What do you think?

[Pez2]

Hello all,

I'm in the process at looking at parts for my new PC, i'm looking at the following:

Antet p182 case
Intel q9450 or q6700 processor
motherboard - ASUS p5k premium. I'm assuming the p35 chipset will not be that bad even though its old?
4gb RAM recommended on this site - Corsair dominator - DDR2-1,066MHz (PC8500)
Harddrives - I wanted a small drive (160gb/250gb) for my programs and 2x 500Gb drives in RAID setup (the one that uses two or more drives to save data across), and then a 1tb drive to copy the data from the 2 500Gb drives (for backup).
Is this too much??

i'm not too sure about the processors. I'm not planning on overlocking and don't really play games.
But i do a lot of video editing and watch videos on the PC.
How does this setup sound? A lot of the components have been researched through reviews on various sites. Would you change anything?

Any help is much appreciated,

Thanks in advance,
Pez

[staffsMike]

P35 is fine unless you plan on changing the CPU next year. After thatnahalem (or whatever its called) will be released which I believe will mean a change in socket anyway, rendering any current board useless.

I would save some money and get the the Q6600, for £135 its a bargain and you could very safely overclock to a Q6700's speed (it would take no effort at all on your part really)

I wouldn't bother with the Q9450, it costs too much compared to the Q6600.

The RAM is overclock, drop back to PC6400 as you will see no gain for PC8500 and you will save a far bit of money.

The Hard Drive setup seems a bit overkill butapparently video edditing likes fast hard drives so it may be worth thinking about some sort of Raid 0 setup on the drives that will be used for this.

[Pez2]

P35 is fine unless you plan on changing the CPU next year. After thatnahalem (or whatever its called) will be released which I believe will mean a change in socket anyway, rendering any current board useless.

I would save some money and get the the Q6600, for £135 its a bargain and you could very safely overclock to a Q6700's speed (it would take no effort at all on your part really)

I wouldn't bother with the Q9450, it costs too much compared to the Q6600.

The RAM is overclock, drop back to PC6400 as you will see no gain for PC8500 and you will save a far bit of money.

The Hard Drive setup seems a bit overkill butapparently video edditing likes fast hard drives so it may be worth thinking about some sort of Raid 0 setup on the drives that will be used for this.

Thanks very much,

I'll really have to think about the processor now, you still don't think i should get the q6700? because i've honestly never overlocked before. i heard you loose the warrenty and it affecs the processor lifespan?

I'm not too bothered about getting a new processor next year, as i wanted a decent one now, so i think the p35 chipset will be fine?

With regards to the RAM i thought if the processor was of a certain speed then a certain speed of RAM will allow the processor to perform better? Is that not the case?

Thanks again,
Pez

[staffsMike]

Long story short, the ram and cpu FSB business is a bit... unfair.. to unsuspecting buyers.

Essentially intel multiply their actual fsb by 4 so at 1066 MHz it's really only 266Mhz and DDR2 RAM's actuly fsb is multiplied by 2. So PC6400 is 400MHz (far more than you really need if not overclock) and PC8500 is really 553MHz (rediculously more than you need)

PC6400 is a good match for 1066MHz FSB chips (like the Q6600 and Q6700 because it allows you to easily overclock the CPU to 3.6GHz + )

With regard to overclocking, as long as you stick to the rated voltages (stock volts) you don't invalidate the warranty.

You will almost certainly be able to hit 3.0GHz on a q6600 without touching the voltage and the tempreatures (which you want to keep below 60 degree's ideally under full load) should remain nice and low as long as you buy a half decent aftermarket cooler.

If you just wanted to get a q6600 to Q6700 speeds though it would litterally take about a minute of your time and would barely change the tempreatures of the chip, theres a great overclocking guide in the stickys of this forum by clunk

[ikix]

if you OCed a Q6600 to about 3.6GHz on an ok voltage (for a first time OCer) then how long do you think the chip would last???

[staffsMike]

I would think it would last at least to the end of the warranty. Most can run stock volts at around 3.2GHz though so it might be worth sticking with that.

[ikix]

thanks, if you weren't to use a 1:1 ratio so that you could run RAM faster (say to 1xxxMHz) while the CPU was at about say 3.2GHz would there be much of a benefit or is it better to stick to 1:1

[staffsMike]

You might see a bit, it depends, but it will run very nicely at 1:1 and I doubt you would really see a difference other than in benchmarks.

[Pez2]

Long story short, the ram and cpu FSB business is a bit... unfair.. to unsuspecting buyers.

Essentially intel multiply their actual fsb by 4 so at 1066 MHz it's really only 266Mhz and DDR2 RAM's actuly fsb is multiplied by 2. So PC6400 is 400MHz (far more than you really need if not overclock) and PC8500 is really 553MHz (rediculously more than you need)

PC6400 is a good match for 1066MHz FSB chips (like the Q6600 and Q6700 because it allows you to easily overclock the CPU to 3.6GHz + )

With regard to overclocking, as long as you stick to the rated voltages (stock volts) you don't invalidate the warranty.

You will almost certainly be able to hit 3.0GHz on a q6600 without touching the voltage and the tempreatures (which you want to keep below 60 degree's ideally under full load) should remain nice and low as long as you buy a half decent aftermarket cooler.

If you just wanted to get a q6600 to Q6700 speeds though it would litterally take about a minute of your time and would barely change the tempreatures of the chip, theres a great overclocking guide in the stickys of this forum by clunk

Your reply made sense and i'm convinced on the PC6400 RAM, i'll get the one mentioned here:
HEXUS.net - Article :: What to pay for your desktop RAM in mid-March 2008 : Page - 1/2
I'm getting 4Gb but i'm running windows XP 32bit. Will that cause major issues?
Maybe I should get 3Gb RAM so xp can see it.

Your not going to like this but I still fancy getting the q6700 chip, lol,
Could you tell me if that's still ok for easy overclocking? As i'm going for the Asus motherboard i mentioned earlier.
Am i correct in saying that the only reason to go for the q6600 chip is value for money?

Thanks very much, - I can understand the questions been asked by me can get annoying!
Pez

[staffsMike]

Yeah go for the q6700 if your heart is set mate, I just like giving people the best value option in mind

P5K's are great overclockers yeah, and thats a nice board. Take a look at the abit IP-35's also, they are very highly regrarded around here, probably partly because I seem to convince most people to get them (that was for blitzen lol).

4GB is fine in XP 32bit it just doesn't address it all. Nothing to worry about though, get it will it's cheap

[Pez2]

thanks very much for all you advice,
I'll let you know how i get on.

Pez