New Spec - Opinions?

Smellyirishman

It's been a while since my last build so I'm looking to get back into the game with this...

Hardwareversand
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L
Intel Core 2 Q6700 boxed
Scythe Ninja Mini
Club3D HD4850

MemoryC
2Gb Mushkin DDR2 800mhz
OCZ 500W StealthXStream Gamers PSU

Comes to €487 incl Delivery.

Going to be used for everything you could possibly imagine .

Current system (just for lols):
ABIT IC7-G
P4 2.8
Radeon 9800pro
1Gb

Questions:
Is it worth going for 8500 speed RAM for an extra €19? Although I've heard that the motherboard has trouble reaching the higher end of its reported capabilities.

I've not calculated PSU requirments. Would 500 do it? I've had 2 Antec PSUs blow on me before so any opinions on that PSU?

Any opinions/suggestions/remarks are welcomed and appreciated.

PogMoThoin

I'd opt for the Q6600 instead of the 6700 and get 4Gb of ram as ram is dirt cheap at the moment.

Are you going to be gaming? if so what games? and at what resolution?

500-550W is fine for any single gpu, opt for a good brand like Corsair, Seasonic etc, although Antec would be one of these better makes, maybe you just had bad luck. I had a 600W OCZ gameXtream before, still have it in another rig, but its damn noisy. Have a Corsair now and v happy with it

Smellyirishman

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I'd opt for the Q6600 instead of the 6700 and get 4Gb of ram as ram is dirt cheap at the moment.

Why the Q6600? Not worth the extra €30 for the minor increase in Mhz? Or are you dropping to a Q6600 to allow budget for extra RAM?

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Are you going to be gaming? if so what games? and at what resolution?

Of course! Anything and Everything. Current monitor's native res is 1600 x 1050

PogMoThoin wrote: »

500-550W is fine for any single gpu, opt for a good brand like Corsair, Seasonic etc, although Antec would be one of these better makes, maybe you just had bad luck.

Yeah, I was very surprised with the Antecs blowing. I'll have a look around for reasonably priced brand names.

Sqaull20

I would order at the same place, that ocz psu has got some bad reviews, suppose to be very noisy and hot.

I would go with a Corsair psu, they are the best around.

I had that mobo, its great for its price but not a great overclocker, from my testing it has a 400fsb block, doesnt matter what air cooler you put on it, it wont go past 400fsb.

It will do just over 3.0ghz with Q6600 and stock fan.

If this cpu is indeed an extreme like advertised get that or get a P35 mobo if you want to overclock.The extreme has an unlocked multiplier and with a mulit of 10 it will hit 3.50ghz on that board ( I got it to 3.80ghz with Akasa fan ) its a great cpu for a not so good overclocking board.Even the crappy 650i boards dell sell with the xps range can be overclocked to 3.30ghz with that cpu.

http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=8569&agid=

I would go with Q6600, P35 mobo, 4gb pc 6400, Corsair 550w, HD4850 or if you could HD4870

Smellyirishman

Sqaull20 wrote: »

I would order at the same place, that ocz psu has got some bad reviews, suppose to be very noisy and hot.

I would go with a Corsair psu, they are the best around.

I had that mobo, its great for its price but not a great overclocker, from my testing it has a 400fsb block, doesnt matter what air cooler you put on it, it wont go past 400fsb.

It will do just over 3.0ghz with Q6600 and stock fan.

If this cpu is indeed an extreme like advertised get that or get a P35 mobo if you want to overclock.The extreme has an unlocked multiplier and with a mulit of 10 it will hit 3.50ghz on that board ( I got it to 3.80ghz with Akasa fan ) its a great cpu for a not so good overclocking board.Even the crappy 650i boards dell sell with the xps range can be overclocked to 3.30ghz with that cpu.

http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=8569&agid=

I would go with Q6600, P35 mobo, 4gb pc 6400, Corsair 550w, HD4850 or if you could HD4870

Not sure how bothered by OCing I am, didn't really bother with it with my current system and doubt I would with any other (might play with the numbers a bit, but wouldn't mind if it choked early). I'm still not sure if I'll stick with the ninja mini or just use the stock cooler.

The link you supplied doesn't work.

A P35, Corsair and 4870 would push me too far budget wise atm. Maybe just a better PSU for now and go to 4Gb RAM, might drop the cooler and take on the P35.

Thanks for the reply.

Sqaull20

The stock cooler on the Q6600 isnt bad, its not that whiney unlike the cooler on some of the other chips ( E8400 ) and its only €4 extra.

3.0ghz is pretty easy on the p31 ds3l board with ok ram and stock cooler, which in itself isnt a bad overclock..Initially I thought you were going to be really clocking the board ( expensive cooler ) but if you only have a passing interest, then the Multi of 9 on the Q6600 and stock fan should be enough for you.3.0ghz is nice.

I would go with.

Smellyirishman

Was trying to stay under €500 really. But that's a promising setup. Was looking for PSUs on that site earlier and couldn't find them .

If I stretch the budget a little bit more (€9) and went for the P35 instead, would that be worthwhile?

Thanks for the posts, you've given me plenty to think about. Really appreciate the basket too.

Is the 4870 worth the extra €70? I'll do some looking into that. I'll be running a lot of games and obviously would enjoy the extra oomph, but it's a substantial price difference.

Sqaull20

I believe there is a mild overclocking difference but other than that specs seem similar (P35 S3L is DDR2 1066 mhz native but P35 DSL3 is 800 mhz native.. odd)

For €9 more than P31 and a bit less than P35 Ds3l, you should go for it.

P35 boards have some very good overclocking options in the bios.

I think 4870 is worth it, but if money is tight, probably not



http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870-and-hd-4850/22/

Anti

If your not going to be doing alot of gaming, and this pc is just for internet/email and the likes, just go grab a cheap dell. For the same price you will get a screen too. But if you want ot game, forget about the cheap dells. The build squall posted for 513€ is a bit of an animal tbh. That type of build last year would have cost you well over 1000€

Smellyirishman

@Squall, I think you've convinced me to stretch for the 4870. Thanks for all the help, I think I'm set now.

Anti wrote: »

If your not going to be doing alot of gaming, and this pc is just for internet/email and the likes, just go grab a cheap dell. For the same price you will get a screen too. But if you want ot game, forget about the cheap dells.

Thanks for reading my thread Anti! /thumbsUp </sarcasm>

Anti wrote: »

The build squall posted for 513€ is a bit of an animal tbh. That type of build last year would have cost you well over 1000€

I'm aware of that, .

TerrorFirmer

Going against the grain, from a games point of view, you can dump the quad and get a cheaper dual core to save 60-70 euro, in fact, if you're overclocking, you can go as little as 50 quid on the CPU and oc'd it with ease, even on the stock intel cooler, any dual core cpu will hit 600-700mhz faster without a bother regarding temperatures. I have a Q6600 and it's a total waste, the only game I really play for example is COD4, which performs almost identical on a 2.2ghz dual core as it does on a 3ghz quad core for example - it's easy to subscribe yourself to bigger and more is better but trust me, a cheap dual core and a 4870 will stomp a quad core and 4850 in most games, aside the odd cpu intensive title, just an an example. People constantly say 'oh but it's the future', sure it is, but by the time quads are the decisive factor in games performance the way dual cores are now in most titles in comparison to their single core counterparts, the current lineup will be obsolete anyway - if I was building now, I'd still go dual core, all I do is play games...

though that said, if you're lasted this long with a P4 and 9800Pro.....:eek:

I'd say the 4870 isn't necessary at 1600x1200, I have dual 80 euro video cards and I can run cod4 at 1920x1200 max settings, don't let prices fool you, video cards are so stupidly cheap and performance per euro has never been as insanely good as it is right now.....Don't worry about overclocking with the Q6600 on that point, I run mine at stock most of the time for day to day gaming, at 2.4Ghz the video cards are limiting games faster then the clock speed, overclocking is touted a lot around here, but half the time it's completely unnecessary - quad will benefit you if you heavily multi-task and use apps that use multiple cores, likewise, further overclocking will increase that efficiency, whereas playing games doesn't really demand more then 2.4Ghz, dual or quad core, for the vast majority of current games. Don't worry needlessly about it, concentrate primarily on video card if you're gaming.

Just for comparison, I have Q6600, 4gb ram of which only 2.25gb is usable by XP (32bit ), dual 8800GS 384mb. I can run COD4 at 1920x1200, max settings no problems - a single 4870 is not only faster, but you'll be using an entirely lower resolution, which really stresses a card - I reckon a 4850 is sufficient for most people using 'normal' monitors.

Smellyirishman

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Going against the grain, from a games point of view, you can dump the quad and get a cheaper dual core to save 60-70 euro, in fact, if you're overclocking, you can go as little as 50 quid on the CPU and oc'd it with ease, even on the stock intel cooler, any dual core cpu will hit 600-700mhz faster without a bother regarding temperatures. I have a Q6600 and it's a total waste, the only game I really play for example is COD4, which performs almost identical on a 2.2ghz dual core as it does on a 3ghz quad core for example - it's easy to subscribe yourself to bigger and more is better but trust me, a cheap dual core and a 4870 will stomp a quad core and 4850 in most games, aside the odd cpu intensive title, just an an example. People constantly say 'oh but it's the future', sure it is, but by the time quads are the decisive factor in games performance the way dual cores are now in most titles in comparison to their single core counterparts, the current lineup will be obsolete anyway - if I was building now, I'd still go dual core, all I do is play games...

Interesting, although Supreme Commander is one of the games I'm looking to run and it's supposed to be heavily CPU dependent.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

though that said, if you're lasted this long with a P4 and 9800Pro.....:eek:

Trust me, it has not been easy!

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I'd say the 4870 isn't necessary at 1600x1200, I have dual 80 euro video cards and I can run cod4 at 1920x1200 max settings, don't let prices fool you, video cards are so stupidly cheap and performance per euro has never been as insanely good as it is right now.....Don't worry about overclocking with the Q6600 on that point, I run mine at stock most of the time for day to day gaming, at 2.4Ghz the video cards are limiting games faster then the clock speed, overclocking is touted a lot around here, but half the time it's completely unnecessary - quad will benefit you if you heavily multi-task and use apps that use multiple cores, likewise, further overclocking will increase that efficiency, whereas playing games doesn't really demand more then 2.4Ghz, dual or quad core, for the vast majority of current games. Don't worry needlessly about it, concentrate primarily on video card if you're gaming.

Just for comparison, I have Q6600, 4gb ram of which only 2.25gb is usable by XP (32bit ), dual 8800GS 384mb. I can run COD4 at 1920x1200, max settings no problems - a single 4870 is not only faster, but you'll be using an entirely lower resolution, which really stresses a card - I reckon a 4850 is sufficient for most people using 'normal' monitors.

Thanks for all that. Again it's given me some things to think about (just as I had settled!).

Anti

Smellyirishman wrote: »

@Squall, I think you've convinced me to stretch for the 4870. Thanks for all the help, I think I'm set now.



Thanks for reading my thread Anti! /thumbsUp </sarcasm>

Bah, gimme a break. It was half 8 in the morning. And i hadn't had a coffee ! And when i did i spilled it all over the floor

Smellyirishman

Anti wrote: »

Bah, gimme a break. It was half 8 in the morning. And i hadn't had a coffee ! And when i did i spilled it all over the floor

Hehe, I'll let it slid, just this once. :pac:

BlackWizard

Finally getting a new PC!! About bloody time :P I might invite you to a game of Havana or Pocket Tanks when you get it.

You know getting a new PC will not make you a good player. Your skillz will still be weak old man.

I'd make sure you try get a decent warranty on the PSU. I've had to replace two of them in the last two years. Hyper were very nice to deal with. PSU looks awesome too.