboard and mouse. Made a real difference getting a bigger screen and nice wireless set even though my budget was a quarter of yours!

There seem to be general murmurings against asus boards due to ram issues, and for abit boards. Can't comment personally on that mind. Check out the motherboard pages and see what it's got compatable for 8gig of ram.

Oh and just thought, what are you getting for CPU cooling?

[mark_a_scott]

Monitor is already sussed, I have a Dell 30" beast

I was going to settle for the retail fan but whats the consensus for QC cooling these days?

KB and Mouse I do have a Microsoft Wireless set which i am happy with for now

[Sema4]

Personally, I have never had a problem with my ASUS board, don't skimp on cheap RAM and they shouldn't give you a hard time, in my experience at least, check the 'qualified vendor' list for RAM on the ASUS site and you should have no problems...

Furthermore, with 2x nVidia 8800GTX Cards and 4 hard drives, I don't think the noise of the stock CPU fan is going to be of any concern.

Replacing the stock OEM cooler could possibly invalidate the warranty on the CPU, and I would find it hard to believe you will even hear the CPU fan above the noise of 4 HD's and 2 x GPU fans...

I would be more concerned about ensuring those 4 HD's were cooled sufficiently, I run 6 HD's in a Stacker and with that many drives running so physically close together, active cooling is important to ensure the drives remain within the operating tolerance of the manufacturer, I don't know the case your thinking of, it may have active cooling for HD's as standard, it's something to bear in mind.

Nice build, good luck with it !

[scsaus]

Hay mate mark my suggesion is dont buy intel quad rite now just wait one more month and get Amd quad core barcelona Its gona rape Intels quad you cannot count this intel quad a next gen but belive me Barcelona ia giant 4 cores on one slice.

why dont you wait and get nvidia 9 series card.But sli of 8800gts is superb aswell.
Mother board asus rock yes good choice going for asus extreme with cross air ddr2 xms or cruical .
But works superb with asus boards and highly recommended for High quaility gaming and 3d stuff.

Your budget is good so you shud get amd next Gen processor.you shud also conisder benchmarks and overcloacking features of Amd.I am using amd x2 3800 its working ace .Ia mjust waiting for barcelona to come out.
But the choice is your.

cheers mate

[kalniel]

Hay mate mark my suggesion is dont buy intel quad rite now just wait one more month and get Amd quad core barcelona Its gona rape Intels quad you cannot count this intel quad a next gen but belive me Barcelona ia giant 4 cores on one slice.

An interesting view point, certainly.

[scsaus]

Yes it is i think its not wise to upgrade pc at this point when monsters like amd barcelona is in pipe line

[Fraz]

Hmmm - I disagree. You could be waiting forever with thinking like that. I'm also not too convinced that the AMD quads are going to be faster except in certain applications where it's useful to have all 4 cores on one die... and they are few and far between at the moment.

[scsaus]

lol mate intel it self accepted tht upcoming Amd processors will be much faster.

Browse the net

[kalniel]

lol mate intel it self accepted tht upcome Amd processors are next Gen and are much faster.

Browse the net

Ok, sorry, maybe I was a bit too subtle before. That statement is complete rubbish - please back it up with some proof

[Fraz]

lol mate intel it self accepted tht upcome Amd processors are next Gen and are much faster.

Browse the net

I have been. That's why I have the opinion I do.

Furthermore my department has been testing them as we're buying 1000 of them for an HPC. They weren't very impressed with the 1.9 GHz ones, and AMD have agreed to swap them out for the 2.4 GHz versions for free when they have them available. I doubt a single AMD core is really much more proficient than an Intel one... like I said already, the main benefit comes if you can take advantage of them all being on a single die. Hence why we chose them for our HPC, because we will make use of this.

[scsaus]

The statement is not rubbish it is actually based on facts.I think some ppl dont believein benchmarks and lab tests they are just fan boys .


AMD's view is that Intel's Xeon is multi-chip module or two dual-core processors glued together and that is legacy front-side bus architecture introduces bottlenecks in memory-intensive applications. AMD claims that Barcelona is the only true quad-core design. Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata Inc. of Nashua, N.H., agrees that the current Intel quad-core chip, code named Cloverton, is not a 'pure' quad-core design like AMDs.


Amd processors are must more energy efficient than intels the most important feature is overclocking .

Just visit this web

Intel and AMD Face Off in Quad-Core Arena


There are hundreds of more .

In last no doubt Amd is better in all aspects .

[Blitzen]

All good except for the 2xGPU's.

Just get the one and set the cash aside for a GPU upgrade after christmas.

I seriously doubt you would notice any kind of difference with only 1 in.

[moogle]

amd fanboy here and i'd say get the quad, it'll last you a long time. yes amd's one is coming in december or so, but i assume you got a crappy pc right now that is unbearable to use or game with so just go with it. like blitzen said, sli isn't all that, your gonna have 4 hds 2 gtx's and all that other crap, mass cabling and such. 4tb is overkill unless you got a special reason, 8gb mem is alright, you can get the 8gb mem for £230 from aria if you get that patriot one. 2 dvd writers? no idea why, seems you like lots of every component

yea sli, i tried 7900gtx sli and the only thing it increased was my 3dmark score, ut3 was still the same soo no 2 gtx's! save for a 9800gtx

[Agent]

lol mate intel it self accepted tht upcome Amd processors are next Gen and are much faster.

Browse the net

Maybe that's because they are a generation after the core2 range, which has been out well over a year now....

Its also quite hard to take anyone seriously that can't spend 5 seconds to make readable sentences

[moogle]

isn't core 2 a gen after athlon x2? what was core duo meant for? iirc pentium 4 was athlon x2's rival and core 2 was released 1 year after the athlon x2.