More questions on building new game system

[Danlo]

Thanks everyone for the help you offered me earlier on building my new game system.

For the motherboard, I'm leaning toward GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard right now. I like the fact that it is the X38 chipset including support for PCIE 2.0 (looks to be coming with the new 9900GTX cards from nVIDIA). The X48 chipset doesn't seem to give any real improvements as far as I can find from research.

I do have a couple of questions still. Is there any reason not to go with the E8500 instead of the E8400? It is a little more expensive, but seems to be a little faster as well.

Finally, for RAM, everyone seems to be suggesting DDR2 800. The motherboard I'm looking at supports 1200/1066/800/667 speeds for RAM. Is there no benefit from going to 1066 or 1200 speeds?

I asked a question in the hard drive forum also about drives. I want to dual boot XP/Vista 64. I would like the system to be fast but reasonably quiet also. Any suggestions for drives? I'm thinking 2 boot drives and one for storage. Game textures still need to load fairly fast for games like LotRO, but it seems that the Raptor drives will be too noisy. Any suggestions?

Also any suggestions for a fast CD/DVD drive for reading and burning the occasional disc?

 

[Maroc]

Yes X38 is the smarter choice as it's all you need. The GA-EX38-DS4 is a good one. For the gfx card I think you should wait for the 4000 series from ATI. The 4870 looks very very good especially with it's price. The E8400 is the processor you should go for. I do not believe the 0.16GHz is worth the extra cash. A good set of 2x2gb DDR2-800 is perfect and it's not worth getting any higher as these OC very well. For the HDDs get just ONE 500gb Seagate 7200.11 as it's all you need, they aren't noisy and they are the fastest 500gb you can buy today. Go for the most expensive DVD-RW you can get as they're dirt cheap and make sure it's SATA.

 

[uguv]

If you're dual booting it's a good practice to get at least 2 drives and install each OS on its own drive. Raptors are fairly noisy and not a whole lot faster than the Seagate 7200.11 drives. If you have the budget for a 3rd drive for data it wouldn't be a bad idea.

I think Maroc meant inexpensive DVD. I'd make sure it's SATA. The only other things to note is that OEM versions don't come with any software. Retail ones do. Also, avoid Sony DVD drives. They are the devil.

 

[Danlo]

Thanks for the help so far.

I've been reading good reviews of the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s drives. These are supposed to be fast and quiet. Right now, they are already storage overkill for me as I mostly use this system for gaming. I do most of my non-gaming stuff on a Mac and there I can't have too much storage. Any advantages/disadvantages of these vs. the Seagate 7200.11 drives? A quick search of reviews seems to show that they might even be better regarded overall. Any reliability differences between Seagate vs. WD?

It seems my choices are either 2 or 3 500GB Seagate 7200.11 or 2 or 3 WD Caviar SE16 640GB right now.


As for the comments about RAM, I get that the DDR2-800 will overclock well. Will this hold true if I drop a faster quad-core processor into the system in a few months? As long as I'm not hurting myself by going with the slower RAM, I don't see any need to spend the money. But, if the DDR-1066 will be better long-term, then I will spend a little extra.

 

[uguv]

There's only a benefit to 1066 or 1200 RAM if you plan on overclocking a new quad over 3ghz (because of their low multipliers).