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Any advice on this spec, please?

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  • 18-11-2009 12:59am
    #1
    tobriain
    Registered Users Posts: 15 ✭


    Would appreciate any dig-out with the spec. Have a case and two matrox cards for powering 4 monitors. Want the quad for running a few betting and trading apps and the corsair and fan because it'll be running most of the day. Have an OS as well.

    Thanks in advance.


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    #2
    Solitaire
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 18,377 Mod ✭✭✭✭Solitaire


    What fan? That cooler is fanless - and a bit naff to boot! It won't handle a 24/7 95W quad very well... :o If you need quiet there's plenty of good (and far cheaper) coolers.

    I also have another issue: that build is now getting a bit outdated. LGA775 is out, and LGA1156 is in. Only the jump in price and some reliability concerns means you should also consider the competing AM3 platform too; it could end up faster and cheaper than your spec by a small margin. LGA1366 is a powerhouse but I'm not sure if you neccessarily need such power (or if your software can take full advantage of 8 threads!) let alone have the money for it. You could spend the same amount on an AM3 setup with DDR3 memory and a fancy low-power (65W TDP) 3GHz quad as you did on the build above; an i7-920 build will cost a good €200 over that and may be overkill anyway.

    What cards are the Matroxes? PCI or PCIe?

    And finally, no reason to get the F2 (Ecogreen) HDDs, the superior F3s are also lurking on HWVS (and most other places) for very keen prices :)


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    #3
    tobriain
    Registered Users Posts: 15 ✭tobriain


    The graphics cards are PCI, so obviously I need a board that will take them. Could anyone recommend an AMD processor that might equal the Quad above and a board and RAM to match so that I can get the most out of all of them. I haven't really been looking at AMD chips, so I'm a bit lost on that.


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    #4
    Solitaire
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 18,377 Mod ✭✭✭✭Solitaire


    PCI? Really? Guess you have the older ones. There are a couple of cheapish modern AM2/3 mobos with two PCIe slots anyway, but two PCI slots isn't exactly a tall order ;)

    The Q9450 is a 2.66GHz part IIRC. You'd get similar performance from a 2.8GHz X4-925 costing €115 and slightly superior performance from the €130 X4-945. The X4-945e showed above is a bit pricier at €140, but still a bit lower the Q9450 while using less power than any of the above (65W instead of 95W). Ater that just throw in an inexpensive AM3 mobo (unless you need RAID5) and a 2*2GB kit of DDR3 memory - the memory controller on the Phenom2 is made of sterner stuff than the ones on the i5/i7 so you don't have to worry about keeping the DDR3 voltage under 1.65V and can sometimes pick up cheaper kits as a result :)


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    #5
    tobriain
    Registered Users Posts: 15 ✭tobriain


    Grand. Thanks for that. Have chosen an AMD processor and board with RAID0. Am a bit confused by choosing RAM and a fan - all the AMD fans on HWV only mention AM2. . Could anyone recommend 4GB of decent ram and a fan that would actually be compatible with this board? Also, checked the graphics cards. They're 'PCI Universal' - can't see whether this board actually supports them. Thanks again.


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