Rate/Trim My Build

[jcenters]

Right now I'm saving up money for a DX10 system. I'll be ready to build by mid-June (Hopefully).

Case
Antec Nine Hundred $130 SHIPPED (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811129021)

PSU
Corsair 520 HX $90 SHIPPPED + $20 MiR (http://www.buy.com/prod/corsair-hx520w-520w-sli-certified-modular-atx-power-supply/q/loc/101/203270716.html)

Motherboard
MSI P6N Platinum $160 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813130081)

Processor
Core2Duo E6600 $232 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819115003)

Memory
G.Skill 2x1G DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 $130 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820231087)

Graphics Card
EVGA 8800 GTS 640mb $389 + $30 MiR (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814130071)

Extra (Won't talk me out of these, except maybe the burner)
Samsung 18x SATA DVD burner $39 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16827151141)

Logitech G15 $70 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16823126179)

Logitech G5 $30 SHIPPED - Dell

Arctic Silver 5 (Six measly bucks)

Holdover From Last System
Seagate Barracuda 320gb ATA

Planned Upgrades
Samsung LCD Monitor 19-22" (By end of summer)
Two Raptors for a RAID 0 + Vista or Server 2007 (Probably within a year)

Considerations

Antec Nine Hundred vs. Cooler Master Centurion 5 ($130 vs. $66 SHIPPED http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119068)

E6600 vs. Overclocked E6320 ($232 vs. $176) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115015

4-4-4-12 vs. 5-5-5-15 ($130 vs. $105 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098)

 

[alcattle]

What are trying to consider? Everything you picked coasts more than what you need. So you go budget or performance?
Case, both choices are sweet, how much do you want to spend?
CPU you are going to o/c, how much? What are your uses?
MB What are you seeing in the MB you like? a DS3 costs $125
Memory Unless you are going for ultimate overclock, you won't need this RAM get the CL5 and save $25
8800GTS 640mb What are you going to drive? A 22" monitor won't use the whole memory, The top games won't tax the card. It is slightly higher in the future proof department. A 8800GTS 320 runs $259 ater $20 MIR or SC version is $299
No one will talk you out of anything, but we can give you choices.

 

[yakyb]

id go with the centurion personally (half the price)

psu fine

mobo as alcattle said go with the gigabyte ds3

Processor fine

memory go with the looser timings just checked Ram List and they all use similar ICS so you should be able to get the same performance out of them


GPU fine

Extras

DVDRW fine (going for the same one myself)

keyboard mouse Fine

arctic silver is not very good any more check out daclans review i dont have the link on me sorry shin etsu is the reccomended stuff now

holdover

hard drive i would try to buy a new hard drive and run this your system drive 7200.10 would be ideal use the old one as a media drive/backup

Planned upgrades
monitor definately go with this as soon as possible also go widescreen its fantastic

raptors i considered it for a while but thought id probably be better off with a GTX instead so will buy a GTX when i build later this year

hopefully this has saved you ~$100 that you can put to good use to somewhere (monitor!)

 

[jcenters]

Thanks for the recommendations. Just as a note, this will be a gaming machine. I'm strongly considering overclocking the E6600 to ~3 ghz, though I'm still a tad leery after a bad experience a few years ago. I'd like a basic architecture that will last me roughly four years.

I decided to go with the cheaper RAM, since I was already leaning in that direction.

MSI P6N Platinum vs. GB DS3
The DS3 is certainly cheaper, but a number of newegg reviewers have complained about various reliability issues. The lack of a second ATA port and SLI support is fine. Both seem very overclockable, though I like the P6N's array of heat pipes.

Antec Nine Hundred vs. Cooler Master Centurion 5
Same issues as the motherboards. The Centurion would save me quite a bit of money, but it's not quite as pretty . Even more importantly, I've heard complaints about sharp edges and non-functional USB ports on the Centurion.

640 vs. 320
Could someone supply a benchmark showing the difference at various resolutions?

Thanks for the heads up about the Arctic Silver. I honestly had no idea. Amazing how much the industry has changed in the past couple of years.

I've got plenty of time here, so I'm still very open to suggestions, especially if anyone has experience with these boards and cases.

 

[darksidedragon]

The DS3 is a brilliant board. I just put one in a computer I built for one of my housemates.
For gaming, overclocking an E6600 won't make much difference at all. I'd say get some cheaper 667MHz C4 RAM, an E4300 (overclock it to 333MHz core clock) and use the money saved to get an 8800GTX. The GTX will make a much bigger difference to gaming performance.
On the monitor front, I got a 20" Samsung SM204BW for my friends build. It looks great running Test Drive Unlimited at 1680x1050 on max graphics and 4x AA.

 

[drummerdude]

640 vs. 320
Could someone supply a benchmark showing the difference at various resolutions?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2926

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2953&p=1

 

[jcenters]

Thanks for the benchmark link. I've decided to go with the overclocked MSI 320mb 8800 GTS. At the moment, it seems like the best bang for the buck, but by June, who knows? Plus, I imagine that the DX10 card prices are going to drop like a rock within a year's time.

I'm also going with the cheaper Cooler Master case. After looking over the reviews, I realized the total percentage of poor reviews was pretty low. My only gripe is the lack of fans compared to the Antec. On the other hand, the Antec apparently sucks up as much dust as a vacuum cleaner, while the Cooler Master actually keeps it out.

I'll consider cutting the RAM speed, but my gut is telling me the money saved won't be worth the performance hit.

I'm still debating the motherboards. I hear a lot of nice things about the DS3, but the Platinum seems both sturdier and more expandable. And it's only $35 more.

The 20" Samsung SM204BW looks like a very nice monitor indeed, and a good compromise between the 19" and 22". To be honest, I'm still a bit shy of LCD. This will be my first LCD desktop monitor, and will replace my Viewsonic A90f. Damn fine monitor, but weighs more than my mini-fridge! 8O

Regardless, this thread has already saved me a few hundred dollars. Thanks guys!

 

[darksidedragon]

Re: the RAM
Unless you overclock your processor all the way to 400MHz core clock, then you won't get a performance increase with the 800MHz RAM, as you normally aim for a 1:1 ratio between RAM and CPU speeds (remember that DDR means the speed is doubled, so 800MHz matches up to 400MHz on the CPU core clock). You could set the RAM faster than the CPU, but that won't make a performance difference (giving the CPU information faster than it can process it doesn't do any benefit). So, you may as well save the money on the cheaper RAM. Plus, if you wanted to go to 800MHz, you could always overclock the RAM (e.g. go from 667MHz C4 RAM to 800MHz C5 RAM and then try reducing the timings).

 

[jcenters]

Okay, good point Darkside.

I've actually been taking a hard look at the Budget Gaming PC Guide (http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&all=1&t=220718&postdays=0&postorder=asc), and it seems like not only a reasonable build, but a helluva lot cheaper than what I've picked out myself.

But the question is: Would I regret some of the trade-offs down the road? Would I eventually regret going from an E6600 to an E4300? How easy are they to overclock? Would I eventually regret forgoing DDR2 800 for 667?

Like I said before, I'd like the base system to last for a good four years, with a video card upgrade half-way through. This is not counting the monitor and hard drive, of course.

BTW, are two RAID 0 hard drives significantly faster than one fast one? Or I guess I could always stick with my single 320 gig. Despite it being an oh-so unfashionable IDE drive, it seems plenty fast enough. However, I was wanting to have a fresh drive to install Vista on.

Oh, decisions.

Also, I now realize that paying extra for a pre-overclocked GPU would be just plain retarded. This is why you should never make hardware considerations before caffeine kicks in.

 

[alcattle]

There are always regrets but you won't see much in real usage. C2D are easy to O/C a little, you just change a setting in BIOS. When you start getting into the medium to high O/Cs then you have to consider more things like cooling, voltages and RAM timing.
It would take a pretty high O/G on either CPU that it would effect the memory.
A RAID 0 of two 7200 drives can run about the same speed as the Raptor. The Transfer rates might be higher on the RAID. The biggest difference is the GB/$$ ratio. You can get 2 160 GB drives for less then 1 Raptor. You could also use the 320 as the data drive. Also you can pay as you go. Get 1 of the raid drives now, then when money is there get the second drive. Only small problem is you have to back up the first drive and then Build the RAID which wipes your drive.
On the GPU, Get the x1950 now and in a year or two, move up the the DX-10 card.

 

[flasher702]

Re: the RAM
Unless you overclock your processor all the way to 400MHz core clock, then you won't get a performance increase with the 800MHz RAM, as you normally aim for a 1:1 ratio between RAM and CPU speeds (remember that DDR means the speed is doubled, so 800MHz matches up to 400MHz on the CPU core clock). You could set the RAM faster than the CPU, but that won't make a performance difference (giving the CPU information faster than it can process it doesn't do any benefit). So, you may as well save the money on the cheaper RAM. Plus, if you wanted to go to 800MHz, you could always overclock the RAM (e.g. go from 667MHz C4 RAM to 800MHz C5 RAM and then try reducing the timings).

Uh, DDR2-800 in dual channel matches up with 400mhz FSB on C2D. The 400mhz memory is double clocked and in dual channel you double bandwidth again for 1600mhz worth of effective bandwidth. A 400mhz FSB would be quad-clocked for 1600mhz effective bandwidth.

You can run your memory faster than your FSB to get a small performance boost (but ussually only if you don't have to relax your memory timings to do it) but the performance increase is very small (historically there have been chipsets where there was actually a performance hit for using memory dividers so it's generally avoided, I don't think it's a problem anymore though).

For many single-user applications the best performance is from a single un-raided raptor (I forget which revision. The latest hardware and firmware with a single platter, that one. I think it's one of the 74g ones) with NCQ disabled. However, if initial purchase price is the only concern (space, electricity, heat, and noise might be others) you could build a raid array with cheap drives that would destroy any number of raptors for Server IO performance for less money. So the question becomes: what application were you wanting to speed up drive access for?

 

[flasher702]

oh, if you're trying to trim costs: don't you also have a holdover optical drive to use? I'm actually beginning my push towards not even using optical drives anymore. With flash drives and high-speed networking getting better I think it's a dying medium. Besides, when I upload myself to the network I won't be able to put the disks in the tray anymore xD

 

[jcenters]

Yeah, I actually just replaced my DVD burner a few months ago. Unfortunately, it's white, and the new case will be black. I could probably paint it, but I'm giving my old system to my gf anyway. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy a SATA something.

The monitor I've got my eye on (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001095) only supports up to 1680x1050 anyway. So I should be good with 320 mb, right?

Like I said, this build isn't coming together until June. I've already decided to hold off on the G15, so that's loosened up my budget a bit. If I can get enough saved up, I might go ahead and get the GTX. Time will tell...

Thanks again guys.

 

[darksidedragon]

320MB should be enough for 1680x1050. If you're going to wait till June, perhaps you should wait till the next DX-10 cards from Nvidia come out? I've been told they're due out in June sometime (probably the latter part), so you could then afford to get an 8900GTS. AMD's R600 card should be out by then (but then I wouldn't bet against them delaying it, again).

Oh, and thanks to Flasher702 for fully explaining the RAM stuff. Now I know why FSB is 4x CPU core clock. Cheers