Building a gaming PC!

[menthel]

Right peeps. Here we are. My first Gaming PC for a couple of years.

I already have:

LG 226WTQ
Gainward 8800GTS 640
Antec P182
Corsair 520W PSU

I am planning on a Intel 6750 as the £50 less than the Quad will get me most of Vista.

So....

Which mobo?

I have narrowed it down to 2.

Abit IP-35
Gigabyte GA P35C-DS3R

I only want 1 GFX card slot, I will not be doing anything fancy like crossfire (seen as I have gone Nvidia!) and would like quite a few sata channels. Because I like hard drives.

Anyone have experience of these boards?

Quality of onboard sound, stability, non stupidness of layout, o/c potential?
I have had abit before and never had any problem, but have no experience of gigabyte boards.
I will cool with an arctic cooler.

For a HDD I am thinking a Samsung HD501LJ.

And yes, I am going Vista because I like it! So there.

[staffsMike]

All good choices so far imo. 640mb GTS should come in handy later down the line.

I'd say either the spinpoints or WD AAKS models for the hard drive..both are good the WD's are super quiet.

I'm doing a build for a friend soon and i'm going to use the Abit IP-35 (was going for thre 35E but no raid regardless of what scan says)

Abit are doing well at the moment plus you get the hexus care forum which is a bonus for me.. better than asus's rubbish support as of late.

[menthel]

I have 1 decent Asus board, but my experience trying to sort out problems with them mean I would never get another!

[Purple]

dont get Vista for games - bad bad.

Unless you have a Creative X-Fi with a imo dodgy hack installed, then DirectSound!!! is not supported by Vista. Therefore all of your old games (in fact all games as far as i know) will not have hardware accel - no EAX - no positional.

Stick to XP for a while.

[menthel]

As I said, Vista for me. I am stubborn and have been playing games on my vista htpc without any problems. I don't have 5.1 for my gaming system and so will stick with vista.

[aidanjt]

Which mobo?

I have narrowed it down to 2.

Abit IP-35
Gigabyte GA P35C-DS3R

I only want 1 GFX card slot, I will not be doing anything fancy like crossfire (seen as I have gone Nvidia!) and would like quite a few sata channels. Because I like hard drives.

Anyone have experience of these boards?

Quality of onboard sound, stability, non stupidness of layout, o/c potential?
I have had abit before and never had any problem, but have no experience of gigabyte boards.
I will cool with an arctic cooler.

For a HDD I am thinking a Samsung HD501LJ.

And yes, I am going Vista because I like it! So there.

I'd probably go for the Abit board out of the two, never really liked Gigabytes lego looking boards, but I'd be more inclined to go for an Asus board personally for build quality. I wouldn't be concerned with SATA ports much, you can always reuse your old parts to build a NAS box for reliable network storage and less airflow resistance in your main rig. Onboard sound always has, and always will be crap, get a descrete soundcard (Creative are rubbish for Vista atm thanks to Microsoft butchering DirectSound on the OS). For HDD I would personally go with a WD SE16 500GB for optimal price/performance/storage ratio, but that's a matter of choice ofc. No quams with Vista personally, 64bit support is nice and responsive.

[menthel]

Coolio. It is looking like the Abit then. I may well get a discrete soundcard once there is one that actually works well in vista!

[BUFF]

The Gigabyte is fractionally cheaper, has an extra 2 SATA (albeit on the JMicron), legacy ports if you need them, has a better codec & gives you the potential to upgrade to DDR3 at some point (tbh I don't think that you ever will on the same mobo so you could save a few £ & go with the regular P35-DS3R).
The abit imo is better laid out & has Firewire if you would use it.

[menthel]

I also thought that the Abit was better laid out. 6 SATA ports should be enough and best that they are on the intel chipset from my understanding. That order is getting closer and closer!

[menthel]

Well, thanks for the advice. I ordered the last parts to the system today including thr 6750 and the IP-35! I will put it together next wednesday and report back.

[kidzer]

Very good, lemme' know how you like the motherboard - I'm pretty set on getting it over a Gigabyte/Foxconn equivalent (can't remember model numbrs!)

[Nick Smith]

will you be up to playing more IL2 when you get this all sorted?

as playing on a 40" telly was a bit of a problem...

[Andy3536]

Have the cheaper gigabyte p-35 mobo and am most impressed. You will like it, i'm sure

[menthel]

will you be up to playing more IL2 when you get this all sorted?

as playing on a 40" telly was a bit of a problem...

I may well be. Playing PC games on my telly sends my eyes funny. Have been trying with EVE and I got a bloody headache after 20 minutes!

[menthel]

Details are in my system. Modular psu and p182 not the best together but got there in the end!

[Nick Smith]

very nice, what's the monitor like? I'm thinking about getting one when i have the money