New gaming rig

[Pup]

I have had my current pc for coming up to 4 years now, and with Bioshock/Crysis on the horizon it's time for me to build a new rig. I've been reading about a lot of the systems people here have been building lately, and a few of my current decisions are based on what people here have been saying, but wanted to see what people thought, to maybe help cement my decisions or fix any glaring mistakes

Case : Antec P182 Black
PSU : Corsair 520W HX Modular
M/B : Asus P5K Deluxe or P5K-E
CPU : e6750 or e6850
HSF : Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme & Yate Loon D12SL-12 (Already bought)
Ram : 2x1GB DDR2 Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300
Gfx : 768Mb BFG 8800GTX OC2
Audio: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
OS : Vista 64bit (undecided on Home Premium/Business/Ultimate)

I will also get a DVD Writer and a main hard disk in the region of 250Mb (partitioned for OS and Games) (suggestions welcome), and then take a couple of SataI drives from my current pc as extra storage.

The main consideration for me is games performance, which is why I have gone for the new c2d's rather than the q6600. If in the future, many games show a big improvement for quad cores then I can always upgrade to the new 45nm cpus.

I have never delved into overclocking on any of my past PC's but am thinking of giving it a go with this system. I wont be doing any extreme OC'ing though. I plan to keep it air cooled, and its more out of interest than any real desire to see how high I can take it. Of course any performance gain would be nice

When I read a recent CustomPC mag review of the e6750 and e6850, they actually managed to get the e6750 running better with both overclocked, but I'm assuming this to be more down to luck than the e6750 being a better overclocker? Most places state the e6750 as the best 'bang for buck' which made me want to get that, but looking at the Tom's Hardware CPU stats which seems to give the e6850 a 10% boost over the e6760 in gaming benchmarks has now got me considering stumping up the extra £50.

I am still undecided about the motherboard though. I am not planning to use Raid, but would like the feature there just in case, and 1 lan port is enough. The thing I wasn't sure about was the E version not having the heatpipes covering the mosfets, and wasn't sure how/whether this would affect any overclocking I do.

I also considered the P5KC board for the DDR3 support. As I will be getting Vista OEM, I didn't really want to have to buy another license should I want to switch to DDR3, but I think I'll take a chance with the DDR2 only board and see what happens over the next year or so. I'm assuming upgrading the CPU alone doesn't invalidate the license,

The memory choice was based on the plentiful amounts of recommendations, plus it top ranked in the DDR2 test in CustomPC this month. I put down the 5300 modules as these are £60, whereas the cheapest I could see the 6400 kits was £87 (8500 were £95), and was hoping that the 5300 stuff would be enough for any overclocking I do. Many people have said they can go up to 1066fsb quite readily, which I assume would be more than I would need. Please correct me if I am wrong

I expect thats enough info (I hope it isn't too much ) Suggestions and comments welcome, if nothing else than to stop me changing my mind every other day and finally decide on everything


Pup

[staffsMike]

That looks pretty much perfect. I would hold off on the sound card until you try the onboard one..it really isnt too bad these days.

The RAM is very good.

for the cpu you should deffiantly consider the q6600. The g0 stepping should overclock to 3.0ghz quite nicely with that HSF.. and its the same price as the e6850.. when it turns up in stock somewhere.

For the motherboard i've gone off asus so would recommend the Abit IP35. Its a fantastic motherboard..abit provide great support and even have a care forum right here on hexus.
It has the raid options which are amazingly easy to set up (came as a suprise to me) ..took about 10 seconds to do.

Other than that it looks really good.

[Biscuit]

Spot on mate. Agreed with leaving he soundcard out. If your going to get an XFI go for the Auzentech option. Its way more expensive but the other ones have driver issues & cheap componants. The onboard sound will probs be ok though.

[TMD]

Looks like a great setup...i agree with staffsMike though...i would think about getting a q6600 instead of the duo...the new games you mention such as crysis will make use of the four cores plus its future proofing for more games/apps for the same money.

[Biscuit]

I say budget C2D now then when the games are released make the decision wether to go quad.

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=115922

As these will be around

[Oobie-]

ooo thanks for pointing that thread out biscuit!

[Biscuit]

no problems

[Thorsson]

Vista - a few suggestions.

1. Home Premium is almost certainly the best version for you. I have 3 PCs and got Ultimate for 1 (which acts as the "server" as well as being main PC) and HP for the other two.

2. Get the upgrade version, never a retail. Here's the description of how you can do a clean install from an Upgrade: http://www.windowssecrets.com/comp/070201#story1

3. Buy on Ebay - you can pick up Vista for around half price, and if you target the fools whose auctions end during the day even less - I paid £60, inc postage, for a full version of HP, which was less than I paid for an upgrade.

4. The main point of 64-bit is the use of more memory - maybe you should think about 4Gb.

[master811]

I'd have thought that getting only PC5300 ram would be a bad idea if you intend on OCing as you'll already be at the limits of the ram speed as the e6x50s have 333Mhz FSB, meaning you'd have to change the ram multipliers for it to go much higher and its generally best to run at 1:1 rations when you can.

Also if you are running vista 64, you will want definitely 4GB (as said above, simply being 64bit it will eat up more RAM)

[Biscuit]

I'd have thought that getting only PC5300 ram would be a bad idea if you intend on OCing...

Crucial ballistics is extremely overclocable though. Yes ok he is running a bit of a risk but still many people have had this stuff to twice its speed.

[staffsMike]

yep the pc5300 ballistix i had ran 1000mhz speeds at cas 5 so its good stuff.

[Pup]

Cheers for the comments people I'll drop the soundcard, since I use headphones and not 5.1/7.1 i'm sure you are right about it being good enough.

For the memory, I was planning to get 2gb now and then upgrade to 4gb in the future if I feel I need it. Also I would prefer to get the 6400 stuff, but for the price difference and the fact I was assuming I wouldnt push the overclock much past 400fsb, I was hoping it would easily be enough. I might still go for the higher stuff, and play it safe.

Anyone know much about whether the lack of heatpipes for the mosfets on the PK5 E will be any issue with overclocking? To be honest I'm a bit of a noob in this area, so have no idea myself

[staffsMike]

If you're wanting to push the chip quite hard i'd probably get the deluxe but the E would be good for a reasonable overclock.

[Pup]

Cheers. I was considering the PC2-8500 memory, but it either seemed to be around £95 and out of stock or £130+. Which left either some 6400 at £85 or 5300 at £60.

I just phoned up microdirect to ask them when their 8500 sticks are due in as they were showing out of stock, and by chance he said they had literally just got some in. I refreshed the page, and there they were So ordered some of those now.

[Mad-Max]

Get the E6750 save you money and easy to OC to E6850

[Pup]

Get the E6750 save you money and easy to OC to E6850

Too late, all ordered And besides, you can overclock the e6750 up to a e6850, so therefore with the same effort you can overclock an e6850 to even more