My first (gaming) build: now or later?

Hey all ! New to OCF, been lurking for a couple days between here and other forums and websites trying to digest as much info as possible about the direction I should go and the components needed for my first build ever: a gaming rig.

My current system is like 5+ years old (AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 1 gig ram geforce 6600). This is the year to upgrade!

However, I'm not sure if I should build now, like this week or next, or wait until the E6850 comes out, or wait until the end of this year when the games I am looking forward to playing come out (Age of Conan, Crysis, Bioshock).

I don't plan to: build for the future, run SLI nor RAID.

I do plan to do some overclocking, but nothing extreme. Just enough overclocking to require an HSF like a Zalman.

I'm hoping some of you can offer some advice as to which build I should do (see below) because my poor brain is getting it's frontal lobe kicked with all the over analysing I've been doing

First, i'm not going to build around the X38, or the G90's, or the Penryn's, or DDR3 because it's all too new and too dam expensive and I'm not looking to shell out $2,000 for just 4 components. Nor am I going to wait til this time next year for their prices to drop. Might as well keep waiting.. and waiting.. and .. um.. no.

So if I were to build *now* here's what it would consist of:

- E6600 (which will be OC'd to 3ghz+)
- ASUS or Giga mb (but which one? need some advice here too - 965P DS3? P35?)
- 8800 GTS 640
- WD Raptor 150
- Antec P182
- HSF like the Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu LED http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118119 or... an HSF that will blow air towards the fan in the back of the P182 (i would prefer this kind of HSF)
- Corsair 520HX PSU
- 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 because I get $70 MIR for the kit! Unless G.Skill or another is all that better?
- Samsung 19" widescreen 906BW LCD - which I currently own, which *may* be upgraded to the 926BW but I'm very pleased with what I have now and 1440x900 is plenty for me too, for now.

If I wait until the E6850 comes out then everything stays the same except:
- Which ASUS or Giga mb? Same as above or lean more towards P35?

My only beef with not going with a P35 is because it's so new.

I feel like if I build *now*, I'm kinda wasting money because no games are out yet that I am looking forward to (Bioshock, Crysis, Age of Conan, and beyond).

I also feel that I shoudl wait until the E6850 comes out, makes sense right, because it's 3ghz at stock and maybe I can get close to 4ghz OC, but at least OC higher than the E6600.

Appreciate any advice! Thanks in advance!

That's actually a really good list, you must have been doing some reading. All that lobe kicking action was worth it!

If you are looking for a motherboard, the Gigabyte DS3 is quite popular, although I would grab an Asus P5K myself, as I'm a big Asus fan. You'd be ok with either board with the E6850, so you don't have to worry about getting a different board. As for the games, you'll do just fine went Bioshock and Crysis come out with that system.

The only thing I would change would be the Hard Drive. Raptors are rather loud, and you can almost match the speed with a pair of cheaper drives in RAID 0, or you can get much more space. For example, this hard drive has roughly twice the space, and costs almost half as much. If you got two of them, you could raid them and be rocking and rolling with almost 4 times the space and nearly the same speed. Although the difference between that raptor and a slower 7200rpm drive is not that great, load times will be faster, in the end, it comes down to how much performance you are willing to sacrifice. I would go the double hard drive route myself, but its your comp.

Edit: Whoops, didn't catch the no raid part. I'd still grab a different drive though, I'm partial to my room ( not that I ever use any of it, but whatever ).

very similar to my list, but i cut some corners because of prices, still going with the 640, but i cant afford a raptor and im using my firends really old case for the moment

i picked the p35 DS3R mobo, its cheap and it will be upgradeable, great reviews on it and p35's overall

July 22nd isn't to far off so I don't think it would hurt to hold out till then. For a motherboard you could pick up something like the plain P5K which is ~$150, I think. I'm not to big of a fan of your heatsink choice. I would get something like the Thermalright Ultra-120. Then pick a fan based on if you want a quiet rig or not. The Ballistix memory is a great choice! They definitely have some of the best D9 ICs out right now. I've got a 36GB Raptor and I don't hear it at all because my computer is louder than it. So I guess unless you want something super quiet I doubt the Raptor will bother you.

Abit's IP35 Pro is not a bad choice either. It is almost the same as the P5K Deluxe, just without the intergrated WiFi.

if you wait I would expect that one of those board will have distinguished itself from the others. + you'd be getting the new G-0 stepping.

my gigabyte ds3 rev1 does 500fsb 1:1.. and its just 100$ new my cpu has more left in it, but i dont think the board does hehe


Look into gigabyte for sure, the p35 is compatible with the next gen of cpus and clocks quads nicely. not to mention the insane speeds people are getting from them.

Thanks for the input so far! Much appreciated.

OK, might as well wait until after July 22nd. Makes sense.

Then the next decision will be: E6850 or Q6600? heheh. But that's why I have a month to decide lol.

G0 stepping ? I have no idea what that is, if someone could enlighten me?

I guess my next decision will be the E6850 or the Q6600. Crysis and games to follow will support the quad, but it's an early version of the quad, so I may just go E6850 for the 600mhz increase instead of having to get extreme cooling for the OC'd quad.

Another option for the drive is the new Seagate 7200.10's that are 250g each, at $80 each, you could raid0 two of them to get a transfer rate that should beat that raptor.They are supposed to be about 30% faster than previous Seagates holding an average transfer rate of 78Mb/s and a maximum of 110Mb/s transfer rate. I'm getting them. I currently get 93Mb/s on my raid0 of Maxtor DiamondMax 10's which are 2 years old. I expect to get around 140Mb/s with the new ones. You would get a total of 466Gb space in Raid0 with them.

Would you rather have 2 cores running at a higher speed than 4 cores running at a slightly slower speed

Well that's 2 suggestions so far for Raid 0 and the new Seagates. I have no experience with Raid at all - I did do some research - I know you have to buy a raid controller, right? And then basically 1 drive is a mirror of the other, is that how it works? I'll poke/ask around more in the appropriate forum here.

2 fast cores or 4 slow cores... heh. Well the E6850 apparently is supposed to run a bit cooler from what I researched, but then the Q6600 will easily OC to 3ghz on stock cooling, right? heh

Ah decisions decisions.

You don't need a controller. At the cost of a few percent more cpu usage (1 - 6%) you can do it through XP, and I think Vista. The appropriate chipset drivers are need to do it with your mb. Raid0 is the highest risk of data loss, In 2.3 year of using it I've only had 1 issue with it going corrupt, and it was sole becuause I was down-volting my cpu to 0.850 volts while planning to download for a few days. That was apparently too low a voltage for my dual core. I never had the problem again after I settled at 0.925. Raid 0 has no mirror image, the data is stripped between both disks.

With the newer quads they're not gonna be really hot and you wont need to OC them much because they're like quadroopasuper fast stock..

JamesXP said:

With the newer quads they're not gonna be really hot and you wont need to OC them much because they're like quadroopasuper fast stock..

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Well again from what I tried to research on E6850 vs Q6600, the E6850 may run cooler, and the Q6600 will run hot OC'd, as the quad is only 2.4 stock.

I mean I guess I'll go with the quad and OC it to 3ghz which I hear is easy to get there.

E6420 ?

After doing more research... I found that the E6420 overclocks better than the E6600, and that the E6850 might not be able to overclock as good as the E6420 dollar for dollar.

So in the end, I don't plan to do extreme overclocking, or running SLI, and if I can reach 3ghz that will be fine for me!

So is there a problem with me grabbing the E6420 instead of the E6600 or E6850?

Why not, right? I'll save $80 or so. I'll have a Thermalright 120 extreme on it.

Or will the 1333 FSB and the E6850 be that much better?

Hm.. this is going to be a tough decision.

Morvak said:

After doing more research... I found that the E6420 overclocks better than the E6600, and that the E6850 might not be able to overclock as good as the E6420 dollar for dollar.

So in the end, I don't plan to do extreme overclocking, or running SLI, and if I can reach 3ghz that will be fine for me!

So is there a problem with me grabbing the E6420 instead of the E6600 or E6850?

Why not, right? I'll save $80 or so. I'll have a Thermalright 120 extreme on it.

Or will the 1333 FSB and the E6850 be that much better?

Hm.. this is going to be a tough decision.

Click to expand...

it comes down to the issue of a motherboard and ram that can push your fsb. my e6300 only has a multi 0f 7 and right now its at 500 fsb, 2000mhz effectively running 1:1 with my ram. RAM is key depending on which cpu you get.

The e6420 looks appealing. Also with our big fsb, my e6300 is going along at 3.5 with a 2ghz fsb, I am more than satisfied. My RAM also is not even sweating and is running at tight timings.

good ram, mobo , cpu you will see nice performance. I mean my proc is just a lil 1.8ghz chip Get what will suit your needs.

ryanmartini said:

it comes down to the issue of a motherboard and ram that can push your fsb. my e6300 only has a multi 0f 7 and right now its at 500 fsb, 2000mhz effectively running 1:1 with my ram. RAM is key depending on which cpu you get.

The e6420 looks appealing. Also with our big fsb, my e6300 is going along at 3.5 with a 2ghz fsb, I am more than satisfied. My RAM also is not even sweating and is running at tight timings.

good ram, mobo , cpu you will see nice performance. I mean my proc is just a lil 1.8ghz chip Get what will suit your needs.

Click to expand...

OK so let's say I get the 965P DS3 mb and the Crucial DDR2 800 2x1gb - which CPU would be great to OC with this setup?


I still don't understand the whole FSB and memory thing, even though I read over everything.

If I can save some money, I'll grab an E6300 over an E6420, over an E6600, over an E6850. I don't need the latest and greatest. I don't care, as long as I can get the most speed for the value and less heat too.

I'm not worry about building a system to upgrade - if I can build a system with whatever E CPU I can that will last me a couple years, I'll be happy.

I could get a P35 but why, when it's a new version, and the X38 is coming out anyway. And again, I don't want to play the never ending waiting game.

All my needs are is an updated gaming rig that will last me a couple/few years. Just a decent system running at 3ghz+ OC'd without extreme cooling (Thermalright 120 extreme fine for me) so I can get decent speed and framerates for games on a GTS 8800 640 at 1440x900 without lowering res to 1024x768 due to poor ramrates.

I don't think any X38 will take DDR2 ram. As far as I know they are all going to need DDR3.