Couple of questions on new build

[garu]

Hi all
I am planing to build when the new gf cards from ATI and NVidia come out so gf is still undecided. But it will be single card.

Rest of the build :
Samsung 20" SM 204B,monitor LCD, 800:1, 300cd, 5ms, DVI-D, 1600x1200,
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
DDR2 Corsair 2048MB Twinx XMS2-6400 2x1gig, cl5
gigabyte 965p-ds3p rev3,3
2xSeagate Barracuda 3.5" SATAII300 320GB, 2x
LG GSA-H42L, LightScribe
Arctic-Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
VA8000BWS
GF card pending release

1) I am still deciding between the Thermaltake VA8000BWS Armor or Thermaltake VA8003BWS Armor. I am not sure that i need the extra side fan. I am mainly worried about the extra noise on the other hand if it would help to keep the northbridge and southbridge cooler than it would be worth considering. So i could use some input on this.

2) Having a real problem choosing a PSU. So far i am deciding between theese
Zalman ZM600-HP 600W
Corsair HX620W
Fortron Epsilon FX600-GLN 600W
I want a quiet and stable PSU but there is problem with price and AVAILABILITY because i live in central Europe. Fortron is the cheapest out of theese but i cant find a good review or detailed specs. Again help needed.

3) I am a newb to this so bear with me. the MB has 8 SATA and 1 IDE i am planing to get Floppy drive (safety, sentimental value) and the cd/dvd drive will be IDE as well because the SATA ones are simply not yet available here + i have a 200gig hardrive which i would like to have connected for backups.. Is it posible to conect the 3 devices into 1 IDE port? (how?)

4) Another newb question. On the PSU's they list only 2 SATA conectors. Does that mean i can only have 2 SATA devices. Again i think i am missing something here.
Thanks for you help

 

[jeff_2087]

Sounds like a solid build. I'll let someone else tackle 1 and 2 because cases and PSUs really aren't my forte.

3) You should be fine, as the floppy drive goes on a separate connector. If you look at the picture of the board
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/Image/motherboard_productimage_ga_965p-ds3p_3.3_big.jpg
you can see where both are. There's the black connector beside the motherboard's power and below the RAM. That's for the floppy drive. The pretty neon green thing in the bottom right corner is the single IDE connector. You can attach your hard drive and disk drive to this, but be warned, IMO it clashes terribly with the dark blue motherboard.

4) Nope, that just means the power supply only has 2 connectors for SATA power plugs for drives that don't have legacy (molex) power. If you need more SATA connectors, you can buy molex-to-sata extenders for your power supply. They're $5ish apiece, but chances are, your SATA hard drives can either be powered directly with molex connectors, or come with their own molex-to-SATA plugs. Basically, don't worry about #4 at all, it's not a problem.

 

[garu]

Thanks for answering 3 and 4, hehe luckily i am not too worried about colours so the clashing is no concern unless my gf sees it.

Also i am planing to oc the cpu to 3.2 8*400 so i can run 1-1 with ram. Is the arctic cooler efficient enough to handle it at reasonable noise level?

There is a lot of talk about lowering the lifespan of hardware by overclocking, should i be concerned? I am hoping this build will survive for 3-4 years with some small upgrades( mainly gf).

 

[jeff_2087]

The arctic cooler should be able easily handle 3.2GHz. I've got 3.2GHz going on my e6600's stock cooler.

While it's true that overclocking will shorten the lifespan of your parts, unless you push very high voltages and clockspeeds through your parts, I wouldn't worry about it. It might mean your rig will bite the dust in 7 years rather than 10. Basically, if you stick to reasonable overclocks it won't kill your machine before it's long obsolete anyway.

You don't need to OC the FSB to 400 in order to run in sync with memory, though. I'm no expert overclocker, but I preferred to run the memory in sync at a lower FSB speed (365 I think) and just tighten the timings from rated 4-5-4-11 2T to 3-4-3-9 1T. It can handle the tighter timings because it was rated to run at 800MHz but is only going 730. But that's all just experimentation, finding the best OC for your setup and needs.

 

[garu]

bump
i could realy use some input on Question 1 and 2