Does this build seem sensible, particularly the Mobo, any suggested changes, want to buy today

Core 2 Duo E6600 Retail - BOUGHT (£160 inc p&p, new ebay ... thank you buy-it-now)

Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi - £122.67 inc. p&p
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/pro [...] uid=113963

2GB Geil Ram PC6400 (800mHz) - 4-4-4-12 - £170.66 inc. p&p
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-058-GL

This is to fit in:
ATI x1900xtx (so I have crossfire potential on the mobo)
Tagan 480W-U01 PSU
2 x 250GB SataII (wanted at least 4 SATAII slots)
1 x 160GB IDE HDD (Wanted 2 IDE slots)
2 x DVD-R IDE Drive (Hence 2 x IDE slots)
1 x PCI X-fi Soundcard
1 x PCI Wireless Card (Do I need this with the onboard wireless)?
Case with 2 front and 2 back fans.

The WiFi/AP mobo will handle wifi connection, so you don't need the wifi card unless you wanted to do wireless bridging or something else unusual. This mobo can also act as a wireless AP/router, hence the name. Were you planning on using wireless networking with this system? If not you could save a few pennies and get the plain Deluxe instead.

Is this a RAID 0 + your existing ATA drive?

It's nice to potentially use wireless connections to routers (though I have a linksy PCI card), however I usually get irritated with the router's wireless and hardwire myself in (god bless the 10m cat cable)

I'm not presently using RAID (my mobo only has one SATAII slot, so the second HDD is unformatted waiting for me to install windows on for the new mobo (assuming I'm likely to have to do that).
However perhaps one day RAID will be a nice option.

Can this motherboard act as a router?!?! If so that'd be excellent since I do a bit of lan gaming with friends.

Does the basic deluxe to Crossfire?

first, I'd same dump the geil for this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-000-CK
far better ram, some of the best I have seen, then save your money on the asus and try this board out instead
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/113820
The asus does not support crossfire, and you don't need a wireless card if you get it, it's built in, so all they give you is an antenna that you attach to the board, but the ds3's bios is just as good for less, and don't get an ide hdd, they are very slow. Just get a raptor for the os and all software/games, and then get a single 250gig drive for all your other crap you might have, as you don't want an os on a raid0 arrray. Maybe get a stonger psu, I recommend 550w minimum for cheap brands, brands like ocz or silverstone or corsair that have bettter efficiency rates, you can get away with 480w if you wanted to

Quite expsneive RAM, what about then Corsair XMS2 Dominator?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-124-CS

How does the DS3 compare with the DQ6?
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/123452
Would it be betetr to spend a little more on the mobo?

I can't afford new raptor drives, I've got the 2 250gig Sata II's already, as well as the IDE drive, so I may as well use them (I use a lot of HDD space)

The Tagan's got pretty good performance, and it's not like the C2D draws much power.

the ds3 and dq6 use the same bios, and with the revision 3.3 release, they should both have support for the 1333fsb and new conroes on the way. As for the corsair, only get it if you don't plan to oc. If you do, then I suggest getting the cellshock, there's a reason behind that. One, being you can't buy it in the us, so you should jump on the opertunity. Two, being it has some of the highest binned IC's on the market, and one review site got their's up to 1200mhz with 4-4-4-5 timings and only 2.4volts. I'd like to see the corsair do that, otherwise, just back down to this, it uses the same IC's as crucial's higher binned versions
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-088-CR
or you ould get this, imo the best ram on the market (highest binned IC, 8 layer pcb, and very high oc's achieved on it)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-001-CK

I don't plan on overclocking now. Although It'd be nice to be able to overclock a little later on when the hardware is becoming dated.

Even if I do overclock now it won't be on liquid cooling (at most I'll get a replacement fan and heatsink).

Given that bit of information, what do you think? Worth going for the Geil, Corsair, or still the Cellshock?

and DS3 vs DQ6 ? The DQ6 have the Crossfire advantage...

given you won't oc, I'd say this ram (you'll have to run it 1:1 instead of 1066 speeds on the ram, but conroes perform better that way anyway).
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] =MY-034-GL
and the ds3, the dq6 is too expensive for my tastes considering the ds3 is the samethign without crossfire. I say you wait until the r600 comes out before buying a gfx card, and then buy a single $500 card, as it's been shown that you get better performance out of 1 8800gtx than crossfire x1900xtx's. Just a thought. Smart buying will get you where you want, so save a bit here and there, then get the better overall pc (so spend the saved money towards a nice gfx card)

As far as overclocking is concerned, why wait. You should be able to reach 3.0 Ghz with the stock Intel HSF and with stock voltage settings.

john

First off huge thanks for your help so far

1. Won't PC6400 ram geneally outperform the PC, How does the RAM you suggested match up, unclocked, to the RAM I suggeted in the first post (which was supposed to be somewhere between quality and price).

2. How does the DS3 and the DS4 gigabytes compare. I notice the DS4 appears to have a lot better heat dissapation unit.

3. How do I know which revision of the DS3/4 I'm buying?

JSC - overclocking the CPU would reduce lifespan, however I might make a slight out-of-the-box overclock.

Those ram both are using the same IC, so the performance should be the same, and as I said, you will be running 1:1 anyway, so it will outperform 6400 with 2:1 anyway, and the geil can't handle 1066mhz to run 2:1, so stick with the cheaper ram, it's good enough. As for the ds4, go for that if you plan to oc, you don't need to cooling unless you will oc. But since the price difference isn't too much, buy it to be safe. And for the revision, it doesn't matter, a simple bios flash will get you the most recent revision.

Ok, settled on the DS4 (£100 inc. p&p from ebuyer)

What is IC (guilty look of noobness)

the actually memory chip itself essentially, so the better the IC, the better the clocks/timings the ram can handle. So for ddr2 ram, since micron makes the best IC's, that means that micron based ram are going to achieve far higher clocks and tighter timings than something with say promos or elpida IC. So if you got some current corsair with promos and compared it to last year's micron based corsair, you'd find the old corsair could achieve close to 1200mhz, while the new one will stutter at 1000mhz with horrible timings. I don't know how I can say it better than this, you may have to ask jack on this one

That's a great explanation.

So is there 6400 Micron Ram, not overly expensive? I'm looking to have something futureproof, hence the desire for 6400

not really any more, there used to be tons, but with ram getting faster and faster and ddr2 hitting it's limits at a bit over 1300mhz, companies are getting ready for ddr3 and have stopped putting in micron chips since the release of conroe basically.

but this has some very high binned chips in it (micron owns crucial)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Crucial-Ball [...] dZViewItem
I say buy it if you can get it at a nice rate, of course, it's ebay and already has 8 bids, so you never know how high it will get

Didn't read the thread but in case no one has pointed out to you, the x1900xtx is more expensive than an 8800 GTS, which outperforms it, and the G80 cards support direct X 10. Of course, in about a month or so, the R600 series from ATI should be coming out. These cards support DX10 as well, may outperform everything else on the market, AND will probably reduce the price of all other high end graphics cards.

that's false, the gts is more than the xtx currently, you're thinking of the x1950xtx with gddr4 that's more. But the gts price drop is going to bring the gts down to $300 very soon, and that will be the time to be the gts, but I want to see how well the r600 performs before making any decisions

Probably too late but

yes, it does in the same way that other 965 mobos with 2 X16 slots do.

the latest BIOS states that support for 1333 CPUs is only for rev. 3.3 mobos.
As I don't have a 1333fsb CPU I can't check on my DS4 (rev. 1).

& the new king of the castle for 965 mobos seems to be the abit AB9 QuadGT - it's doing 500fsb whilst staying on the 1067 strap. 8)

wtf are you talking about, none of the intel chipsets support sli or xfire just because they have 2 pci_e x16 slots, you have to use hacked drivers to do that, which is a bad idea, they usually aren't stable and you never know what else might be written on the drivers such as spyware and such if it's made by an unknwon orginization

And have you updated the bios on your ds4 v1? As far as I know, you can update the bios to whatever you need to from any version, at least you can on amd boards

Didn't read the thread but in case no one has pointed out to you, the x1900xtx is more expensive than an 8800 GTS, which outperforms it, and the G80 cards support direct X 10. Of course, in about a month or so, the R600 series from ATI should be coming out. These cards support DX10 as well, may outperform everything else on the market, AND will probably reduce the price of all other high end graphics cards.

I bought my x1900xtx brand new off ebay for £181 a few months ago. I sold my 7800GT for £141 ... I'd say it was a pretty good £40 upgrade considering it was pretty much the best card on the market when I bought it.