Like to get some thoughts on my new rig

[moogle]

Looking up those links as I type this moogle! As for the floppy drive, I thought it might be needed to flash the bios unless that can be done as easily on a cd or usb flash stick now. I like your avatar, Azumanga Daioh is one of my favourite animes (especially love Osaka's shoe, soap and volleyball scenes ).

Thanks for the feedback on the monitor CAT-THE-FIFTH!

Hahah good to see another anime fan! I'm still watching it but yeah Osaka is funny

As for the Floppy, with the bios you can now use the USB flash drive so it's not really needed Another neat feature of the Maximus Formula II is the dual bios option which is great if you're scared of flashing. If you fubar it just switch bios and do a bios copy from the good one->bad one and then retry the flash. It's a pity on some other high end boards they make they don't include it or have a dual bios. Weird eh you pay more but you miss some crucial bits.

Also you now qualify for Scan free shipping at hexus. If you've registered an account at Scan follow this guide

Your userid is at the top right under your name bit but I'm sure your ID is 41535

[ChrisVick]

Ah yep, didn't realise my posts were that high yet. So thanks for the heads up!

Currently watching One Piece at the moment. My faves include the Naruto's, FMA, FMP, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, GTO, Monster, Hellsing and a few others.

[moogle]

Ah yep, didn't realise my posts were that high yet. So thanks for the heads up!

Currently watching One Piece at the moment. My faves include the Naruto's, FMA, FMP, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, GTO, Monster, Hellsing and a few others.

No probs

I've died down the watching but I'll soon be checking new ones out
You will have alot to talk about with our other anime hexite sleepyhead

No cookie for guessing whos in his avatar though

[ChrisVick]

No probs

I've died down the watching but I'll soon be checking new ones out
You will have alot to talk about with our other anime hexite sleepyhead

No cookie for guessing whos in his avatar though

lol, no cookie for me then!

And I've decided what I'm getting now, just got a few questions for the OC'ing.

As you have the motherboard I will get now and the same cpu moogle, taking into account the cooler I'm getting and the case and fans, should I be able to get 3.5-4GHz OC?

Also, I'm going with the 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC2-8500 (1066) as you suggested. How far will I be able to push them on that motherboard with the fans they come with?

Hmm well I've been number crunching like a crazy person but I think this is the cheapest I can get all these things from Scan and using taking advantage of the corsiar offer on OCUK and their 6% deal at the moment.

OcUK
£381.86 - Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24"
£233.81 - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
£82.24 - Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 (on offer)
£78.71 - Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB
- £46.60 6% Offer Discount
+ £12.87 Delivery
£742.89 Total

Scan
£8.21 - 100 pcs Millipede Mille-Tie Natural
£112.80 - Windows Vista Ultimate SP1* 64Bit 1Pk OEM
£42.17 - Noctua NH-U12P CPU
£81.65 - 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2
£69.85 - (5x) 120mm Noctua NF-P12 (hehe)
£155.65 - Asus Maximus II Formula
+ £0.00 Delivery
£470.33 Total

BT Shop
£348.99 - Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB
£160.98 - Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos S (Sport)
- £15.30 Quidco cashback
+ £10.95 Delivery
£505.62 Total

£1718.84 Grand Total!

I know it's over a bit but I never thought I'd get that monitor though. I could a normal ATI 4870 card instead of the X2 one but I don't mind the price difference really, as both the graphics card and monitor will be with me for a long time. I've found the Quido website and the 6% discount on OcUK from these forums, plus all the help I've had to make my decisions, so thanks again everyone for that (I'll be thanking a lot of posts when I get to 25 post count!).

Edit - Starting to think I shouldn't go with OcUK now... I've never had a problem with them in the past, but with all that money being spent, I really don't want to get headaches with returns. Is it worth paying the extra &#163;32 and getting those things with Scan? (the free corsair psu return is good as well) Also the BT Shop doesn't even know if their case is the revised version but with Scan that's going to bump it up to &#163;52. Argh, back to being confused again >_<

[moogle]

lol, no cookie for me then!

And I've decided what I'm getting now, just got a few questions for the OC'ing.

As you have the motherboard I will get now and the same cpu moogle, taking into account the cooler I'm getting and the case and fans, should I be able to get 3.5-4GHz OC?

3.5GHz is easy, I can reach that without a voltage change. 4GHz you can get that too depending on how fast your cooler can dissipate heat. I haven't read many reviews on the Noctua heatsink but I know it's mainly for silence.

Also, I'm going with the 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC2-8500 (1066) as you suggested. How far will I be able to push them on that motherboard with the fans they come with?

They can reach 1132MHz with a bit of voltage increase, who knows you might be able to get more. I've never had one of these so I wouldn't know but they should be good, and there may be better ones but doesn't mean this set is bad. At 471MHz you will be at 4GHz and the ram can be set to run at 1131MHz, me myself I can't run at that speed probably because mine can't overclock or because I've got 4 sticks. I am running at 951MHz but because of the FSB boost at 4GHz I get speeds over the 951MHz speed. ie for 951 I'd be expecting 7000MB/s-ish in ram tests of copy write and read (in theory) etc but the real results are higher.

Hmm well I've been number crunching like a crazy person but I think this is the cheapest I can get all these things from Scan and using taking advantage of the Corsair offer on OCUK and their 6&#37; deal at the moment.

Now alot of people don't really like OcUK because of the customer service. Maybe a few of them will tell you to avoid them in this thread. There are lots of bad service threads about them on here, one recently in the same sort of scenario as you'll enter as the guy used a special offer/discount deal and it ended up badly. I would say avoid getting major components from OcUK unless you can deal with the manufacturer directly and they are highly rated manufacturers. For example like if your Corsair ram messes up I'm sure they can sort it out quickly for you, same goes with Dell as they have an RMA base in the UK iirc, and from what I've read it's quick most of the time.

Now I'm just informing you thats all, you can choose to buy from them who knows you may be one of the (many? ) people who get good service. I wouldn't like to see you get into a bad situation with them though so before you order from them just have a read of these threads if you want.

http://forums.hexus.net/shopping-ret...ack-offer.html

http://forums.hexus.net/shopping-ret...ers-co-uk.html

http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...ping-ocuk.html

http://forums.hexus.net/shopping-ret...shop-ocuk.html

They're all locked or closed because of the "hate" alot of the users have for them I'd say, but you can see how some people have been dealt with. I'll say again it's not to deter you from them but just to let you know what you're getting into

&#163;1718.84 Grand Total!

I know it's over a bit but I never thought I'd get that monitor though. I could a normal ATI 4870 card instead of the X2 one but I don't mind the price difference really, as both the graphics card and monitor will be with me for a long time. I've found the Quido website and the 6% discount on OcUK from these forums, plus all the help I've had to make my decisions, so thanks again everyone for that (I'll be thanking a lot of posts when I get to 25 post count!).

Edit - Starting to think I shouldn't go with OcUK now... I've never had a problem with them in the past, but with all that money being spent, I really don't want to get headaches with returns. Is it worth paying the extra &#163;32 and getting those things with Scan? (the free corsair psu return is good as well) Also the BT Shop doesn't even know if their case is the revised version but with Scan that's going to bump it up to &#163;52. Argh, back to being confused again >_<

Well you can see what I've put up about OcUK, and you've pointed out another reason for getting the PSU from Scan. From one of their posts they said that they will honour the 5 year Corsair warranty too all the way and they are the only ones to do so if I've got my facts right. BT Shop/Dabs weren't terrific on CS for me either but since it's a case it won't have much things going wrong with it. If you really want the revised version then get it from Scan, but if you don't mind a risk of it then take the savings at BT Shop.

HTH

[Powderhound]

FYI, BT shop is Dabs in disguise.

EDIT: Ignore me, someone's already mentioned it.

[moogle]

FYI, BT shop is Dabs in disguise.

EDIT: Ignore me, someone's already mentioned it.

Not much of a disguise eh

Doesn't matter if I mentioned it maybe someone will skip my long post and find this piece of info (from your post) anyway, still useful

[ChrisVick]

Hmm that would explain the same price on the graphics card then. >_< Only time I used them, I had a bad experience (wrote it in another thread), so hmm well things are certainly getting interesting now.

Edit - *throws some thanks around*

[MSIC]

HI, well done on a good looking spec.
Scan is worth the &#163;32 difference, plus it might be worth your while asking a Scan guy if they can do a few 'today only' special offers just for you They do do that, you know!
Can i ask what you have in terms of mouse, keyboard and speakers?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ah yep, didn't realise my posts were that high yet. So thanks for the heads up!

Currently watching One Piece at the moment. My faves include the Naruto's, FMA, FMP, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, GTO, Monster, Hellsing and a few others.

Cowboy Bebop was great. Only watched the old Hellsing properly;the new one seems quite different. GITS is also pretty good. The Big-O and Ergo Proxy are also really worth watching too!

[ChrisVick]

HI, well done on a good looking spec.
Scan is worth the &#163;32 difference, plus it might be worth your while asking a Scan guy if they can do a few 'today only' special offers just for you They do do that, you know!
Can i ask what you have in terms of mouse, keyboard and speakers?

I still use my G5 and my mousepad is my big drawing mat (I just use part of it ). Keyboard is one I got when I bought my dell 5 years ago, I like the twisty bit for the volume, it's convenient and my speakers are built into my Asus monitor. I usually use my vitality headset most of the time. And for parts I will salvage from my computer at the moment will be my dvd rw+/- with dvd + double layer and a creative labs vitality gamer sound card I think, not sure which one.