NewBuild......Your Opinions Please

[Syd]

A very good freind of mine and fellow WoW guild member has decided it's time to change his slightly aging desktop system, he currentley runs a Athlon XP2500/6600 vanilla based rig and has a budget of circa £1000 for a new build.

He was looking at buying a prebuilt, but I suggested it would be a better idea for me to build one for him ( I was a little drunk at the time)

I've done a bit of reading and although we are both AMD fanbois traditionally it appears that the Intel is the right way to go. He currentley has a 19" LCD 1280 x 1024 monitor and is looking to keep that as it's only 14months old, may upgrade to w/s in future, hence the extra memory on the 8800GTS.

Oh, he's quite a sensible chap and I don't think he'd approve of me doing any overclocking or I may get

So heres the spec I have come up with:

NEW SPEC NOW AT BOTTOM OF THREAD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB)
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Gun Metal Black)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2
Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache – OEM
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache – OEM
Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) – OEM
Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) – Retail
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD – OEM
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard (PCI-Express) - OEM



I'm looking to build later in the month as I undersatnd there is going to be a price realignment on the Intel processors?

Now questions:

Firstly do you think thats the best use of his cash?

1) Vista 64 the way forward, He plays WoW, Championship Manager uses Itunes alot.

2) Does vista handle all Sata Drives ok, as I remember my asrock dual sata2/XP had a few recognition problems with sata drives.

3) Is that RAM the best choice for that Mobo?

[staffsMike]

The RAM is overkill unless you do overclock.

It was looking like a nice silent build until you put the raptor in there lol. Just get a decent 7200prm hard drive from samsung or western digital.

Other than that its looking good.

Power supply? I suggest the 520w corsair HX whisper..great psu..good for a quiet pc.

As is the scythe ninja HSF for silent operation.

I'd go with the asus P5K over that motherboard but it will do the job just fine.

Vista is fine with sata drives..sometimes you need to disable ready boost in the bios though..took me ages to work that out for a laptop i was setting up.

[StaffsKieran]

What mike said but i would consider getting the 620w version of the corsair and possibly losing the sound card as you wont hear that much difference over the onbaord sound unless hes a bit of an audiophile with v good speakers.

I would also go with an asus or abit P35 board over a gigabyte one personally.

The RAM is overkill i would reccomend getting some decent 800Mhz memory Crucial or OCZ would be my choice. GEIL Ram is also very good for the money you can get that from microdirect or OCUK.

[gha128]

£1000 on a new PC is a lot of cash, my 2 cents would be:
PSU - Corsair 520W should be fine
OS - I presume that any peripherals he has have drivers available? If he's really not into his tech then why not stick with XP at least until SP1 for Vista comes out (this may also help to lower the spec of the GPU in terms of use of Direct X 10)? Vista 64 v 32 - depends on what else he's going to do - do those games run 'better' on a 64 bit o/s v's a 32 bit? Are you looking at OEM or retail - big difference in price points
CPU - why not go with a E6600 - although cash is not an issue, it may help by putting some extra £ here..
RAM - agree with the others - take a look at Geil and boost it 4gb - much better for Vista if you want to go that way
HDD - Raptor is overkill for what it appears he will be doing with the PC and as it does not appear to be a RAID configuration - a WD 7,200 16mb will do the trick, also one with a larger amount of GB than 32 (that will go very quickly after you have installed Vista)...save some cash and think about this...
CPU cooling - any decision on this at all? There is a great review floating around on Hexus. I went with a Thermalright Extreme - fantastic! If there is no O/C (though even a very soft one would see a huge benefit with a E6600) then it could well be run without a fan...very quiet
Mobo - if you are buying DDR2 RAM then buy a DDR2 board I guess - another vote for ASUS (P5B Deluxe poss..)
GPU - great choice but I would save some money elsewhere as suggested and look at upgrading to 22'' w/s now (Dell?) that way he would really get the benefit of the card, especially as he is games focused!

Don't forget to have fun!

[Queelis]

Again, that's a DDR2 & DDR3 mobo. Is it really necessary? Because I think when it's time for DDR3, the dude will just build a new rig around it, and seeing the rate at which he changes his PCs, DDR3 will be standard then. Now there is no distinct advantage of DDR3 over DDR2.

[Syd]

£1000 on a new PC is a lot of cash, my 2 cents would be:
OS - I presume that any peripherals he has have drivers available? If he's really not into his tech then why not stick with XP at least until SP1 for Vista comes out (this may also help to lower the spec of the GPU in terms of use of Direct X 10)? Vista 64 v 32 - depends on what else he's going to do - do those games run 'better' on a 64 bit o/s v's a 32 bit? Are you looking at OEM or retail - big difference in price points
CPU - why not go with a E6600 - although cash is not an issue, it may help by putting some extra £ here..

His last machine was a prebuilt so he's gonna have to buy an o/s this time, and because he won't change the mobo I was looking at OEM - bout £70.00. Didn't really want to buy Xp for 12 months then change again.

64 v 32bit I have no idea which one

Isn't the 6750 gonna be a better processor than the 6600???

losing the sound card as you wont hear that much difference over the onbaord sound unless hes a bit of an audiophile with v good speakers.

I would also go with an asus or abit P35 board over a gigabyte one personally.

The RAM is overkill i would reccomend getting some decent 800Mhz memory Crucial or OCZ would be my choice. GEIL Ram is also very good for the money you can get that from microdirect or OCUK.

The sound card is only £27 and I thought that was a worthwhile upgrade as well as a small load of the CPU. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

I'll look at those other MB's and the ram thanks

The RAM is overkill unless you do overclock.

It was looking like a nice silent build until you put the raptor in there lol. Just get a decent 7200prm hard drive from samsung or western digital.

Other than that its looking good.

Power supply? I suggest the 520w corsair HX whisper..great psu..good for a quiet pc.

As is the scythe ninja HSF for silent operation.

I'd go with the asus P5K over that motherboard but it will do the job just fine.

Vista is fine with sata drives..sometimes you need to disable ready boost in the bios though..took me ages to work that out for a laptop i was setting up.

Mike you are, as alwys a font of knowledge Almost orderd my lappie now......lol

I like the raptor's as boot drives, but if you reckon theres not a noticable difference i'll look at putting in a higher cap 7200rpm drive for boot/progs.

Changed to Corsair P5k and scythe Ninja, thanks

So Now:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Gun Metal Black)
Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (4x1GB)
Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache – OEM
Samsung SpinPoint T HD401LJ 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) – OEM
Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) – Retail
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD – OEM
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard (PCI-Express) - OEM

£1032.00

[zephod]

Whilst the p35 chipset has achieved good results in the overclock, DDR3 doesn't seem to be the way to go as yet. Probably better to stick with a i965/i975 chipset and get a e6600 - and wait to see what happens when the x38 (p35's big brother) comes out and intels 45nm process in all its glory...

The c2d on these platforms overclock so well it seems a shame not to do a bit...especially if you are going to get a decent cpu cooler. The Thermalright eXtreme and the tuniq tower will run all but silently and give you lots of overclock headroom with the sort of RAM and processor you are looking at. Could push a e6600 to 3ghz and not even worry about it quite frankly.

As for 10krpm vs 7200rpm - the raptors are really noticeably faster in boot according to the stats but quite frankly im not sure the performance gain is really worth the money. I recently trialled a RAID0 array as a boot/system drive and found it faster in benches but never really noticed it giving me an advantage in games etc. It also made XP twitchy . Ofc, a raptor would achieve less bandwidth than a 7200rpm raid BUT would have better access time. If the game is accessing a lot of small files...this can make a big difference. If you have the cash to burn id be tempted by the 74gb raptor and buy a nice big drive for data. 500gb are a good price atm on scan.

[Syd]

Whilst the p35 chipset has achieved good results in the overclock, DDR3 doesn't seem to be the way to go as yet. Probably better to stick with a i965/i975 chipset and get a e6600 - and wait to see what happens when the x38 (p35's big brother) comes out and intels 45nm process in all its glory...

The c2d on these platforms overclock so well it seems a shame not to do a bit...especially if you are going to get a decent cpu cooler. The Thermalright eXtreme and the tuniq tower will run all but silently and give you lots of overclock headroom with the sort of RAM and processor you are looking at. Could push a e6600 to 3ghz and not even worry about it quite frankly.

Thanks for the feedback m8
I assumed that the E6750 would be a better bet than the E6600 - they are about the same price, are you suggesting that I would be better off using a 6600?

[Blitzen]

What mike said but i would consider getting the 620w version of the corsair

Arrggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not again! This 'band-wagon' jumping is driving me mad.
The amount of people recommending this PSU is madness.....its POOR value.

[Syd]

Arrggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not again! This 'band-wagon' jumping is driving me mad.
The amount of people recommending this PSU is madness.....its POOR value.

Ok fair point it's your opinion, but you don't back up why its POOR value, and you don't make an alternative suggestion........................... That doesn't really hep me

[gha128]

His last machine was a prebuilt so he's gonna have to buy an o/s this time, and because he won't change the mobo I was looking at OEM - bout £70.00. Didn't really want to buy Xp for 12 months then change again.

64 v 32bit I have no idea which one

Isn't the 6750 gonna be a better processor than the 6600???

Well if you can wait until the 22nd July then yes go for it - but really the difference between the 6600 (2.4ghz) and 6750 (2.6 ghz) will only be noticeable if you o/c - with that cpu it would be a real shame not to push it a bit especially with a good heatsink. There is a speed up in the FSB and obviously the stock speed and also the stepping but you need to o/c to see the difference

There are lots of rumours flying around about price drops, new products but as with all things we wont know what is going to happen until it does. I was in a similar position with having a sizeable budget and plumped for the 6600 - I am a newbie when it comes to o/c, but I followed Clunks advice to the letter and am now running it at 3.1ghz and have very low running temps with the Thermalright Extreme - everything is very stable. A 700mhz increase is very noticeable. I hate spending money for the 'latest' when really you can get the performance with an 'older' product.

Save the money and use it to buy a new moinitor and really see what the system can do - I am glad you have upped to 4gb I think the issue is now the monitor. You have a fantastic system but a dispaly your gamer friend can't truly make use of

As for 32 v 64, if future proofing is the way then 64 it is - though as I mentioned I hope there are drivers out there for his peripherals if required...

[gha128]

Now its bugging me - I am concerned about the XP v Vista thing - take your point about upgrading again in 12 months but by doing so you may be saving your friend a whole lot of hassle. I accept that some people are happy with Vista and others aren't. Some running dual boot, some have tried and gone back to XP.

With so many people umming and ahhhing it just smells to me...personally I would stick your mate on XP and wait until SP1 arrives. Without making too much of an assumption, and my appologies if I am, I expect that £70 in 12 months is not going to be an issue if he has had 12 months of minimal system free issues...

[Syd]

Now its bugging me - I am concerned about the XP v Vista thing - take your point about upgrading again in 12 months but by doing so you may be saving your friend a whole lot of hassle. I accept that some people are happy with Vista and others aren't. Some running dual boot, some have tried and gone back to XP.

With so many people umming and ahhhing it just smells to me...personally I would stick your mate on XP and wait until SP1 arrives. Without making too much of an assumption, and my appologies if I am, I expect that £70 in 12 months is not going to be an issue if he has had 12 months of minimal system free issues...

Thanks gha

HMmmmmmm, he's coming round for a few jars and some consultation tonight, i'll ask him the question and see what he thinks about it - I musn't forget he's gotta live with it

[NightshadowUK]

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Gun Metal Black)
Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (4x1GB)
Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache – OEM
Samsung SpinPoint T HD401LJ 400GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) – OEM
Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) – Retail
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD – OEM
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard (PCI-Express) - OEM

£1032.00

It's a damn good setup if you're gonna overclock but if not then the Scythe Ninja, Asus P5K and PC6400 memory are all overkill...

I'd personally drop the Raptor too as the gain over a standard SATA hard drive is small for such a large premium.

[Syd]

It's a damn good setup if you're gonna overclock but if not then the Scythe Ninja, Asus P5K and PC6400 memory are all overkill...

I'd personally drop the Raptor too as the gain is small for such a premium.

The Ninja is to keep it nice and quiet, what RAM would you get, the 4GB is about £120 and i'm open to suggestions on the Mobo, I just have been given a budget and i'm trying to build him the best system within that budget, you never know he may let me OC

[NightshadowUK]

Even though DDR3 and a 1,333Mhz FSB make squat difference I'm gonna use a P35 motherboard as it costs very little more and adds at least some degree of 'future proofing':

- Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 ~ £234.96

Price drops should mean this comes below the £200 mark so it may be worth waiting a few weeks.

- Scythe Infinity ~ £28.54

The Ninja's a better passive cooler but when using a fan the Infinity's superior.

- Asus P5K-E/WIFI-AP ~ £116.90

Great overclocker but not so stupidly expensive that it's a waste if he doesn't use it.

- 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX PC2-6400 x2 ~ £135.46

Turns out PC6400 isn't much more expensive than PC5400 so again, useful if he decides to overclock but not the end of the world if he doesn't. Only buy 2GB if you plan on upgrading to DDR3 at some point though, otherwise it's just burnt money - plus XP can only officially handle up to 3GB anyway.

- 640MB Leadtek 8800GTS ~ £219.98

As recommended by Mike.

- 400GB Samsung HD401LJ ~ £54.04

Drop an 80GB Samsung HD080HJ in if he wants a seperate drive for the OS.

- Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer ~ £56.39

Proper X-Fi card.

- Antec P182 ~ £80.95

Great case so I'll stick with it.

- 520W Corsair HX V2 ~ £68.02

More than powerful enough, don't sweat it.

- Optiarc (Sony/NEC) AD-7170S-0B ~ £19.85

Total ~ £1,015.09