New Build Please Review and Post Comments

[tommardle]

I'm about to embark on my first new build and i'm starting from scratch having read hundreds of reviews for months and moths i've come up with something i think is good, but do you? I've still got a few question marks so any advice for a noob is much appreciated!

Processor
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140 @ £43.11

Motherboard
MSI P35 Neo2-FR @ £68.08

Memory
BLACK DRAGON DDR2-800 @ £44.64

COOLER
Zalman CNPS9700 LED @ £33.95

PSU
Hiper 530W Black Type M PSU @ £39.82

Graphics Card
Asus EN8800 GT @ £163.27

MONITOR
Samsung SyncMaster 206BW £167.20

Now Case is either
Coolermaster CM690 £49.99 or Antec 900 @ £69.97

I'm unsure about the motherboard I took it from the same review i read about the proccessor on because of its overclocking ability matched the proccessor and it fits my budget. In the future i will want to run two 8800 GTs does that impact my choice of case? + it's only PCI 1.0a not 2.0 is this going to make a big difference?

Any recommendations on a SATA drive at the moment i'm ATA and at full capacity 320g any ideas on a better drive should i have two 250g or one 500g?

Do i need to cool the system down in any special way i'm attempting to overclock the CPU to 3ghz maybe even 3.2 . Any suggestions are really appreciated thanks


Tom

[vintastic]

Looks pretty good. I haven't heard much about that MSI motherboard, for the P35 chipset it seems most people would recommend one of the Abit IP35s or one of the Asus P5Ks. I just ordered a similar spec system based around the Asus P5KC and it's got amazing specs for similar money to the MSI, it overclocks well, can handle DDR3, 8.1 channel onboard sound, has crossfire, is cooled by heatpipe.

That black dragon ram will be fine, but if you wanted to save another £10-£15 , overclockers/ebuyer/scan almost always have 2 gig pc2-6400 ram kits for about £30-£35.

That cooler might be overkill for an e2140 also, I don't know. A more standard combination would be an e2180 with an Arctic Freezer 7. If you're overclocking to 3.2ghz that should be all you need.

For a 500gb SATA drive I'd go with the Samsung Spinpoint, and for 250gb i'd go with the Seagate Barracuda. Also, I'd probably get a nicer power supply, you don't want to be skimping on that. I went for the Corsair HX520W as it's modular and super reliable.

I don't know if the coolermaster is big enough to hold those 2 cards, but I think the 900 is big enough... maybe someone can answer that properly though. Hope some of that helped!

[staffsMike]

Dont bother with the MSI get an Abit IP-35. Fantastic board.

The RAM you could save a bit with this
2Gb GeIL DDR2 PC2-6400 Ultra CL4 Dual Channel kit

but the black dragon is kool if you want to pay the extra.

I would have one 500GB western digital AAKS. Very good drives.

Don't bother with the zalman cooler either, it's very expensive and not very good.

Check out the scythe ninja which is around £27, scythe mine around £23 or thermalright ultima90 which is about the same but you need to buy a fan for it.

Please please please don't buy a hiper! A corsair VX 450w will run that system not problem for about £45. Or the 520W HX if you want a modualr PSU.

The E2180 might be easier to overclock but you never know with these chips.

[tommardle]

Ok so on your recommendations I'm dumping the Hiper and getting a Corsair PSU!

Does different ram really make much of a difference a lot of it comes highly rated and there are a lot of suppliers, I went with Black Dragon based on a recomendation, but i'm fairly easy and would like to save money without comprimising too much performance!

And on MB's could i go for Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L, i understand it's really good value for money?

[TooNice]

Spending 80% of the cost of the CPU on a CPU cooler is a little.. strange IMO. I probably would go Miné under this circumstance (and agree with the Ninja/Ultima 90 suggestions as alternatives).
I definitely suggest going 1x 500GB than 2x 250GB these days. It works out cheaper per GB, and gives you better room for expansions in the future. The WD AAKS make a better primary drive, but the Samsung T166 make a fine, slightly quieter and proportionally slower alternative (that's not to say the T166 isn't fast nor the AAKS noisy - far from it). Sometime you can find the T166 £10 cheaper than the AAKS, so it's worth consideration under very tight budget.

[staffsMike]

P31 is a fairly good compromise of features. Great for overclocking according to custom PC to.

Personally I would stick with the IP-35 though. Little bit more money (currently £63 on scan today only but only for the next few minutes)

As long as you stick to the good brands (crucial, ocz, geil, gskill, corsair) you are fine with RAM. I presonally use geil as it's best for the price and always reliable for me.
I use the ultra stuff that I linked you to but you won't go wrong with either set.

I agree that it's a bit strange to spend 80% of the cpu cost on a cooler for it, but, you can't really get a much better CPU for the combined price of £70ish and you would be stuck with a crummy intel cooler. The mine and ninja offer good value imo.

[tommardle]

MB, sorry to drag this out, but I value your opinion.
To overclock the cpu above 3GHz I need a FSB of over 400MHz can the IP-35 really sustain this stably? + The MSI board has two PCI x 16 slots, which will allow me to add another 8800 GT if i wanted to later on.

Also point taken about the cooler didn't really look at it like that! Scythe Mini Ninja looks good to me i do like the idea of saving a couple more quid and going for the scythe mine is there any reason why this is a bad idea?

and one more thing what do the numbers mean after memory? (4-4-4-12) and what is best?

[Webby]

The numbers after the memory speed are its timings and on the whole lower is better! As you overclock the CPU the memory speed which is linked to the FSB will also increase and you may need to slacken (higher numbers) the timings for the memory to still function, remember that when you increase the FSB to OC your CPU this also increases the speed at which the memory runs as they are usually linked (some MB have the option of running them unlinked) so if you run your FSB to 400MHz your memory running at a 1:1 divider will be running at 800MHz DDR (double data rate) so a higher FSB than 400MHz will require overclocking your memory and potentially changing the timings.

As to the Abit IP-35 it should run past 400MHz FSB no problem but that is not guaranteed and different boards from the same batch have different maximum possible overclocks.

The MSI board is P35 as well and as such does not support SLI (only the nVidea chipsets do) so you wont be able to have two 8800 GTs in it ever! Now you could have 2 HD 3870's in Crossfire but that's a whole different kettle of fish!

As to CPU cooler I would say don't look at it as a percentage of the cost of the CPU look at it as facilitating the maximum overclock. Thermalright Ultima 90 with a 120mm fan will set you back £25-35 depending on the fan Scythe Mine is good as is the Ninja. In the end it may be CPU temp (at least what you can accept) that limits your overclocking rather than the maximum FSB of the CPU or MB.

[staffsMike]

As above, no SLi on that board.

You could run two 8800GT's .. but they would independent.

For PC6400 4-4-4-12 is pretty much as good as it gets.. some offer lower but at a price which doesn't warrant it.

5-5-5-15 is quite common on the cheaper versions.

[bigbloke]

i'd go with a p35 based motherboard

any good brand ddr2 pc6400 should do

any of the coolers recomended will be better than your original choice.

corsair VX series psu's are excellent, good choice.

the Coolermaster CM690 is an excellent case great cooling options, comes with 3 120mm fans 1 intake 1 exhaust and 1 side intake. with options of fitting an additional 3. it is SLI certified so if you went that route could easily accomodate 2 GTs. To me is much better aestically than the antec, also.

reviews
MADSHRIMPS - Hardware Reviews ,Crazy Projects, Modding Tutorials and Overclocking
Cooler Master CM690 Mid-Tower Enclosure :: TweakTown

i have one and would highly recommend it.

i'd go with 1x500Gb myself. samsung, western digital, seagate are all good brands.

Multi gpu configs don't really offer very good price performance. By the time the GT doesn't suit your needs you'd be better off selling it and buying the best available card at that time instead of adding another like card.

[tommardle]

Ok, thanks for all your inputs lets see my system is now looking something like this:

Processor
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140 @ £43.11

Motherboard
IP-35 £65.95

Memory
2Gb GeIL DDR2 PC2-6400 Ultra CL4 Dual - £29.64 or

COOLER
scythe mine £23

PSU
corsair VX 450w ? £40

Graphics Card
Asus EN8800 GT @ £163.27

MONITOR
Samsung SyncMaster 206BW £167.20

Now Case is either
Coolermaster CM690 £49.99

and finally a western digital AAKS 500gb hdd

[danroyle]

your board memory and cpu a re same as mine except i have the ip35 pro

excellent combo have had no problems getting my 2140 up to 3ghz and it can probably go alot further as my temps are mid 40's at load

[adam_weisshaupt]

Dont bother with the MSI get an Abit IP-35. Fantastic board.

I second the "don't bother with the MSI" board advice - MSI used to be very good but in recent years the quality of their products has gone down a lot. Either ABIT or ASUS for the board - both have quite a sizeable offering if P35-based boards.