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New C2D rig - advice please

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Clockwork_Apple

Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2006
Location
UK
I'm building my brother a new rig for christmas, I've been looking into hardware for the last few days and reading reviews and posting on various PC forums. After some debate my specs changed drastically from an E6300 with 2GB on a P5B-D, to an E6600 with 1GB on a GB DS3. Here are my current decided specs;

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

OCZ (OCZ2G8001GK) 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2-800 PC2-6400 CL 5-5-5-12 Gold XTC Dual Channel Kit

Leadtek GeForce 7900 GS 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Hiper HPU-4M580 Type R 580W ATX2.2 PSU - Black

Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM

Thermaltake VB1000BNS Soprano SuperMidi Tower - Black

And then optical drives and other small parts.

It comes to £630, which isnt too bad. He already has a nice Samsung 19" 920N screen, and an MX Revolution mouse.

He plays a lot of flight sims and plays games regularly, so this PC needs to be able to play new games. I am aware it will need a DX10 card at some point, but I'm waiting until they drop in price. Also, I would probably add an extra 1GB at some point when he wants to upgrade to Vista. I will be overclocking this rig, but not to its limits, a mild overclock to increase performance is all I think he needs.

Basically, I just want to make sure what I'm getting is good before I make the purchase. So opinions please :)

Thanks.
 
One thing I would change is the hard drive.
You should be able to get a 16 MB cache drive for close to the same money. I would stick with Western Digital or Seagate.
 
Thanks, I wasn't that sure on what HDD to get so I basically picked what I knew which was Samsung. I've decided on this then, as it's only £8 more and has 16MB cache.

As for the other hardware, any more thoughts? My main thing is, whether it's better to get an E6600 with 1GB DDR2 or an E6300 with 2GB DDR2. I know in the long run it's easier to add to the RAM, so it's a better choice I think.
 
Samsung doesn't have good rep with harddrives.

I would go for the E6300 with 2gb ram and a good cooler. Then you can easily overclock to 3.4ghz+.
 
Good choice on the hard drive.
I would lean to the 6600 and 1 gig now if you are adding a gig later. The extra cache and stock speed will be more important than an additional gig of RAM until you install Vista. While there is a boost in some games with the extra RAM, its not all that much for present titles.

Nice rig, I am jealous.
 
Yeah, I think in the long term a better processor is a good idea. He can get an extra gig when he gets Vista. Is there any problems of having all four DIMM slots taken up? As in having 4x 512MB?

I'm still unsure about the motherboard, my brother likes the idea of onboard Wifi so he wants the P5B-Deluxe, but personally I think the DS3 is a better choice.

I'm ordering the parts tommorow. Hopefully all goes well,
 
Clockwork_Apple said:
Is there any problems of having all four DIMM slots taken up? As in having 4x 512MB?

if you ever want more then 2gb of ram you'll have to start tossing sticks, and dual channel isnt an option, other then that, no.
 
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