Building new PC - need my choice of components assessed!

Inspector Gadget

Hi All:

Well, I've finally gotten some money, and I've promised myself that I'd build myself a new desktop PC to replace the rather geriatric Athlon XP-based rig I'm using (to give you an idea, the thing is using PC133 SDRAM, that's how old some of the components are!)

Anyway, I'm a little bit out of touch with this sort of thing, BUT, I'd like to try my hand at overclocking again, and I'm reading that people are getting very satisfactory numbers from C2D systems. So... I'm going to see if I can't have a bash myself.

(Before I start, I have plenty of experience building/fixing systems, but I haven't dealt with recent desktop hardware in a while; also, I've only really worked on AMD systems for myself, so bear with me)

Remember, I want to overclock this

What I'm looking at is this for the guts of the thing:

• Core 2 Duo E6300 sitting under a Noctua NH-U12F cooler
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard (anyone know if Komplett are shipping the Rev. 3.3 boards?)
• 2x1GB sticks of RAM - PC8500/8800/something-like-that; haven't decided what brand yet, want good price/performance ratio. BTW, if this isn't so important to the overclock, can I save money by going slower? I know it used to be important, but like I said, I don't know the nitty-gritty of this stuff any more.
• Haven't decided about graphics yet. That board has some crappy onboard Intel thing that'll do for now, don't need to worry about gaming Will probably look for a silent PCI-E card at some stage, though.
• I'm assuming that the choice of PSU will be important here - I'll only be running one add-on graphics card (worst case), and that'll be a relative slowpoke like a 7600GS as I prize silence over 3D performance - as I said, I'm not much of a gamer. I'm kinda looking at a Seasonic S12 600W - is that overkill?

I want to shoehorn all of this into a midi-tower case, preferably something I can order from within Ireland due to weight (though maybe Dabs might be useful here?) - any recommendations on a cheap-but-good ATX Midi tower with lots of internal drive bays (5+)?

Thanks,
Gadget

notahappycamper

Inspector Gadget wrote:

Hi All:

Well, I've finally gotten some money, and I've promised myself that I'd build myself a new desktop PC to replace the rather geriatric Athlon XP-based rig I'm using (to give you an idea, the thing is using PC133 SDRAM, that's how old some of the components are!)

Anyway, I'm a little bit out of touch with this sort of thing, BUT, I'd like to try my hand at overclocking again, and I'm reading that people are getting very satisfactory numbers from C2D systems. So... I'm going to see if I can't have a bash myself.

(Before I start, I have plenty of experience building/fixing systems, but I haven't dealt with recent desktop hardware in a while; also, I've only really worked on AMD systems for myself, so bear with me)

Remember, I want to overclock this

What I'm looking at is this for the guts of the thing:

• Core 2 Duo E6300 sitting under a Noctua NH-U12F cooler
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard (anyone know if Komplett are shipping the Rev. 3.3 boards?)
• 2x1GB sticks of RAM - PC8500/8800/something-like-that; haven't decided what brand yet, want good price/performance ratio. BTW, if this isn't so important to the overclock, can I save money by going slower? I know it used to be important, but like I said, I don't know the nitty-gritty of this stuff any more.
• Haven't decided about graphics yet. That board has some crappy onboard Intel thing that'll do for now, don't need to worry about gaming Will probably look for a silent PCI-E card at some stage, though.
• I'm assuming that the choice of PSU will be important here - I'll only be running one add-on graphics card (worst case), and that'll be a relative slowpoke like a 7600GS as I prize silence over 3D performance - as I said, I'm not much of a gamer. I'm kinda looking at a Seasonic S12 600W - is that overkill?

I want to shoehorn all of this into a midi-tower case, preferably something I can order from within Ireland due to weight (though maybe Dabs might be useful here?) - any recommendations on a cheap-but-good ATX Midi tower with lots of internal drive bays (5+)?

Thanks,
Gadget

Looks good to me.

dazftw

Heres ram.

I just bought this..

http://www.memory-configurator.com/products/10668.html

Its like 360 on komplett.ie so its a great saving!

conzy

Wow! thats amazing value, but you can get cheaper stuff if you're on a tight budget, There is only about a few fps difference between the PC5400 and PC8500 ram..

http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=331922

I would also consider getting an E4300 instead of an E6300, they are much easier to overclock...

TonyM.

Upgrade Kit Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Mainboard, 2048MB, PCI-Express


See other products from KOMPLETT

€ 365.01

---

Productimage is for illustrative purposes only, contents of the kit is listed below



Do you need to upgrade your system and want a bargain? This kit is a selection of separate products that we have tested and bundled together to give you optimal performance for your money. The kit includes CPU, CPU fan and heatsink, Motherboard and RAM. The price of the bundle is reduced to offer you a better price than the individual components.



If you need help with building your kit, please contact us as we are glad to help. Alternatively, please feel free to check out buildyourown.org.uk This site gives you excellent step-by-step guides for putting together your PC as well as detailed information on different item categories.





This kit includes:





330167 - Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz Socket LGA775, 2MB, BOXED w/fan (info)
327806 - ABIT IL9 PRO, Intel 945P, Socket-775, ATX, SATAII, DDR2, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16 (info)
313834 - Corsair Value S. PC5300 DDR2 2048MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 1024MB (info)
317429 - Antistatic Wrist band Blue including ground cord (info)

conzy

Copy and paste FTW!

I would go for a 965p board, much better overclockers

Inspector Gadget

Thanks one and all. Am still considering my options right now - I see that AMD have announced a hefty price cut today, so the thinking cap is right back on

Cheers,
Gadget

Mountjoy Mugger

Intel due to cut on 22nd April. Keep the cap on a bit longer

Anti

If you really wanna overclock, the celeron d's are now hitting 7ghz.. But even at that speed they are way behind a c2d in all aspects.

Chosen

1) Stay away from 945-based motherboards: they stop at 300MHz (some of them hit 320-340, but it's still ridiculous). On an E4300 that would give you 2700MHz and on an E6300 the max frequency would be 2100MHz.

2) Although the E4300 sounds like a better fsb/multi combo, compared to the similarly clocked E6300 (9x200 instead of 7x266), they are known to be worse overclockers.

I would advise you to go for a good 965 board (almost all of them hit at least 450MHz fsb), an E6300 and a Scythe air cooler. The chances of hitting 3.5GHz for everyday use, are very very big. For that, you will need a decent pair of memory (almost all PC6400 4-4-4 can do 900-100MHz with 5-5-5).
The E4300 will propably give you anything between 3-3.5GHz too, but it will need a lot more voltage to do so. On the plus side, you can achieve that, with very cheap memory, since for a theoritical 3.6GHz (9x400) the E4300 can be coupled with *any* DDR2-800 (PC6400) ram, which can be found for ~150€ these days (for 2Gb), or even less.