Parts chosen for a new rig -- please comment

Good job at choosing the parts.

The DS3 supports quad & the revision 3.3 supports 1333mhz fsb. You'd look for the 3.3.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Product...

Make sure the psu has 450w & 30a or more. If in doubt, ask around.

You can save some money if you get other brand of ram of the same speed & size.

No idea which chipset heatsink you mean. If it's Zalman ZM-NB47J, it's pretty decent passive cooling.

You can't get the new version of Scythe Ninja w/o fan. I believe the fan is bundled & is rather quiet.

Good choices.
Get enough power from the HIper 550-600w
I doubt you can get 3.2 on an e4300 with air at least, 3.0 seems to be the common top end, YMMV. More top end, get the E6400.
Compare that card to A x1950, more goodies, not much more $$

if you go e4300, 667 RAM is a good match, if you want to buy for future upgrades now, then the 800 is ok, XMS2 is overpriced though.

Thanks..I read quite a lot of reviews and literature before I came to this list...and it has since changed, but slightly. These are the changes :

PSU changed to the more silent "SeaSonic S12-430" because of it's awesome efficiency, and great review from the Silent PC Review site. I COULD move to seasonic's S12-500 if need be..ever so slightly rated louder...but if I want the power, I have no problem with going to it. should I?

What RAM would you suggest that would be comparable to this XMS2 RAM? I do not mind buying non premium brand, if it's just as good.

ok I will get the Rev 3.3 board, thanks!

How much could I realistically expect for a stable system if I changed out for the E6400...i chose the 4300 because people seem to be drooling all over it as an overclocker.


and thanks alcattle and akhilles for help with the fine tuning  

EDIT : Also..the ninja seems to get great reviews...howabout the Ultra 120 extreme that is coming out? I want to keep my PC pretty quiet at idle or low load(word processing web browsing and such), and not really annoying at full throttle, and am looking for the 3.2ghz ish OC. I think I am torn as far as fans coz I've never heard any of these...only seen reviews.

alcattle is right about the general highest stable o/c of the e4300. There are many crazy impossible o/c's, but they're not stable. The overclockers just want bragging rights. Stable overclocks should be what we talk about.

If you're lucky, you can get 3.2ghz out of e4300 with the DS3 & better ram & a good hsf. Corsair is using cheap integrated circuits on their ram. Only a handful of their more expensive line Dominator uses the Micron D9, which is the best for overclocking. If you want Micron D9 for cheap, look for G.Skill with a suffix of HZ in the model # & Buffalo Firestix. They're cheap in the u.s., but may be expensive in eu.

If I had to guess, the specs in your 1st post could get to 3.0ghz. If you want to break the 3.0ghz barrier guaranteed, you might want e6300 which can go beyond 3.0ghz in most cases. See my signature & skyguy's.

If you want cheap ram & high o/c, you might want to look for 650i mobo such as ASUS P5N-E SLI, which is my next upgrade. I'm cheap. I get the cheapest & o/c the hell out of it. You can throw in any value ram & get 3.0ghz out of either cpu.

I suggest you read a few 650i reviews, particularly the overclocking section.

Seasonic is one of the top psu brands. I'd get one if I don't have the galaxy. 430w & 29a are bit low for the X1900XT PC. You can try. If it indeed can't power the pc, you'd have to lose money on restocking fee, shipping, etc. There's no such thing as too big a psu as it will let you upgrade parts w/o upgrading the psu at the same time. A big psu never has insufficent power issues, while a small psu may have & introduce any sorts of instability issues that will make you pull your hair out.

Get an aftermarket hsf if you want quiet o/c. The stock fan is loud. See, when you o/c, you have to max out all fan speeds to minimize any heat issues.

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=4&ar...

If you are at a stage where you are wondering whether or not you need a fan on the Scythe Ninja to cool a 90% overclock then maybe you should learn some stuff about overclocking before you try it. Granted a Conroe overclock is child's play, a 90% overclock on any processor can be quite hazardous if not done right. If I were you I would at least get the Scythe Infinity and one fan. The PSU could use some rethinking. Go with a Corsair 520W PSU.

The Northbridge cooler on the DS3 is passive, I have a Zalman NB-47J installed on mine and It didn't make much of a difference though I haven't overclocked yet. I only put it on because I already had it from and old mobo with a noisy fan and I didn't want to waste something I paid $12 for  

People like the E4300 as it has a relatively high multiplier of 9x as compared to the 7x multiplier in the E6300 and 8x in the E6400. The E6600 has a 9x multiplier and 2 MB more L2 cache too, but it also costs double what an E4300 goes for. People like the higher multipliers as it allows a smaller bump in FSB speed to yield a greater increase in CPU core speed. When people are talking about overclocking CPUs by 50% or more, the FSB can reach speeds that some of the motherboards' chipsets can't handle. A 50% overclock on an E4300 yields 2.7 GHz core speed on a 300 MHz FSB. A 300 FSB is child's play even on a very crappy board as most Core 2 Duos run stock on a 266 MHz FSB. Even if you get a board that is an absolutely terrible overclocker, an E4300 can run at 2.40 GHz on the E6000 series' standard 266 MHz FSB clock. Now overclock an E6300 50% and that's 2.80 GHz. Very little difference in core speed, but now the FSB has to hit 400 MHz to get the chip to that speed. A 400 FSB takes a reasonably good board to reach. It will also make a northbridge damn hot as well.

But to tell you the truth, if I were you, I'd go for the E6600 and inexpensive DDR2-667 and leave on the stock cooler. You'll end up paying about the same for an E4300, big cooler, and fast RAM as you would for the E6600, stock cooler, and cheap RAM but the E6600 will be much more stable and cooler. Not to mention that you can overclock the E6600 a little on the cheap RAM and stock cooler and hit the same speeds as a highly OC'ed E4300 can hit. Not to mention that the 4 MB L2 of the E6600 will add roughly 5-10% more performance per clock than an E4300 has.

Intel will be bringing out new 333 FSB chips here shortly and those should be no fun to overclock as the FSB already pretty high and multipliers will be a notch lower than they are right now for similar chip speeds.

You don't need expensive ram for an E4300.

If you OC an E4300 to ~3ghz it only needs an FSB of 333, double that is 666 which means you only need DDR2-667 to be able to run, so really, you only need a $50 cooler and you've got an E4300 that beats an E6600 and sits barely below a X6800.

It all depends what your financial situation is, if your povo or someone who has better things to spend hundreds of dollars on (like me) then the OC'd E4300 would be better.

If you can afford an E6600 and can justify it then go for it, you'll have a warranty to back you up aswell and can always overclock anyway and go beyone what the E4300 can do.

looks nice
 

The cooling method is something I struggled figuring out, and I knew i wasn't going to use passive, but I wanted to get the quietest possible OC without using water. I may get the thermalright Ultra 120 or wait for the ultra 120 extreme to come out.

Get the CoolerMaster Gemini or Noctua NH-U12F. I refuse to buy a Tuniq Tower.

haha too late, already got a Tuniq Tower...I just had to go with the reviews on this decision..If it's no good..well, so be it haha! Anyhow I have a final hardware setup now(too late also for changes as it is sitting here already in my office!)

Antec P180 case(yeah i skipped out on the Solo case..really like how this looks, specs, and I like how the fans are set up)

Gigabyte GA965P-DS3 Mobo

Core 2 Duo 4300 775 processor

Seasonic S12 550HT PSU(chosen over the Hiper for performance..great reviews everywhere I look!)

G.Skill 2GB DDR2800 4-4-4-12 RAM

POWERCOLOR X1950XT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 VIVO Video Card with Artic Cooling Fan - yeah jumped up from the saphire x1900xt. was going to go with saphire x1950xt but reports of it running really hot out of the box was a turnoff...read only good stuff about the arctic cooling working well and being relatively quiet on the powercolor.

2 Seagate PMR 320GB drives to be striped

Tuniq Tower - probably loud, but I hope this sound deadening P180 case will help soften that sound. Scythe looks good but I want this puppy over 3GHZ! 8)

Zalman Northbridge heatsink - I bought this...and this is one for you guys...is this better than the stock Gigabyte northbridge cooler...shall I even bother using the zalman or this mobo's chipset stays decently cool after an OC with stock HS?



thanks for all your suggestions...there are a lot of posts asking for comments, and I'm glad that some people take the time to help!