Is this the right direction to go in

Why are the prices in $? get me some stuff will ya :P

mem price is crazy if you ask me, otherwise great build but youve no gfx card?

Overheal wrote: »

Nope I plan to skate along and shop for the card later. Im also curious to see just how much beef integrated graphics have nowadays against the lappy's 8400.

I did catch something about the memory: @ 1600mhz its not compatible with the board: I'll need to shop 1333, or 2000 (which is out of the question for the asking moneys!)

Ahh ok, youll be disappointed with the current integrated gfx cards, theyre just as $hit as they were several years ago , you could go for a second hand card, 8800GT's are excellent and go for about 50euro second hand, but i think that rig would be unbalanced with an 8800GT, you'd want an ati 5850 or Nvidia 460( of course you could go for something cheapo like a 5770 to tide you over ) otherwise youre great on cpu power and crap on gfx power.

Another thing is youve bought thermal paste but no cpu cooler, doesnt make much sense tbh as the 2 go hand in hand really, youll get slightly better temps with the Artic Silver but you only need that for overclocking and if youre overclocking you really need an aftermarket cooler.

If youre looking to get the price down with next to no compromise i would get this as your harddrive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&cm_re=samsung_f3-_-22-152-185-_-Product

I do have to question your need for a x6 core, you do realise it will give you absolutely nothing for game performance right? its great for Photoshop, 3D ray tracing or video conversion, but useless for gaming. It will be several years before a 6 core is needed for games as most games on PC are console ports and just need 3 cores( as its usually 360 ports the pc gets )

Overheal wrote: »

ill hold off on silver for now then.

the hdd only does sata @ 3gbps. a big feature of the board is its ability to do sata 6gbps

toms hardware does a good breakdown of the processor:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-x6-thuban-core-scaling,2652.html

you're right in saying currently games wont take much advantage of more than 2-3 cores but the same story was true when i bought my laptop: "nobody makes dual core games waa waa" lo and behold 18 months into my lappy valve's source engine gets multicore rendering and multicore support hits the games industry like a fat kid at a buffet. Also considering Tri-cores already hover around $100 It's hard not to justify just going ahead and slapping another $100 into it. Not that you couldnt be totally right and i should just ride out a lighter processor for a while.

On a side note the wattage of the x6 is fairly impressionable. as for photoshop i do it once in a moon: I have a tablet i make **** for deviantart with.

6gbps SATA doesnt provide much with the current harddrives tbh. Seagates 6Gb Sata drive loses out performance wise to the WD RE4( which are nearly impossible to get ), but generally its only the same performance as the fastest 3Gb drives and remember 3Gigabit SATA does 375Mbyte/sec so it still has plenty of room for non SSD drives( and therefore gains very little with 6Gbps drives ).

As for the x6 core, well if it was me i would just get a x4 core that is a better overclocker. Ive read all the reviews and the x6 AMD generally loses out to the intel x4, but i know you want to go AMD, just saying if you can get an AMD x4 cheaper then go for it. I guarantee you it wont be the same situation as with your laptop. Quad cores are the sweet spot for PC gaming due to the consoles, its not going to change until the next round of consoles probably due in 2012, but even at that i doubt more than a quad is needed.

I generally have a top end PC gaming rig and upgrade it every 2 years, currently i have 0 plans to get a x6 core for gaming. I also dont even think i will replace this i7 next may when i would normally upgrade on my 2 year cycle. PC's have become so powerful since i7 and the latest AMD's that there is absolutely 0 need to upgrade them for gaming.

100% honesty, i play at 1680x1050 and on absolute maximum i get an average of 80frames per second. GTA IV and Supreme Commander are the most cpu intensive games out there and i never drop below 60FPS, with those i could crank up the resolution to 1920x1080 and not suffer anything in frame rates because theyre just cpu intensive.

Even Metro2033 which is a hog runs great for me, but i have an 8800GT to drive my 3rd screen but it also does physx so it improves Metro2033 performance in that respect.

I run Crysis at about 50Frames a second maxed out with 2xAA

Just making a point, if you can get a x4 core cheaper go for that, save your money and upgrade in 2 years rather than going for something which isint being made full use of now and will probably be obsolete in 2 years time anyway.

Ill end my rant