I can't be arsed with the HW folks - Tech question (sorry!)

Right, the first pay packet hits the bank acount at midnight so the chimp finally has funds! As you all know I've just started back in the tech job front and I'm realising that having spent the last 4 years running Linux on an old rig that I'm well behind on the Windows front. The upshot of this is that I need to get myself back into the game and a new rig is looking essential. I've got the KB, Monitor and mouse but that's it. The old box is off to my brother.

Requirements:

• Support VT extensions as I'll be running a couple of VM's.
• Come in complete with a legit copy of Vista64 Business (~£85 here in the UK)
• Give me a little room to OC (nothing stupid but my current 2500XP running at 3200 spec saved me a packet)
• Come in at a total budget (including Vista) at £450 or lower. Lower is better but I'm not going to cut corners for the sake of a couple of nights off the pop.
• Half decent video. Although I'm not a gamer I would like the option to run 3d eye candy or older games.

I've already PM'd a couple of the requlars here for an opinion on this config but I'd really like some input from the rest of you HW freaks. Whilst I'm working again this box will have to do me for at least a couple of years and I can not afford to get this one wrong. My supplier of choice is www.aria.co.uk - They are very local and I've used them before. Failing that MicroDirect is close at hand but I've never had any dealings with them.


Here is where I'm at presently:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz £110.39
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, iP35 Express, £57.93
Arianet 4GB PC2-6400 CL5 (2x2GB) £46.94
250GB Hitachi SATA2 Hard Disk - 7200rpm – 8MB £31.67
LG DVD RW GH20NS10 SATA 20x £15.31
Graphics are undecided but something like an 8600GT £50.00
Coolermaster Elite 330 With CM 460W PSU £49.99
Microsoft Windows Vista Business 64bit OEM £85.72
TOTAL: £447.95

I'm running a stock E8200 at work and it seems enough although I do wonder about a Q6600 (G0). If I could find an MB with onboard graphics then that might be an option although I do like the low heat of the newer 45nm chips. Case wise I'm totally open to suggestions.

Rip it to shreads and stick it back together folks. All half way sensible suggestions most welcome.

It's only so we can lure in noobs from HW then confuse the hell out of them by complaining when they do it

Wait a couple of weeks and the guts will drop out of the mid range graphics market ... don't buy a card till then. Then you will notice the 3850's will drop quite a bit ... don't go near an 86xx series NV card as they are crap.

The 8800GT / GS will also drop ... because the new 4 series ATI cards are sitting in warehouses now for the launch.

A 3850 will be a good card - don't get anything less powerful or you will just regret it.

A quad is a bit more future proof and the 45nm's do run cooler ... but the price is higher for a Q9450 than a Q6600. Get the 66 but make sure the case is well setout to allow the air to move. Make sure the case has a 120 fan on the back and cutout the grill behind it to basically double the airflow ... makes the goodies inside a bit cooler and they run stable.

Get 2 X 320Gb drives (the 7200rpm cheap Seagates are fine) and RAID 0 them together for some decent increase in speed.

There is no need to OC the Q66 for now ... make sure it runs cool enough ... OC it later on down the track.

These recommendations mean a bit more cost but the difference in HDD throughput, processor power and graphics power will see you a hell of a lot happier now and further down the track.

Hope this helps.

This seems very weird posting this kind of reply in this area and I am now worried

I am on a budget! Please don't forget this as I'm after the basic rig that will give me the most bang for buck. I can add to it later although I'd rather not buy any parts that I'll have to scrap or sell on later.

In terms of disk I'm quite happy with the performance of a single drive. The applications and systems I'll be running are not that disk bound and I'd rather have the logical seperation of seperate disk for seperate operating systems, I'll be running Ubuntu, Vista and XP on this rig eventually. I can afford to add disks one by one as and when money becomes available. If I had lots of money then yes, but I dont

The Q6600 is tempting but again costs more and runs hotter:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 95W (G0) £129.19
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz 65W £110.39
Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.40GHz 95W £75.14

The board looks nice but:
Asus P5E-VM HDMI iG35 Socket 775 Motherboard £86.21

Now I loose 2x PCI and a PCI-E (1x) expansion slot. The seperate graphics card DS3 solution is only £25 more. Against that it is m-ATX and I would be happy if I could fit the rig in a smaller case as I could do with saving space if I could, that's not the main design consideration though. I guess the savings would allow the q6600...

I'll say this again. £450 is the budget. If you can give me a truly compeling to spend £500 I will but I wanted to get under £450 if I can and still have a half way solid rig that will last me a couple of years.

Which is why I suggested the P5E-VM SE - basically the same board, but it doesn't have the HDMI port so it only costs £60.83.

If you went with a Q6600 and that you would end up ~£425, since you won't need a graphics card. Again, I'm basing this on you using multiple VMs. If you're primarily just going to use one, then your original config looks good.

I always get vanilla cases and mod them to suit.

Some of the vanilla cases come out with 400 - 450 watt PSU's ... look around.

You can mod a power supply to ensure it handles closer to it's limit under load ... essentially cut away more of the venting ... you do need to be careful ...

Saves money too.

Can't beat a Bosche Nibbler for chewing up metal sheet.

The only problem you may run into with the E7200 is that it doesn't support Virtualization Technology.

Aside from that, the E7200's lower FSB (1066) and it's 9.5x multiplier make it a good overclocker - so I wouldn't worry about speed. Googling around, I see several people saying that 2.8GHz seems to be the sweet spot for stock cooling.
Some are getting almost 5.3GHz with dry ice. I know this isn't a practical enviroment, but Jebus - 5 point freakin' 3 GHz!!! That's good enough to run Zork with all options on.

Looks like wow-rebates just did a copy & paste of the general C2D overview, not realizing that the E7200 has limitations.

As you saw (and by what I went by) was what Intel says. Also:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] 200_2.html

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/564

Perhaps a smaller drive to allow you the Q6600? Slap in a larger one later when the funds allow. If you keep your OS on a partition, make a large one for Vista. With SP1 and only drivers and such Vista is nearly 20gb for me. (!)

Since Audio has no fcukin idea what he wants and no idea about components then I suggest a Dell ...

Heaven help the firm he has "restarted" a tech job with.

Don't take my advice about case modding or power supplies ... please don't.

Your clearly not ready for that.

Enjoy the helpdesk **** support role ... it really sounds like you!!

"Did you switch it off and then on again"?

Moron.

You only have a lowly tech support job so I just applied Raynod logic and decided that you were to thick to know anything.

If you'd taken more than a second to read his post, then you'd have been able to provide him with some sensible answers. Instead, as is your want, you veered off on a tangent again, missing the point completely. AV politely asked you to refrain from "advising", so you come back at him with this? And after your pontificating in Syphers' thread? Bit fcuking rich isn't it? Especially as you next to fcuk all about him.

You called him a moron? Take a look in the mirror.

Another candidate for the one word answer I feel.

Right, I did a bit more reading and this is where it stands at the moment:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz £110.39
Asus P5E-VM HDMI iG35 £86.21
OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) 1000MHz, CL 5-5-5-18, Lifetime Warranty £58.69
500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2 32MB ST3500320AS 7200RPM £52.82
LG DVD RW GH20NS10 SATA 20x £15.31
Akasa ZEN V2 Tower Case Black - without PSU (NEW Version) £29.95
Hiper 425W PSU HPU-4S425 £22.49
Microsoft Windows Vista Business 64bit OEM £85.72
Total: £461.58

I can build the same rig with a Q6600 for only £19 more which I could just about stretch to or I could cut back on the HDD to bring things back in line. As much as I like the look of the Gigabyte board the reviews and OC reports on the Asus look really rather stunning, I can also put off the graphics card to a later date once funds are a little easier to come by. The reports I'm reading show that the Asus should be easily able to do 450/460 FSB before you get a hint of issues from the X3500 onboard graphics.

HDD wise I'll be checking the reviews to see where the best bang for buck is so consider that a work in progress. Any recommendations in the 250-500 range much appreciated.

@Jef
I'm seriously torn on the 82 / 66 question. I'd love the lower heat output but for VM work I suspect the 66 would blow it out the water. Do you think 425W would be enough for me given that I have no intention of going SLi or any such sillyness?

@Rise
Before you PM me again yes I know I could do it all on a lower spec box and learn some patience. This is a treat and will have to do me a good few years

Check your power supply and configuration here:

http://www.journeysystems.com/?power_supply_calculator


Something doesn't look right about your PSU.. maybe the lack of info on it. I have an Antec 450W in my other PC and it won't run a 6800GT because it doesn't have enough power.

I couldn't find any info on that PSU you have out there.. but it looks cheap for what it claims to be giving you.. red flag there. I generally look at $50 price range, or 25+ for yours.

Buy a case that comes with a 450W supply and then sell the power supply on fleabay. Job done. Some daft twat will pay more than enough to make the case free. FFS, have you seen how many cnuts will buy Argos catalogues?

Super Chimp
I also have a couple hsf for socket T.
You pay the shipping plus £5 for the hsf.

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Prod [...] =1551#Tab0

and

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Prod [...] 48&ID=1576

I don't have the Antec TruePower that comes with 2-12v rails. Your ThermalTake probably has 2 which is why it can run that setup.

On AV's, it doesn't list what it has and I would question if it has the required rails to run a powerful configuration.

Hmmm, I was gone for awhile and I see Hard ware stuff...meh, it's the chimp so it's okay.

I'm running an Antec True Power Trio 430W with the following:

Q6600 - 3GHz
8800GTS 320MB OC'ed quite high
9 x 120mm blue led fans
4 HDs
4 x 1GB of DDR2 800MHz ram

Seems to run fine on any game I throw at it...

If you hit 400 MHz FSB, that's 400 MHz better speed for the e8400.

I did order some DDR2 1000 so I wouldn't run into my memory being my road block for my OC.

Yes, DDR2 400 should be able to hit 425 or 450, but for the $15 or $20, I wasn't going to take a chance.

A friend of mine took the q6600 from 2.4 to 3.6 on air cooling...

Not the best ever, but quite impressive none the less...

My X2 5000 Black Edition won't go past 3000, stock is 2600. Temps are fine, it just BSOD. I did get it to run for a few days at 3.2 with a healthy voltage bump, but once it crashed, I took it back to stock voltage.

OK, I've had a play with the config...

Build One - To the MAX!
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO £14.04
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz £126.25
Asus P5E-VM HDMI iG35 Socket 775 MB £86.21
LiteOn LH-20A1L-14C 20x DVDRW LightScribe SATA £19.39
OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) £58.69
160GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA2 8MB £25.26
Antec Sonata III Quiet Super Mini Tower inc.
EarthWatts 500W PSU (80 PLUS certified), £81.18
Microsoft Windows Vista Business 64bit OEM £85.72
Total: £496.74 - That's at the absolute max of my budget!

I've done an alternate build spec that is closer to the original target...

Build Two - I'm not that rich
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz £110.39
Asus P5E-VM HDMI iG35 Socket 775 £86.21
LiteOn LH-20A1L-14C 20x DVDRW LightScribe SATA Retail £19.39
OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) £58.69
160GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA2 8MB £25.26
Antec Sonata III Quiet Super Mini Tower
+EarthWatts 500W PSU (80 PLUS certified) £81.18
Microsoft Windows Vista Business 64bit OEM £85.72
Total: £466.84


I could still drop the memory to 2Gb and save another ~£30. The case and PSU are well reviewed, finding bargains in the PSU world seems to be hard work. I could have a generic case PSU combo for £20 but it seems like a false economy to me, even if I took Tom's advice and sold the PSU later to upgrade.

Questions:

• Do you think it's worth the extra £30 for the first build?
• Would the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO offer enough of a improvement to make sense? I'm tempted to just run stock and upgrade in a month or two. (Removing that from build 1 ~£482)
• Dropping the cooler and going E8200 with 2GB I can hit sub £440. Penny pinching?

I'm leaning towards build two.. Build one minus the cooler is also very tempting.

I'm all set to drop the cash on Saturday although having only been 3 weeks in the world of work I'm still slightly nervious of dusting off the debit card...

@Jef - Have you got your E8200 running yet?

I just got them in, delivered about 20 minutes ago...

I won't be building till tomorrow.

I'd prolly go with the 8200 and the cooler.


And I DID go with the 8400 and that cooler...

*discreetly disappears before anyone discovers what CPU should be arriving later on my desk this afternoon...*