I have been working together this wishlist for about a month now. Now I need help and suggestions from others that have actually used the parts. I am trying to keep it under $1100, I'm already pushing it at that.

Anyways, I am looking for help, suggestions, or anything that could make this wishlist better. Different brands, etc., will gladly be appreciated.

I will mainly use this computer for gaming, and LOTS of multitasking. I play Halo, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike:Source, Battlefield 2142, and many other games. I am hoping to overclock the e6600; my goal is to get it to 3ghz, but it's probably not going to happen.

Without any further due, here is the wishlist:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersio [...] er=6388947

There are a couple things I'll address.
1) I already have a case, Thermaltake Shark (Black)
2) I already have a graphics card, ATI Radeon x800GT.
3) I already have a CPU cooler, Scythe Infinity.
4) The Masscool thermal grease is for a different computer of mine.

Thanks in advance for the suggestions!

The Striker is a nice motherboard, but it's probably not the most economical solution for a budget system.

What is your plan for graphics? (didn't see a video card on the list) If you aren't going to run SLI, go for a good P965 motherboard like the DS3 to save about $200. If you do want SLI, consider a cheaper motherboard like this popular EVGA. If you are keeping your ATI card, you should go for a P965 board or wait for the upcoming P35 boards.

If you "only" want to get an E6600 to 3 GHz, you don't need that expensive RAM. This stuff will work fine for that speed (it will actually work for up to 3.6 GHz) - I have used it and it works great. You could even drop back to DDR2-667, but the DDR2-800 is cheap enought that I would just use that.

I like this hard drive better than the Hitachi (they're what my system runs for storage). I would personally skip the Raptor and HDD cooler for a budget limited system, the amount faster it is doesn't really justify the price on the bang/buck scale (and I do have one, that very model in fact, left over from my previous machine and it's not all that much faster than my Seagates).

Getting an E6600 to 3 GHz is almost trivial with a good mobo (the Striker and the two I listed will all do it with ease). You should probably get an aftermarket heatsink, though. The Tuniq Tower and Thermalright Ultra 120 (I use the Thermalright on my system) are among the best, but you won't need anything that extreme for 3 GHz with the 6600, although cooler is better. I think you can easily get the budget for the heatsink by savings on the mobo and RAM, even if you want to keep the Raptor. If you use the Intel heatsink, you might make it to 3 GHz. You won't need thermal paste if you use the Intel heatsink either.

I agree with bobs choices. The DDR2 1000 is overkill drop down to some DDR2 800, and if you want a Raptor, the 36 gig wont hold out for long.

Cheaper MB, cheaper ram, then what video card?
Not sure what last post meant by the Raptor won't last? For the OS drive, it will be fine.

wait for the ati hd 2900xt for ur gfx card coming out in about a week

and that sriker extreme is NOT worth getting

you don't need that mobo, you sureas hell don't need a hard drive cooler or that raptor. even with the OS and a few games it will fill up quick.

as has been mentioned that ram is slightly overkill.

if i were you i would take the money saved by not buying that mobo, ram, hard drive and cooler and invest it in a gfx card.

oh and what resolution you play at.

Thanks for all the comments, guys. But I totally spaced out about the graphics card.

Graphics Card
I am an ATI fan, right now I have an x800GT, mainly a placeholder for the new dx10 ATI cards, so I would have preferred a crossfire mobo, or not. But since I saw the Striker Extreme, being an awesome board and all, I had to make a change. Maybe that will change again in the next few posts.

CPU Cooling
I also forgot to mention that I have a Scythe Infinity, so hopefully that won't pose a problem with heat.

Motherboard
As for motherboard, I would much rather prefer a crossfire motherboard, like the P5B Deluxe or the P5B Deluxe/Wifi. That was actually my first decision for a mobo until I started seeing some bad overclocking results. Maybe I just looked in the wrong place.

Hard Drives
As for the hard drive, I will follow what you said, so I replaced the Hitachi with the Seagate. And for the Raptors, was there even a noticeable difference in speeds?

Memory
Also, for the memory I chose, I chose DDR2 1000 so that when I start overclocking, the memory will *hopefully* underclock itself to DDR2 800, so it'll have less stress on it. If you guys think I could go higher with the e6600 with the DDR2 1000 ram, then I'll keep it. It's nice ram.

Phew, I think that's all the questions answered about my questions, lol. I'll be waiting.

Since you seem interested in Crossfire/SLI, wait until Monday when the reviews of the new HD2900 series come out to make the critical decision about the graphics and motherboard. Again, the Striker is nice, but it's not worth the $ unless you're building a high budget best of everything rig. Notice how few people on here use it, even with water cooled type setups.

You should easily hit 3 GHz on an e6600 with the Infinity.

Wait for ATI test results to decide if you want Crossfire or SLI. IMO, you don't need either unless you run 1920x1200 or above, a single 8800GTX (and hopefully a single 2900XT) can serve nicely at 1680x1050 or 1600x1200. The most promising looking Crossfire chipset isn't even out yet, which is the Intel X38 coming Q3. You should post your desired resolution.

Windows boots maybe 2 seconds faster off the Raptor versus the Seagates(which are not in RAID, they'd probably outperform the Raptor in RAID 0). I can't tell the difference in normal use where there isn't a long sustained HD transfer. The Raptor also seeks faster, but can you honestly tell the 4 ms difference or whatever it is? You can however tell the noise difference, as the Raptor is considerably louder.

The memory doesn't underclock/overclock itself - the motherboard controls that. For a 965P board, it's linked to the front side bus of the processor, which also sets the processor speed. The 680i boards like the Striker let you make the RAM and CPU speeds independent, although some report better performance by keeping them linked. In any case, DDR2-800 will support up to 3.6 GHz on the e6600, so if you aim for 3 GHz you will run the RAM at DDR2-667 speeds. You can buy the expensive stuff if you want to, but I would save the money to put it towards the video card. Besides, Intel is already planning to move on to DDR3 instead of DDR2 with the Bearlake (P35 [supports DDR2 & DDR3]/X38[rumored DDR3 only]) chipset, so do you really want a lot of money invested in high-end DDR2 RAM?

As to the PSU... unless you absolutely want to or have to order all of the components from the Egg you may want to consider shopping around a bit. You may have already done so and your wishlist is just for convenience sake but, for instance, the Corsair 520HX can be had for 85 bucks (AR) from ZipZoomFly. The deal is set to expire today but I wouldn't worry too much - if you wait a day or two they often put the same deal back up... sometimes for less than the previous deal. Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of NewEgg, but they aren't always the most inexpensive option and 30 bucks is 30 bucks.

Just a thought. Good luck with your build.

Senor_Bob -

The reason why I want a crossfire or SLI mobo is so that my build will be more futureproof. What I am saying is that later down the road when new things come out and stuff, and my build starts slowing down, I can at least add another ATI/Nvidia card to boost it back up for awhile.

Also, when will the new Crossfire chipset come out? Because I plan on ordering the parts in about 2-3 weeks. But if I must wait, then I guess I will. I can't handle my P4 for much longer though, lol.

As for resolution, I use 1280 x 1024, mainly because that's the max my current card will handle without lagging, and it's my monitor's max res. But now that I'm looking at my wishlist, currently at ~$700, I might be able to squeeze a larger monitor in there, maybe a 22". Right now i have two 17" monitors.

Also, how far away is the DDR3 away from coming out?

Thanks for all the help.

do you mean DDR3?

DDR2 has been out for a long time.

DDR3 should be coming out this summer. I don't know the exact date. Some of the P35 based motherboards with DDR3 support are available in other countries, I think they officially come out around the end of May. You can find threads about the Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 (with x16+x4 Crossfire) floating around the forums. The X38 with full x16+x16 Crossfire is due Q3, which could be as early as July. I can't imagine Intel would release a chipset with poor market RAM support, but there was the P4/Rambus debacle.

With a 22" monitor (widescreen LCD I assume) you will be looking at probably 1680x1050 resolution, which an 8800GTX will handle fine and the 2900XT may as well. I would personally not count on SLI/Crossfire as a rig life extender myself, as by the time that you need an upgrade you may have trouble finding another of the same card you originally bought (see people trying to find 7800/7900GTX now) and you will probably be able to sell your old card and upgrade to a new single card solution for less (like how 8800GTX alone is better than the 7000 series in SLI).

You REALLY need a new video card for your stated purposes.

GPU is far more important than CPU for gaming.

Drop the E6600 to an E4300 and pick this up for the price difference.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102022

See...............
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] ther_cards


This card comes in about 5 ranks higher than the X800.
3 Ranks is basically considered to be a very signifcant upgrade in performance.

So in essence this is almost twice the amount that would be considered a major upgrade.

The E4300 can also OC to 3.0Ghz quite easily and just about the CPU performance for an E6600 OC'd to 3.0Ghz. Hence you save money, but you don't really lose much in the trade. What you get in return is a big difference.

I'm not firm on that one card or even exact model.
It was mostly selected since it's from a good manufacturer, matches the cost savings almost exactly, and would provide an extreme upgrade.

My only suggestion is, if you want to get the pc right now, is to add a 8800GTS for about $280 and that should just put a little above $1000, and that will at least allow you to play some of the newer games you want to play at a decent graphics level. But If your willing to wait a few weeks, with the 2900xt coming out you'll probably see the 8800's prices drop, and you can save money or you might even be able to get a 8800gtx with you budget.