New Build Questions

ZorbaDaGreek

Hi guys i will be buying and putting together components for my first build, here are the parts

• 354717 Antec Three Hundred Black 140mm Fan (Without PSU)
• 354387 Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3, P45, Socket-775, ATX, 2xGbLAN, DDR2, 2xPCI-Ex(2.0)x16
• 344757 Intel Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Socket LGA775, 1333MHz, 12MB, BOXED w/fan
• 343070 OCZ DDR2 PC6400 4096MB KIT, Reaper HPC, 2x2GB, Heat Pipe, (CL4-4-4-15)
• 354996 Samsung DVD±RW burner, SH-S223F, 22x, DVDRAM 12x, Black, Bulk
• 388744 Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI-I, HDMI, HDCP, Lite-Retail
• 391645 Western Digital Caviar® Black™ 500GB ,Sata 3 Gb/s, 32MB Cache, 7200RPM

There are a couple of issues that i hope you can help me with.

First off i have a 450W PC Power and Cooling PSU, will this be enough for this setup?

I also noticed that most if not all P45 boards have 1.8V for the dimm rail supply, but the DDR2 modules i have looked at require 2.0V to 2.2V in most cases. How will this effect the RAM when i install it?

As i said this is my first buy, i gave it a budget of 1000euro and the above parts come to 800euro, i have the PSU i mentioned and a Creative X-Fi Gamer soundcard. If you have any suggestions regarding better components i would be grateful for any input.

Thank you.

Solitaire

A good 450W PSU should power that build quite happily if it has a decent +12V rail with high output (and PCP+C usually do). What WILL cause trouble is upgrades - you're not going to be able to add a second HD4870 for Crossfire without a PSU upgrade. The HD4870 takes around 11A on the 12V rail alone when fully loaded.

And the vast majority of motherboards support overvolted RAM but you'll have to set the required values in the BIOS manually otherwise the PC will keep the RAM at 1.8V and reduce its speed to compensate. The Reapers tend to take a retarded amount of power (2.1-2.4V) and bear in mind that their heatpipe sticks up and may interfere with some larger CPU coolers...

duffman85

That spec looks decent enough - never heard of that brand of PSU.
Going by ATI's system requirements - you may need a higher wattage PSU.

From the ATI Website

ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 System Requirements

* PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
* 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
* Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
* Minimum 1GB of system memory
* Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
* DVD playback requires DVD drive
* Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
* For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required



Other things to consider - what OS are you going to use? you'll have to buy a copy of Vista unless you already own a non-OEM copy. That'll be another
€100 or so.

Are you going to use your existing monitor?

uberpixie

duffman85 wrote: »

That spec looks decent enough - never heard of that brand of PSU.

PC Power and Cooling are a bigger in the States, have a very good reputation and many of their PSUs are made by Seasonic....

A good quality PSU is more than enough for the preposed build, any system requirements listed by either ATI of Nvidia are always overkill, you can always knock of at least 100W+ of the recommended power requirements.

They always overstate the PSU requirements to prevent tards with cheapest, nastiest PSUs from buying their cards, blowing up thier PC and moaning Company X makes crap gfx cards.

So a PC P&C 450W psu will be plenty.

ZorbaDaGreek

Thanks for the input lads.

@ Solitaire, I knew i would need a bigger PSU to go xfire but that is not going to happen for a while i think. Also might OC at some stage so the point made regarding the RAM and cooler is nice to know.

@ duffman, As regards the OS i managed to get my hands on Vista Ultimate 64bit for free so that helps. Have a 24" widescreen playing everything in 1920x1200.

So i think i will change the RAM and order everything this week.
Cheers.

duffman85

uberpixie wrote: »

PC Power and Cooling are a bigger in the States, have a very good reputation and many of their PSUs are made by Seasonic....

I didn't realise that - I have a Seasonic PSU myself. I just didn't recognise the brand name - thought it might be a cheapo one but obviously not.
I only suggested that he might need a new PSU as the cheapo ones don't get to the wattage that they say they do.

@ZorbaDaGreek - Cool, best of luck with the build.:pac:

Solitaire

I think that build is lacking a CPU cooler, unless you're "recycling" a decent one from somewhere else. You'll need some hefty cooling to keep a C2Q in check once overclocked.

And why did you choose those RAM modules? Not really pushed on OCZ atm (QC and/or compatibility issues) plus the idea of paying lots of money for memory that needs to be run overvolted (i.e. 2.1V+ rather than stock 1.8V) just to maintain 800MHz slightly nauseates me The heatpipes just add that extra little bit of repulsion factor... only truly top-end DDR2/3 needs heatspreaders to protrude miles above the module and 800MHz is now pretty far off said top-end.