Take a look at my rig?

[Axil]

I initially posted this in the CPU and components forums, since i'm not actully building it myself, but perhaps this is the right place for it?

This is what i'm looking to get, any opinions are more than welcome, but please understand i can't afford to spend much more than this, that said if you tell me "you can spend 200$ here, and your system will run twice as fast" then i'm all ears. Also i'm of course open to the idea of saving money somewhere if it won't hurt my performance much.

# PRICE: $2469
# Case: CoolerMaster Stacker 830 Tower 420W Case W/ Side-panel Window
# CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6850 CPU @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit
# Cooling: Asetek Liquid CPU Cooling System
# HDD: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (500GB (250GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM
# MOTHERBOARD: (Quad-Core FSB1333) Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard
# MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Mushkin Xtreme w/ Heat Spreader)
# NETWORK: Intel Pro Gigabite 10/100/1000 Network Card
# OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate (64-bit Edition)
# POWERSUPPLY: 750 Watts Power Supplies Thermaltake ToughPower 750W
# SOUND: Creative Labs X-FI XtremeGamer 24-BIT PCI Sound Card [+89]
# VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB 16X PCI Express (XFX Extreme Edition)

 

[itotallybelieveyou]

Obviously... You are ordering it from a site? Q6600 is better. Everything else should be fine. Wait... Get XP then eveything is fine

 

[rgeist554]

I really hope you're ordering that pre-built, because that is really expensive! (no quad core either?) If you're going to pay that much, make it as future proof as possible. *edit* I see you have liquid cooling, are you going to really OC?

Here - Same thing for 300 less + you get a Q6600:

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.asp?ID=8666787

Shave off some more if you take off the Vista and go for XP, but I'm assuming you want to OC and go for DX10 with this thing. If that's the case, just get the Vista then. (I would really go with the Q6600 for what you're paying though)

 

[Axil]

decided you guys were right about the 6600, i do plan to OC but i'm probley not going to top it out, i'd like it to last a couple years without dying on me.

Yes, i'm going to a site, yes i'm paying too much, but i've had too many issues trying to do major hardware installs myself. I decided to get another 2 sticks of ram for a total of 4gigs, it wasn't substantially more, and with 64bit vista, i was afraid i'd bottleneck. Unfortunately this site doesn't have any low latency RAM =(

What do you think about the mobo, will it hold up if i OC the CPU and GPU? Is it significantly better than the cheaper P5N-E 650i? Is there anything else i should consider? I really appreciate the input thanks!

 

[rgeist554]

Yes, i'm going to a site, yes i'm paying too much, but i've had too many issues trying to do major hardware installs myself. I decided to get another 2 sticks of ram for a total of 4gigs, it wasn't substantially more, and with 64bit vista, i was afraid i'd bottleneck. Unfortunately this site doesn't have any low latency RAM =(

I don't think the RAM will cause too many bottlenecking problems. The main reason to upgrade to 4GB of RAM is simply because 64 bit OS will support 4+Gb of RAM while the 32 bit has trouble recognizing more than 4gigs.

What do you think about the mobo, will it hold up if i OC the CPU and GPU? Is it significantly better than the cheaper P5N-E 650i? Is there anything else i should consider? I really appreciate the input thanks!

Just stay with the 680i, it's better for Quad and the latest GPU's. From what I understand, the 680i chipset handles OC very well, and ASUS also has a reputation for having easy-to-OC motherboards. So you should be set.

 

[Axil]

ok sounds good, also if i add another GPU in a year or so, am i going to have to replace the power supply, or will the 750 thermaltake handle a overclocked quadcore, and 2 overclocked GPUs?

 

[frednitney]

This looks like a gaming rig to me.
And i would like to see some stats on the q6600 being better than the C2D6850 before I trusted that it was "better".

It may be better in apps like winrar and other softwares designed for 4 processors but I don't think there are many games out there that take advantage of the 4 cores yet.

If it were me I would keep the processor you originally considered then buy a top of the line quad (qx6850) in a year from now when the prices are reasonable since your motherboard is ready for it.
And you could also in a year from now double up on that video card of yours....

P.S.
"Show me the money" on that quad6600 over a Duo6850.

 

[Axil]

when i looked at some of the benchmarks comparing the two, i noticed that while most games are slightly faster on the e6850, there isn't much difference between the two, and it looks like the newer games are already being designed for 4 cores, so as long as it can handle what's out now (which i believe it can) it ought to catch up and then be better than the 6850 as new games come out over the next year. At least that's what i'm hoping for. The pricing is exactly the same, on the site i'm looking at.

 

[frednitney]

The 6850 is a 3.0Ghz processor while the q6600 is a 2.4Ghz processor.

The q6600 stacks up almost equal to a 6550 at 2.33Ghz but I doubt it would hold its own against the 6850

A relatively new article http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/08/parallel_processing/page8.html

I am sure that either one of those processors will suit you just fine.
One word of advice on the Asus MB
If you ever update the BIOS be sure to do it through the EZ flash utility that is included in the BIOS itself.
Never use that Asus web update utility!

glhf

frednitney

 

[Axil]

I understand that at stock speeds, 2.4 vs 3.0 is a lot, but from what i understand, with overclocking, the difference tends to be far less. I plan to overclock the q6600 to 3gigs (supposedly some can get up to 3.5 without issues) which should, coupled with the rest of the equipment run just about any game on the market today at high settings, am i mistaken?