Taking delivery of new system next week

[Robbie G]

Well my venture into the C2D world happened already unofficially but it was a test system built for a mate, but now I have ordered my own gear from Scan for £390 delivered. Using the combination of Today Only and free delivery I was able to get what I think is a pretty good deal and a cheap upgrade to C2D while I wait for the July price cuts:

1 x GByte P35C-DS3R Mobo 72.59
1 x 256MB XFX 7600GT 570M 54.99
1 x Corsair TwinX 2GB DDR2 6400 C4 75.99
2 x 320G WD SATA2 HDD WD3200AAKS 87.50
1 x Intel PentiumDCore E2140 1.6GH 44.99
Net Total: £336.06
VAT @ 17.5%: £58.81
Total (including VAT and free delivery): £394.87

In a few months or whenever the prices are cut I'm getting a 8800GTS, a 500Gb storage / backup drive, and a quad core C2D. Looking forward to it and it should be a massive step up after my extremely noisy NF2 / Barton 2500 system.

[Biscuit]

Sounds good but surely it would have been better to just wait for the price cuts before doing anything? What about your PSU, you not going to upgrade that?

[staffsMike]

the prices dont have anywhere to drop on those cpu's lol

EDIT: Oh i see.. there is a further upgrade.. lol yeah i'd have waited.

[Robbie G]

Sort of...the prices on the 2140 / 60 won't be going anywhere and if the Penryns are worthy I'll drop one of those in, or perhaps a Q6600. It may also be that the 2140 @ 3GHz is sufficient for my needs in which case no worries.

PS - re: the PSU, I'll be keeping my current Akasa PaxPower 460W.

[staffsMike]

Yeah that makes sense then..

From your original post it seemed like you were deffinatly going to.

[Robbie G]

You're right it did sound like that, and I will indeed almost certainly do that i.e. buy a C2Q, but I needed this now really and when I sell the 2140 I should only lose a tenner on purchase price. I may also keep it and make a cheap HTPC for the living room.

[Queelis]

Why on earth are you taking P35C-DS3R, which is a combo board with DDR2 and DDR3 slots? Take normal P35-DS3 or P35-DS3R (the latter has 2 more SATA ports (8 vs DS3's 6) and additionally supports RAID5 and RAID10, whereas the DS3 supports only RAID0 and RAID1). No need for DDR3 at the moment, you still will only be able to have either DDR2 or DDR3, not both at the same time.

[Robbie G]

Why on earth are you taking P35C-DS3R, which is a combo board with DDR2 and DDR3 slots?

Because it's a combo board with DDR2 and DDR3 slots

I don't nor will ever need 8 SATA ports so that's not a factor.

The P35C-DS3R also supports RAID 5 and RAID 10 (I've downloaded the manual) so I'm not sure where you got the info from that it won't.

I'm aware that you can't run DDR3 and DDR2 in tandem. Having this board means I won't have to upgrade the mobo again once DDR3 becomes norm. Judging by the rate at which stock for this board goes on Scan's website it's selling quite well.