what do you recon?

[douglasb]

im going to build my first computer during my summer holidays and wanted your views and suggestions.

case - coolermaster CM-690V2 dominator

motherboard - Asus P5N-D, NF750i sli, 775, PCI-E2 (x16) DDR2 533, 667, 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

CPU - Intel core2Quad Q6600, 2.4GHz
PSU - 850W coolermaster real power m850 modular

GPU - 1GB BFG 9800GX2

HDD - 2x 500GB samsung HD501LJ 7200rpm, 16MB cache

OS - windows vista home premium 64bit


after reading through some stuff iv found in the forum i am going to get a different PSU, any suggestions? i am probably going to get a factory overclocked 9800GTX instead of the GX2 (just for the cost difference and the difference in performance will probably not be noticable)
also roughly how much further would i be able to overclock the CPU if i got the all copper ninja heatsink? and do you think it would be worth it?
thanks
douglas

[BUFF]

Hi & welcome to Hexus

I probably wouldn't go for an nForce chipset board myself.
A P35 or very shortly P45 basd mobo will probably be easier to live with.

With good cooling 3.6GHz should be doable on a Q6600 but of course it all depends upon how lucky you are i.e. if you get a better or worse than average CPU.

[Blitzen]

Depends really.
If you are on a budget then go for the Corsair 520W. Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

If you have £11 more to spend then go for the Enermax Modu82 Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

I have both (aswell as a Enermx 500W Liberty) and the Enermx Modu82 is comfortably the highest quaity unit although all 3 met requirements

[staffsMike]

It depends what you want the PC to do. Obviously if you are doing something like media encoding then you start to really notice the difference in clock speed. In terms of gaming, I don't see a noticeable difference in most games when running 3.4GHz against stock which is 2.4GHz.

Q6600's will quite happily run 3.3/3.4GHz all day long and with that cooler you could probably do it passive But the fan it comes with is so nice it would be a shame not to use it. I have the normal ninja and it's a great cooler

I agree with buff, P35 is a great chipset. I wouldnt bother with P45 unless you are planning on a CPU change in the very near future. Afaik it's only really offering 1600MHz FSB support in addition to the P35.

Other suggestions I would have made you have picked up on yourself

The 520W Corsair HX would be plenty enough for that system, there is also the new dark power range and enermax modu82's available at scan, all good PSU's The GTX is a wise choice over the the GX2, but, there are new card less than a month away so I would just hold off that bit longer as they are not doubt going to fall into your price range.

[douglasb]

I probably wouldn't go for an nForce chipset board myself.
A P35 or very shortly P45 basd mobo will probably be easier to live with.

have just had a look at P35 motherboards and have settled on this one

Asus P5K, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 667/800/1066

has everything the nforce one had apart from SLi (which i probably wouldn't have used anyway) and is about £25ish cheaper btw why is the P35 "easyer to live with"? and is SLi that important considering the power of current GPUs? is anyone running an SLi set up here?

If you have £11 more to spend then go for the Enermax Modu82 Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
sorry Blitzen, i couldn't work out how to quote 2 people in 1 post

would 525W give enough headroom for future upgrades? (new GPU!!) apart from that question i like that PSU, again, has eveything my previous one did and costs less (£50)

so just stick with the normal ninja and not bother with the copper one?
Thanks guys

[staffsMike]

The cooler is up to you. The normal one will be great for overclocking to around 3.2-3.4GHz after that the copper would be better. But something like the thermalright 120 ultra Extreme would probably do the job even better (assuming you dont get one with a curved base).

PSU wise, PC's are going green like everything else at the moment so power consumption is on the way down and PSU's like the modu82 and dark power are bringing us more and more efficency in using that power (customPC shows the dark power to be 87% efficent over a broad range of power requirements )

I have SLi available but I'd never bother to use it now, Single GPU cards are getting so much better so fast there is no point wasting money on two inferior ones.

[Noxvayl]

I'd recommend getting the HD3870 X2 GFX instead of the GX2. Yes the GX2 is faster but is it really worth that much money? I think the HD3870 X2 is better value for money and is a bloody good performer as well.

Other than that what every one else has said basically Oh i'd rather get the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 or the MSI P35 NEO2-FR. The Asus boards are prone to fail more often than not from my experience. I've had 3 fail myself and someone has just complained about a DOA Asus tonight. I prefer to stay away from them myself but then others swear by Asus, luck of the draw really(my luck is pretty bad )

Edit: About your question whether Blitzens recommended PSU would supply enough power. Yes it would supply plenty, PC's use much less power than people tend to think. Your CPU uses only 95W and the motherboard is using around 60W and then you have you HDD and DVD drives plus the GFX which wouldn't add up to more than 200W even if the GFX was the GX2. GFX now-a-days only use around 80W, the HD3870 X2 uses 125W and the GX2 from nVidia isn't far from that either so PC's (even high end ones) don't need more than 500W. Put in PC specs here and check the recommended PSU Watts(I've checked the projections and they are surprisingly accurate).

[staffsMike]

I'd recommend getting the HD3870 X2 GFX instead of the GX2. Yes the GX2 is faster but is it really worth that much money? I think the HD3870 X2 is better value for money and is a bloody good performer as well.

Other than that what every one else has said basically Oh i'd rather get the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 or the MSI P35 NEO2-FR. The Asus boards are prone to fail more often than not from my experience. I've had 3 fail myself and someone has just complained about a DOA Asus tonight. I prefer to stay away from them myself but then others swear by Asus, luck of the draw really(my luck is pretty bad )

Damn that is bad luck. As much as I despise their service, for the one time I had to use it (for a laptop) asus have never let me down. I've still got everyone I've ever bought I think and they all work, most recent one is a P5B as I have started to use Abit whos boards are as good if not better and service has been excellent, however they have jumped ship and left the UK so I'm not sure how badly it has been affected.

[Noxvayl]

Damn that is bad luck. As much as I despise their service, for the one time I had to use it (for a laptop) asus have never let me down. I've still got everyone I've ever bought I think and they all work, most recent one is a P5B as I have started to use Abit whos boards are as good if not better and service has been excellent, however they have jumped ship and left the UK so I'm not sure how badly it has been affected.

Yeah I know... I tend to stay away from the BIG brand names. They tend to have good products but because of volume they do supply there fair share of bad ones and I tend to be on the receiving end. Samsung are another I've had 5 pieces of equipment from them fail and then there are 5 other failed items from them I know of in my immediate family.

About service Gigabyte and MSI I find to have great service as well as Seagate. Corsair everyone knows has great service so no need to float there boat(its already flying ).

[douglasb]

Edit: About your question whether Blitzens recommended PSU would supply enough power. Yes it would supply plenty, PC's use much less power than people tend to think. Your CPU uses only 95W and the motherboard is using around 60W and then you have you HDD and DVD drives plus the GFX which wouldn't add up to more than 200W even if the GFX was the GX2. GFX now-a-days only use around 80W, the HD3870 X2 uses 125W and the GX2 from nVidia isn't far from that either so PC's (even high end ones) don't need more than 500W. Put in PC specs here and check the recommended PSU Watts(I've checked the projections and they are surprisingly accurate).

according to your wattage calculator i would draw 571W with a GX2, which i am thinking about getting again now because when nvidia release new cards the price of the GX2 will fall, so it might become more tempting...
what good PSUs are there around 600W?
(i have had to remove the link because i cannot post them)

[Noxvayl]

Enermax PRO82+ are excellent PSU's and so are the Seasonic M12 PSU's. Seasonic and Enermax are generally regarded as the best of the best PSU's. Other PSU's which are also very good are the Corsair HX620 and the Tagan TG600-BZ.

EDIT: Just added the following spec to the calculator; High end desktop mobo, Intel Q6600, 9800GX2, 4 sticks of DDR2 memory, 3 HDD's, 2 DVD drives, 5 120mm fans including 2 led and 1 high perf, 4 USB devices with the recommended CPU TDP settings and it only gave me 436W. Did you by chance use dual or quad sockets? Because that is for dual or quad dies on a motherboard not dual or quad CPU's, only servers have dual or quad sockets. Otherwise you must have loads of extra's in your machine because I loaded the spec up and it didn't surpass 500W even with overclocking the CPU to 3.6Ghz at 1.4v.

[douglasb]

EDIT: Just added the following spec to the calculator; High end desktop mobo, Intel Q6600, 9800GX2, 4 sticks of DDR2 memory, 3 HDD's, 2 DVD drives, 5 120mm fans including 2 led and 1 high perf, 4 USB devices with the recommended CPU TDP settings and it only gave me 436W. Did you by chance use dual or quad sockets? Because that is for dual or quad dies on a motherboard not dual or quad CPU's, only servers have dual or quad sockets. Otherwise you must have loads of extra's in your machine because I loaded the spec up and it didn't surpass 500W even with overclocking the CPU to 3.6Ghz at 1.4v.

i said quad sockets lol
so the 525W Enermax Modu82 should be fine? or should i get the Enermax PRO82+ just to be safer?

also is there a guide somewhere about how to overclock the Q6600 to over 3GHz? or shouldnt i need to?

edit: just put it through the calculator myself and got 441W with IDE HDD and 462W with SCSI HDD, which are mine? but when i added 20% aging, to simulate a years hard work, i got 530W and 554W, so should i get a 625W Enermax PRO82+ to allow for the aging?

[staffsMike]

Plenty around but this one should serve nicely

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...beginners.html

it's about core 2 duo's but it's exactly the same process.

Get the Modu82, that'll be a good PSU

For 3.0GHz you should be able to get away with stock settings and just raise the FSB to 333MHz (the motherboards native) and that will be it as longas you want to run the RAM at the same speed Hopefully thats not confusing but it will all be explained in the guide.

[TheReaFireblade]

Unless you have a particular reason for choosing two HDD's Doug... you might want to consider one larger capacity drive instead?

750GB (32MB cache) SATA II drives are selling for £65 - £70... and one of the best drives on the market - the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1, can be picked up for around £95 now!

In fact Scan are selling that very drive - with a free Xigmatek HD cooler - for just £90.46

[douglasb]

Unless you have a particular reason for choosing two HDD's Doug... you might want to consider one larger capacity drive instead?

750GB (32MB cache) SATA II drives are selling for £65 - £70... and one of the best drives on the market - the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1, can be picked up for around £95 now!

In fact Scan are selling that very drive - with a free Xigmatek HD cooler - for just £90.46

1 for OS, music, DVDs, work etc... and 1 for games!!! having 2 means that performance isn't bottlenecked by multiple programs trying to access the HDD at the same time (ie, both OS and a game can access the files they need on the HDDs without having to compete for space in one cable)
2 500GB samsung spinpoint cost £90ish

[staffsMike]

Yep the prices are very fair £ per GB so if you want 2 smaller ones you won't lose out