Advice needed for buying. £600 budget

Hey guys & girls - i'm a software developer and not really into my hardware. I'm looking to buy a new machine next week - my budget is £600. I have a monitor / mouse / keyboard and need the following:
- case (maybe)
- processor
- ram
- mobo
- hard disk
- cooling
- any good add-ons that are worth buying

I do not use my computer for gaming (so wont spend much at all on graphics - i just use it for running web servers to develop Java apps. Also do quite a lot of graphics. Thinking about getting 3 / 4gb of Ram? Think i'm going to over clock if i have the right kit ;)

All suggestions / specs i can get for this price would be very greatful :)

All prices are estimates as its too late to go surfing lol

cpu - Core 2 Duo E6600 - £150
mobo - Abit AB9 or Asus P5b - £80
ram - something like crucial balistix as its so cheap at the moment (ocuk is a good place for ram) 2GB pc6400. Stick with 2gb to start with..can always upgrade if you need more. £110 - £130

if you go with the pc5400 it's only £80

hard disk - Western Digital 400/500gb £60 - £70
psu - corsair 520w whisper - £75
graphics - geforce 8500gt - £50ish
dvd writer? - £20
case and cooling - take your pick you've got about £50 left..

akasa zen would do for about £25
forgot the cpu cooler. Arctic freezer 7 pro - £12

totals around £600 for all that. Plenty of overclocking potential and dx10 graphics.

I'd say ram, right now the crucial ballistix are really cheap at dabs and they are very good performance, 4gb would set you back £178.30, quite a decent price. hard drive i'd recommend a samsung spinpoint sp2504c 250gb, case your choice, i'd choose a antec 900, its a gamers case but it offers good cooling and its cheaper than the p180 and others. cpu + mobo depends, if you get 4gb thats cutting 1/3 of the way into the budget. am2 cpu's are much cheaper than c2d so if you dont want the best fastest cpu's that overclock very good then i'd say get a athlon x2 4600 or 4800, and for cooling, if you want to oc then get a thermalright ultra 120 (preferably the extreme edition because it has the am2 backplate for it) and a scythe s-flex fan.

thats it i think. oh yea i dunno about graphics card, any one would do for you i suppose since you dont game.

seagate barracuda 7200.10 harddrive (any capacity) is all that I have to change with moogle's build

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Originally Posted by saltynay

seagate barracuda 7200.10 harddrive (any capacity) is all that I have to change with moogle's build

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:O, so glad you like it :D

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Originally Posted by moogle

am2 cpu's are much cheaper than c2d

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whilst the E6600 are more expensive than the 4600 and 4800 athlons. if your going to overclock id go c2d and get an E4300 as theyre the same price as a 4600 on scan. They overclock a treat, just ask clunk or look at some of the results hes posted, over 3 ghz with one of these, and will far out perform the AMD's

fresh

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Originally Posted by fresh

whilst the E6600 are more expensive than the 4600 and 4800 athlons. if your going to overclock id go c2d and get an E4300 as theyre the same price as a 4600 on scan. They overclock a treat, just ask clunk or look at some of the results hes posted, over 3 ghz with one of these, and will far out perform the AMD's

fresh

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yea i know, but does he want it for overclocking to the max, does the programming benefit from the extra speed? i can only see him gaining extra performance when doing graphics. also overclocking requires a decent board. i guess he could get the ds3 to keep it in the budget but then he'd have to cut back on the ram or case.

Good luck

Nice find; but..

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Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that every kit will overclock to this frequency

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I'd go for;

Intel E6420 £120.95
Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI £113.86 / Abit AB9 Pro £85.94
2 x Kingston 1GB DDR2 667MHz £31.99 each
Coolermaster IGreen 500W PSU £52.05
Antec NSK6000 Black/Silver £45.98
8500GT £55 or 7600GT £60 if you don't want DX10
LG GSA-H30NBAL 16x SATA DVD±RW/RAM £20.03
Seagate ST3250820AS 250GB £40.74

All of the above are from ebuyer, order the items individually using google checkout to save a fair bit.

yea maybe they got a good pair of d9 micron chips on that one.

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Despite being rated to run at just 533MHz, with the voltage upped to 2V, we overclocked it to 850MHz. Even better, with the timings dropped to 6 - 6 - 6 - 18, we could overclock it to 1,066MHz, which is the equivalent of PC2-8500 RAM! Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that every kit will overclock to this frequency but, at £143.34, it's worth taking a chance.

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would be bloody awesome to get those speeds at that price.

You could just buy it, try, then sell on ebay if they don't clock that high ?

You should be able to make your money back from some mugs on ebay...

EDIT: £59.68 including delivery on ebuyer using google checkout.

Sorry for the thread hijack btw, forgive me :( :P

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Originally Posted by daniel.phillips

Sorry for the thread hijack btw, forgive me :( :P

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not thread hijacking :P, your still helping :)

Thanx for all your input guys - think i'm going to go for either the E6600 or the E6700? Is it worth the extra money? Also what is the difference between those chips and the Intel Xeon 5130? which is better? I'm going to get 4gb of ram which one of either chips, which shud i get?

many thanx again

id say e6600, i dont really see the advantage of having the e6700 except for the higher multiplier. as for the xeon, i think they need more exspensive buffered and ecc registered ram to run. i may be wrong.

ok cool sorted! thats the processor - i'm getting the E6600 - what Ram and mobo to get? i want 4gb :)

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Originally Posted by moogle

does the programming benefit from the extra speed?

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The compilation will definitely get a big boost, and Virtual Machines (for testing) will also benefit from faster processor.