My motherboard broke.. so im building a new PC!

[texas166]

Hi all,
This is my first post in the forums. However i have been here many times before, and found them to be very useful! So this is why i decided i should ask your opinions...

Yesterday my pc gave up the ghost , it was my first self-built pc, its cpu was an OC'd D805, i had it at 3.4Ghz on air cooling, which was awesome, and ive have had 11 months of stable(ish) operation. But i think that the OC'ing may have been a factor in what caused the motherboard to die on me (ASUS P5P800 SE).

So i thought hey, maybe its time to upgrade!
Seeing as i was sick of still being on AGP, and DDR...

However, being a uni student in England, im poor and stuff is expensive and so i have to work to a fairly tight budget. BUT i love to game :lol: , and my course means i need to use CAD software. All that needs replacing is the motherboard, graphics card, memory, and cpu. As i can still use my HDD's, case, etc from my old build.

So here is what i was thinking...

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - £153
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i - £69
EVGA 8800GTS SuperClocked 320MB - £200
Crucial 2GB kit (1GBx2) DDR2 PC2-4200 CL=4 - £63

Estimated Total - £485

N.B. (All prices inc. VAT from ebuyer, and the EVGA 8800 has a 10 year warranty)

This time i don't think i will overclock, although its fun, i don't fancy having to replace my system every 11 months, lol. That is why i have decided to get a good cpu, and an already OC'd graphics card.

It would be great if i could get some feedback on the system before i go and blow a big chunk of my student loan on it!

Things like is it futureproof?
Or is the ram a good match for the fsb speed of the cpu?
Is the ram too slow, or wont i notice?
Also my current PSU is 480W with 31A on the combined 12V rails... will that be ok?
Compatibilty issues?
And anything else u spot.

WOW long first post!

Thanks in advance.

Steve

 

[akhilles]

The mobo sure is popular. I love it. I just got it. Took me 1 min to overclock it. Have experiences with 680i. So 650i feels like home. If you don't o/c or SLI, you can get Gigabyte S3 or any good P965 mobo.

What about the rest like psu? & target screen resolution?

 

[texas166]

My current PSU that i was planning on using is an Xilence 480W.
I am a tad concerned it might be a little under-powered...
My monitor is 19" so ill be playing games at 1280*1024.

 

[alcattle]

You really need to get PC-6400, although you can go one step down if not O/Cing. I do not see your PSU on the list, might be a US thing. Might not be enough power for an 8800 card, depending how solid is the 31A figure.

 

[texas166]

I was wondering about the speed of the memory, as the fsb is at 1066/4 = 266.5, the memory being ddr should be 266.5*2 = 533 or PC4200.
Is that right?
I thought that a 1:1 ratio was best.

 

[texas166]

I've had a re-think and im going to get...

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400 CL4 TwinX (2x1GB)

and

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 320MB

Will that memory be better?

 

[alcattle]

You be all smiles now. Let us kmow how the build goes.

 

[texas166]

It has all been ordered now, and should arrive here on tuesday.

I can't wait!

There is so much stuff to do, like installing all the drivers, codecs, games and programs i need. Think ill screw going to lectures! lol

I do have a slight problem though, is it possible to install XP on a hard drive without having to format it? Otherwise im going to have to sacrifice some data.

 

[alcattle]

What is on the drive now? You could try to boot as is and back up the data to optical, then install XP

 

[texas166]

The drive has the original install of XP on it, plus lots of music, and some personal stuff. It has about 40GB free.

As its almost a completely new system what are the chances it will boot to XP at all?

 

[sirrobin4ever]

I've had good luck booting old OS'es in safe mode on new hardware. When you start the PC just keep pressing F8, then select safe mode. Use this to copy the important files to whatever you choose. Then restart, format, and reinstall windows.

Best of Luck

 

[akhilles]

If you're getting 650i/680i, the cpu/ram ratio doesn't matter. You can run cpu/ram unsynched/unlinked, like many do. I'm one of them. You can even put 533mhz ram in this build.

The cpu/ram ratio is of importance only to P965 users or those who want to o/c the cpu & ram.

425W 28A is the psu req. for a full 8800gts pc.

 

[texas166]

I've had good luck booting old OS'es in safe mode on new hardware. When you start the PC just keep pressing F8, then select safe mode. Use this to copy the important files to whatever you choose. Then restart, format, and reinstall windows.

Best of Luck

Ok thats good to know, i shall try that. Thanks

If you're getting 650i/680i, the cpu/ram ratio doesn't matter. You can run cpu/ram unsynched/unlinked, like many do. I'm one of them. You can even put 533mhz ram in this build.

The cpu/ram ratio is of importance only to P965 users or those who want to o/c the cpu & ram.

425W 28A is the psu req. for a full 8800gts pc.

Sweet, looks like ive picked a pretty good chipset.
Although running them sync'd is better?

Also looks like my PSU may just be able to handle the system, its 480W with 31A. On the BFG website it says that 425W is the power consumption on a system based on the X6800, but im only using a E6600. Probably puts overclocking out of the equation though, but thats not really a problem.

Well im happy!
It's all coming tomorrow, i canny wait!

Thanks guys for your help.

P.S. I read somewhere that you can't run the 8800GTS on 8x PCI-e, which means if i was to say SLi it in the future it would not work, as the 650i chipset can't run both PCI-E slots at 16x, is this true?

 

[akhilles]

Better is subjective.

I'd say synched would be faster if you could overclock the ram. If you run ram synched at stock speed, then there's no point.

True that. 650i does SLI at 8x. The performance hit wouldn't be noticeable to naked eyes, def. to benchmarkers. I don't play on running sli. Never will. I'll keep upgrading to a single faster gpu. I bought this mobo for its overclockability & features: gb lan, usb, ieee & esata.

Have fun with your build.

 

[texas166]

The chances are are won't use SLi at all, just seems too expensive, and its only really a benefit at mega high resolutions.

Its all coming today the goods have been loaded onto the van and are on their way here!

Shame i have to go do a 1hr 45min electronics test first

OOO the excitment!

 

[texas166]

WOOOOOOP!

Its all built now!

So the final cost was £507, roughly the same as $1000.

I just benched it using a non-registered version of 3dMark06 and got 8916 Points!!!
That was not even on a clean boot.
A massive leap from what i had before, probably around ~2000 if i was lucky.

I also managed to save all the data i thought i might lose, by booting with the XP Pro disc, and doing a repair on the original install, then it booted fine.... kinda, the drivers were all screwy so i quickly saved what i wanted onto another drive, and re-formatted the drive and did a clean install, worked like a charm!

This time i have put XP into a 20GB partition of its own, lol. Learnt from my mistakes!

Thanks for all your help guys.

Steve

 

[alcattle]

great to hear when things work out, you were lucky as XP is picky when doing a repair. Sounds like you will have years of good computing

 

[akhilles]

I never put my files on the same partition as the OS. Always D:\. Now I don't even bother partitioning, just format 2 sata hdd's & put xp on the 1st & all data on the 2nd.

The P5N-E SLI clan is 1 man stronger. Cheers!