First new sys build in 2yrs+ so thought I better get advice

[Dave101]

Will buy bits in new year but am researching now to get the best idea.

Budget looks like about £550-£600, thinking about

E6600
975X mobo (MSI acc to Tom's Review)
1 or 2GB DDR2 800 Mem prob Crucial (as always bought prev)
Radeon X1900 XT
SATA2 HD approx 250Gb

Have priced this on ebuyer.com with 1GB ram at £615, thinking about prices coming down after xmas should be able to manage.

Questions for now then:
1) Thoughts on best 975X mobo? Review picked MSI as editors choice but also said couldn't get mem to run at 800mhz

2)Above Gcard seems good VFM looking at VGA chart (only 10% less score than top for half the price). What you think?

3) Might consider two smaller HD and run a RAID0 but am always afraid of loosing everything if this goes south. How stable is a SATA RAID? and I suppose is the risk worth the performance gain?

Thanks in advance, have been doing lots of reading on here since registering and will start to try and chip in where I can with any knowledge I have.

D

 

[mad-dog]

Scale back on the CPU and get the 6400, it will OC nicely and outperform the 6600 while saving you some money.
DDR2 800MHz RAM is very expensive right now, $350 minimum for 2Gig's of quality memory with low latency.
667MHz will save you money and OC's nicely as well, just make sure you buy from a 1st Tier manufacturer.
1Gig would serve you well with XP, if you switch to Vista then add another Gig of RAM because Vista requires 750Mb of RAM just idling and leaves you with 1.25Gig to run programs and such.
The X1900 will provide plenty of gaming fun if you can find one.
Get 3 HDD's and configure RAID5 if you want Speed and Security,
SerialATA has maximum transfer speed of 3.0GB/s, there are no stability issues to speak of when configured correctly.
Intel makes a fine MOBO to match their CPU's (imagine that) and your 975 chipset choice lands here,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121016R
Good luck, keep us posted

 

[Dave101]

Cheers for the link MP, makes for good reading, as you probably guessed hadn;t thought about PSU just blundered on thinking waould use the old one, lol.

Couple of new questions.

RAID5 - does that give me the ability to swap out a drive if one fails? I thought that was only poss with 5 disks.

I have a water cooling sys that currently fits my athlon xp 3200 on an Abit NF7-S board, any chance this would fit the conroe? It has a large flat surface, but I suppose it is the attachements that are the important bit. Will post more details soon and ??a pic.

cheers

 

[Dave101]

Does anyone know if newegg deliver to the UK and if so what sort of price would I pay?

 

[xeenrecoil]

I would recomend a cheaper graphics card because the DX10 cards are comming out real soon, just get something in the midrange untill then.
Did i miss something here since when did intel start allowing OCing on their motherboards, perhaps since the EE came out and they took the multiplier lock off? interesting news if so, intel always was a stickler about OCing, and never supported it in the past, someone update me on this one.

 

[angry_ducky]

Lower the CPU to an E6400, and get 2GB RAM. Also, that £615 setup you have is only a CPU, MB, RAM, GPU, and HDD. You forgot a case, power supply, and optical drives (not to mention OS, but that isn't necessarily an expense ).

 

[Mousemonkey]

Whereabouts in the UK are you?, anywhere near Londium perhance?