Buying advice - new rig

[meansizzler]

Haha
Its not disagreement.
Meansizzler is obviously wrong in his 'guessing' and is has ZERO CREDIBILITY' as his first words were that of a ten year old flamer.

I disagree, obviously your can't tell the difference between a crappy audio and good audio setup, maybe it's because your use to listening to the sound of crappy mp3's..

[jakc]

I feel a bit sneaky asking for advice in several forums, I just want to get the best system I can and not have any regrets.

So, in yet another forum I am getting conflicting advice (but sounding logical) about the choice of mobo I have gone for (Abit IX38):

the quad-gt isn't highly rated. They don't have any of the the new quads in stock which are wholly better than the old ones. To be honest I would phone yoyotech and ask them when the quads come in. If you are spending that much on a system you should at least have patience till you can maximise your gains for that price or you may end up with a computer that might be powerful but not as powerful as it could have been.

So probably an Asus Maximus/DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R/Asus P5K series motherboard is going to be your best bet. The DFI and Maximus are greater clockers.

Seems to make sense. Any thoughts on this? Id like to have a decent mobo thats going to last.

[GenBanks]

You're getting a q6600, I hope you plan on overclocking it! Those things are practically made for overclocking

For a motherboard, if you don't intend to SLi in future, I'd say go for the Asus P5K Premium WiFi-AP. It got a good review in Custom PC magazine, and they're pretty tough in their reviews. It's got lots of features , supports DDR2 (MUCH cheaper and almost identical performance-wise as DDR3) and will be very comfortable ensuring that your g0 q6600 shows its true colours (speed-wise). On the other hand, I've got an eVGA 680i motherboard and have been happy with it, my q6600 is running at 3ghz without any problems at all. I'm sure I could get it higher if I spent some time on it. But I went the nvidia route because I wanted SLi.

In terms of graphics cards, the Geforce 9800 GTX came out yesterday. It's faster than the 8800 GTX, the 8800 GTS and even the 8800 Ultra in some circumstances. It's not truly a 'next-gen' card performance wise (as the naming scheme suggests) but it costs £213 @ YoYo so hardly more than the GTS. Plus, it'll probably maintain it's value longer in case you want to resell it down the road to upgrade to the possibly much faster 9900-series cards that are possibly coming out this summer, or the rv770 series if ATI/AMD get their act together.

I realise that you also want to see if you can save some money and my suggestions so far have all been for higher-performance (although at decent price/performance ratio) components. Well if you want to save money, don't get a 8800GTS/9800GTX and instead get a 8800GT or 9600GT. This is especially if you game on a smaller screen (lower than 1680x1050 which is 20"/22" widescreen monitors). The smaller the screen, the smaller the gains you get from having the faster graphics cards. With the 8800GT/9600GT you'll still be able to play games like CoD4, TF2, World in Conflict etc. at decent settings with good framerates. The graphics card that is the best bang per buck (bang per pound? ) is very dependent on what screen size/resolution you have.

Another measure you could take to save costs is to go for a 1.6GHz dual-core pentium E2140. I know you'll probably cringe when I say pentium but that chip is different from the Pentium D's. It's more or less a Core 2 CPU. However, it is only worthwhile to get it if you're willing to overclock. It shouldn't be too difficult to get it to 3GHz or more, especially with the M0 version (as opposed to L2). Particularly if you go for a good quality motherboard like the Asus. The E2140 costs about 40 quid!
If saving money isn't a huge priority though, definitely go with the q6600!

[jakc]

Thanks for the detailed reply.
Ive got a Sony SDM-HS94P (19") which I run at 1280 x 1024.

Ok, so ill stick with the q6600 (and look into overclocking it after I get everything up and running)

Im pretty sure I wont be SLI-ing in the future. I like my games but ive currently got a 7600GT and that impresses me, so im sure one of these newer cards will keep me impressed for a few years.

So which g-card to get? Blitzen previously recommended BFG 8800GTS OC 512MB. I may upgrade this to 9800 GTX on your advice. Should I rule out the alpha Dog card compared to these two?

And finally (and IMO most importantly) the mobo...
Its a toss up between:
Asus P5K Premium WiFi-AP
Asus Maximus
DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R
Abit IX38

From earlier recommedations I was going to cool the mobo with a Scythe Ninja Heatsink.

However someone quoted in another forum:

a passive cooler the best thing to go with CPU thats crying out the be overclocked

and mentioned something like the tuniq 120

Im sorry for treading so carefully, every other system ive bought has been a pre-decided spec. All this hardware confuses (yet interests/excites) the hell outta me. Just want to have no regrets once ive clicked the Buy button. All your help/advice is really appreciated.

[jakc]

any more advice on this, in particular to my last post.
Have also been a little reluctant to wait for these Nehalem processors I know nothing about?

[Kovoet]

Only get the P5K especially with the cpu if you are prepared to OC, I have it and believe its an awesome mobo and the bios is very friendly. Included with this is that you can almost OC anything on the board. I got this after the Abit IP35 pro but much preferred the P5K

[GenBanks]

At 1280x1024, I suppose you could consider saving some money and getting a 9600 GT OC (like the Xpertvision 9600GT Sonic 512MB) or a 8800 GT and still expect to get good framerates. It might be a good idea to spend less on graphics cards now, and then upgrade when the 9900 series comes out. The graphics market is quite stagnant right now in terms of performance levels, nothing that is much faster than the 8800 GTX has come out, and it has been more than a year since that was released. Hopefully the 9900 series will offer bigger performance gains than the 9800 series (even though it's basically the same architecture).
Sorry if that confuses you since it contradicts my previous advise about the 9800 GTX, but I was guessing you had resolution of 1680x1050 or so. If you're still aiming for a top-end card though, the suggestion of the 9800 gtx still stands.

The Tuniq 120 is a good choice; although I don't have one, lots of people with big overclocks on air seem to use them. Do a quick internet search to make sure you've got enough room in your case and around the CPU socket area of the motherboard you choose though.

I reckon you'll be pleased with the p5k, although I don't really think you'll be disappointed with any of those motherboards. Check out prices and bundles, I suppose.

[Blitzen]

If you're still aiming for a top-end card though, the suggestion of the 9800 gtx still stands.

Why though?
Its a £200+ card which, at the resolutions 1280x1024, will offer incredibly little/if anything over a 8800GT which can be had for around £120 now.

The 8800GTS can also be had for £165 and thats the same card as a 9800GTX except the 9800GTX has been overclocked a little.

9800GTX @ £200ish = poor vlaue.

[Nessuno]

hmm...time for me to join the debate. I do have much of your orginal spec except my rig is more powerful. If i was to advise myself and you, i would put the XFX 790 ultra board on your list and also an XFX alpha dog 512 single slot graphics card (i choose this card because it is reliable under stress. Nvidia driver set 169.32 is the most stable). The 790 is a expensive board but if you want something really reliable....remember, you are about to build a super-rig and pushing it to the extreme. invest in good components.

If you stick with the reliable striker extreme 680 (my current mobo), make sure you have Bios 1503 to get the max performance out of the Q6600...some say the 780 and 790 mobos are good for the Q6600 because the Northbridge has been redesigned to deal with heat better and DD3 memory.

Make sure you get a SLACR GO stepping Q6600 proc.

good luck. you will need to be experienced to take on a 700 series Nvidia mobo build. However, you will not regret the experience. My rig purs like a kitten.

As for cases, you will like the coolermaster Rc stacker 832 or the new Cosmos S case. It has beautiful options for watercooling.

I have a X-Fi plat but would choose Vista Ultimate 64 instead of 32. its just that practically all your hardware is desgned with 64bit in mind....

Just in case you are wandering about the load stress my machine can handle. I had to deal with a Adobe premiere video project that had 250 gig of video and 100 gig of audio. the rig rendered the finished High definition production in six days without crashing. my rig doesn't just play games!

[Blitzen]

Just remember that if you go the 'XFX' route, that reports of their customer service no being very good are rife.

[Nessuno]

true, very true, blitzen. I used to be an Asus man but since buying my O/C XFX 8800GT alpha dogs i have fallen in love with their performance. since installing the now available 169.32 drivers the cards are alot more stable. XFX cards and mobos essentially use the stock Nvidia drivers except the hardware is made better.

i have taken a look at the XFX 790 ultra mobo and i am confidant that i can get a Quad core extreme proc up and running to over 4ghz per core by using water cooling. something jakec is not considering at the moment.

My future spec is

XFX 790 Ultra mobo (if that doesn't work, an intel skulltrail mobo)
Cosmos S coolermaster case
Coolermaster 1000w PSU
Q9650 Quad extreme proc
DDC Pro w/ XSPC top, XSPC R120-T Rad, EK Supreme
2 x XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 preoverclocked (670mhz)
4X DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz ReaperX Memory
3x Samsung spinpoint 750gig Raid O
2x Samsung 226CW monitors - 1 x Sony X3000 1080p HD TV
X-Fi Plat soundcard
LG BlueRay burner
Logitech 540 speakers, DiNovo Edge Keyboard and Habu mouse

Only later will i consider buying a 9800GX2. i want to watch vista develop a bit and for Nvidia to sort out its driver support.