First Time Builder Advice

[rockstar1582]

Hello,

I've been a lurker here for monthes and I've decided to take the plunge and build my own system. I have experience with computers and computer parts just never built my own system before. The system will be used for everyday tasks and moderate gaming. I don't plan on overclocking it. I have a budget of around 2,500. I will be starting from scratch building this system. I'm leaning towards putting in it either a E6700 or a QX6600. I'm also thinking about going with the 8800 GTS 640MB. I'm not sure about the rest of the build, any advice would be appreciated.

 

[knowsitall]

nah screw the e6700 dont go for that. go for the quad e6600. go for a 8800gtx. gigabyte ds3 motherboard. pc power and cooling 750 quad powersupply. ur not over clocking?? u should, but go for the corsair dominator 1066 mhz ram ( the price on those babies just dropeed 200bucks on newegg good deal) new new antec p182 case is pretty sexy. and monitor ?? i hear samsung got sum nice 16 x 1200 lcd's .. u d have a sick system with the above^^

 

[Mondoman]

Since the OP doesn't want to OC, he'll have to skip the Dominator and spend much less money on some decent DDR2-800 that actually runs at the standard 1.8V.

 

[EXT64]

I'd suggest the E6600 dual core (unless you really need quad). I would also suggest waiting for ATI R600 to come out later this month. Even if you don't get it, it will drive the prices of the 8800's down. The 2900XT is supposedly better than a 8800GTS and weaker than an OC'ed 8800GTX, however I have no trustwothy/good benches to give you.

 

[goldragon_70]

nah screw the e6700 dont go for that. go for the quad e6600. go for a 8800gtx. gigabyte ds3 motherboard. pc power and cooling 750 quad powersupply. ur not over clocking?? u should, but go for the corsair dominator 1066 mhz ram ( the price on those babies just dropeed 200bucks on newegg good deal) new new antec p182 case is pretty sexy. and monitor ?? i hear samsung got sum nice 16 x 1200 lcd's .. u d have a sick system with the above^^

Da/V\N "know it all"'s......JK

KnowItAll made good suggestions with the Q6600 and the 8800GTX (your budget can handle it), as for the Ram you probably won't use it's full potential, and Upgrading ram is easy to do anyways. Power supply is a little higher then you might need unless you load the system down with drives and other expansion cards. Get a large hard drive unless you want to have a drive for storage so you can recover your files without worrying about reinstalling your OS, and look for a case with good air flow.

 

[scoot241]

What resolution will you be running your monitor at, or are you planning to get a new monitor? If you're not running terribly high resolutions, the 8800 GTS 320MB will serve you just as well as the 640MB. If you can swing it, the 8800 GTX will blow any game out of the water right now (and probably for a while). The new ATI boards will be out soon too, but you'll have to wait a little longer for them.

I personally prefer Asus motherboards; I just purchased the Asus P5B Deluxe and am very pleased with it. Unless you want to SLI nVidia cards, get a 965 chipset board.

I'd suggest getting 2GB of RAM. Again, brand is mostly a matter of personal preference. DDR-2 800 will serve you well for a while right now (the FSB for the C2D processors doesn't even use all of it yet).

Are you planning to overclock? A good OC is going to require a different heatsink. Thermalright makes very nice heatsinks. I have the XP-90 (and I'm not even overclocking, but I bought it for my previous computer and kept it for the new one), but there are newer heatsinks now. With Thermalright heatsinks, you have to purchase your own fan. If you're not overclocking, the standard C2D heatsink is pretty good.

Eventually I want to RAID5 my hard drives for data redundancy purposes, but due to cost constraints I got a WD 320GB SATA hard drive right now to replace two PATA drives that had my data on them. PATA is going out the window, so buy everything SATA, including optical drives. I also already had a 160GB SATA boot drive. Having one hard drive to boot from and another to store data on makes things easier when reinstalling Windows, etc.

Having a case with good airflow is important. A 120mm intake fan in the front and a 120mm exhaust fan in the rear is a good start. A power supply with two fans is also helpful in keeping everything cool. I got the Sunbeam Nuuo 550W power supply, but it seems this model is being discontinued.

Any of the Core 2 processors are going to serve you well. I got the 6420 because it was a good price for a 4MB cache processor. You can't go wrong with either the E6700 or the QX6600, but I'd lean toward the QX6600.

 

[wiley15]

I think everyone's (well most) people's opinions here are valuable info, but the post says

"The system will be used for everyday tasks and moderate gaming ... don't plan to overclock"

Therefore I believe the best advice, despite is $2500 budget, is to council him to save some of that cash. With that description a 6600, 8800 GTS, 2GB 533 Mhz Ram, etc. are just fine and can be put together for ~1000 (and really a 6300 and 1950Pro would do'em). Take some of the rest of the money and snatch a nice 22'' monitor then just just the extra $1200 to upgrade video cards, HDs, etc. for the next 3 years.

Anyway, just my 0.02

 

[vanka]

@wiley15

I agree. There are a few changes I would make: get a Q6600 instead of a E6600 ($535 vs $230 and you'll have it when you need it) and I'd go with DDR2-800 instead of DDR2-533 (no reason to cripple yourself when there's only a $30 difference).

 

[rockstar1582]

If I went with the QX6600 could I just use the stock heatsink or would I need a better one. Also would I need some type of cooling system if I went with the QX6600. I don't plan on overclocking it but wasn't sure about the heat requirements with the QX6600. Last question I have is should I wait until the new stepping of the QX6600 is released in July or buy the current model. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[knowsitall]

If I went with the QX6600 could I just use the stock heatsink or would I need a better one. Also would I need some type of cooling system if I went with the QX6600. I don't plan on overclocking it but wasn't sure about the heat requirements with the QX6600. Last question I have is should I wait until the new stepping of the QX6600 is released in July or buy the current model. Thanks for the suggestions.

if ur not overclocken stock heatsink/cooling is fine. the qx6600 is a qx6600. dont bother waiting. either get ur shit or dont. waiting is completely stupid.

 

[rockstar1582]

Does the E6700 run at comparible speeds to the Q6600? Does the Q66000 have performance bottlenecks? I'm trying to decide between the E6700 and the Q6600. Thanks for the advice.

 

[wiley15]

From everything I've read you definitely want to go with the Q6600, the 6700 is not faster enough to justify the premium over the E6600. The Q6600 really isn't eight right now, but with more multi-threaded programs it could (possibly) provide 100% more performance (but highly unlikely with shared cache, memory bus, etc. but 50% wouldn't be unthinkable).

 

[rockstar1582]

Since this is my first time putting together a system I thought of a few more basic questions. Will a 750W power supply be enough to power a Q6600 and a 320MB 8800GT? Since I'm not going to be overclocking the system I assume it doesn't matter which brand of RAM I go with as long as its DDR2 800? Thanks for the help.

 

[goldragon_70]

750W is more then enough and will give you plenty of head room. DDR2 800 should be enough.