New Quietish Gamin Rig

[altich88]

Hi Guys,
I'm new to the forums and completely new to PC building. I've been doing some research online but still need some direct advice on a good setup. I'm building a gaming PC with a maximum budget of £850, and I would like it to be fairly quiet also. So far I'm thinking roughly the following:

Q6600 Core 2 Quad 95W 2.4GHz (have also had Q8200 recommened to me as it's easier to cool as it's 45nm?)
4GB DDR2 RAM
8800 or 9800 nvidia GPU (have had HD4850 recommended to me as is slightly faster than nvidias?) - GPU budget ~£130
Asus P5Q pro mobo
Enermax modu82 425w PSU

Antec solo or P182 case:
800rpm scythe slipstreams, Scythe Kama bay accesory, intake at 7v, exhaust on a zalman fanmate
Scythe Ninja rev b with no fan.
92mm scythe fan in the normal intake place (at 5v).
An Accelero S1 (passive) on the GPU



The above seup has been suggested by someone based on my starting point - a gaming pc that is fairly quiet for around £850ish. Hardwarewise I don't have any particular preferences, so feel free to completely redesign if you want to!

Please feel free to voice any opinions, as I say I'm completely new to this so all thoughts will be extremely useful. I'm not interested in overclocking btw. I'm especially interested in peoples thoughts on all the cooling gadgets/fans listed above and their effectiveness in reducing noise whilst keeping the pc stable.
Thanks for your help, feel free to ask anthing I've undoubedly missed.
Al

 

[aevm]

Q8200 is faster than Q6600 if you don't overclock. If you do overclock, the Q6600 can beat the Q8200 because it has a larger multiplier. Go with the Q8200. Also consider an E8400 or E8500 - they will be better than the Q8200 in most games and may be cheaper. It's easier to cool 2 cores than 4 with a fanless heatsink too.

Yes the HD 4850 is faster than the 8800 and 9800. Very annoying, seeing a $150 HD 4850 beat my 8800GTX (which cost me $651 last year)
It's also a better match for P5Q Pro because that is a Crossfire motherboard, not a SLI motherboard. That is, if you ever want two video cards, the HD 4850 Crossfire/P5 Pro combo works. The 9800GTX SLI/P5Q Pro combo doesn't.

P5Q Pro - very good choice.

425W Enermax: no. HD 4850 cards need a 450W PSU or larger. If you want to keep the Crossfire option, you need a 550W PSU or larger. I'd recommend a Corsair 650TX or a 550VX (the 550VX if you're sure you will never want a second video card; the 650TX if you're not sure).
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135514
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132563

P182 is a very nice and quiet case.

 

[altich88]

Thanks for your reply. I like the idea of a cheaper Core 2 Duo, - why will it be faster than a Q8200 in most games out of interest?
As far as the graphics goes do you think the HD4850 is powerful enough? I would probably be buying one for about £140, but I want a system that will run the latest games at high graphics for a while to come. My friend says a Core 2 Duo will definately be powerful enough, especially if I overclock it later. My only concern is that I may perhaps of cheaped out on the graphics a bit; would a £140ish 4850 run new games on high with good FPS for a while yet?

Also how does the system we're talking about fair up future-proof wise? I'd like to keep it fairly up to date by upgrading the parts every few years without completely rebuiling it.

Thanks again,
Al

 

[aevm]

Thanks for your reply. I like the idea of a cheaper Core 2 Duo, - why will it be faster than a Q8200 in most games out of interest?
As far as the graphics goes do you think the HD4850 is powerful enough? I would probably be buying one for about £140, but I want a system that will run the latest games at high graphics for a while to come. My friend says a Core 2 Duo will definately be powerful enough, especially if I overclock it later. My only concern is that I may perhaps of cheaped out on the graphics a bit; would a £140ish 4850 run new games on high with good FPS for a while yet?

Also how does the system we're talking about fair up future-proof wise? I'd like to keep it fairly up to date by upgrading the parts every few years without completely rebuiling it.

Thanks again,
Al

Because most games only use one or two cores. It's very hard to program them to use 3 or 4 cores and most companies haven't bothered with it yet. In a case like that, a core from the E8500, running at 3.16 GHz, will do more work per second than a core from the Q8200, running at 2.33 GHz, and all other cores will do nothing. On the other hand, when you play Flight Simulator X or encode videos all cores are used, and 4 cores at 2.33 GHz will beat two cores at 3.16 GHz. We had lots of threads about quad CPu vs higher clocked dual core CPU. There's no easy generic answer. It depends on what you do. If it's mostly games and not FSX then the E8500 is better for you.

Buy the best graphics card you can afford, of course. That's the most important thing for a gaming box. Performance (and price) goes like this:

HD 4850 < HD 4870 512MB < HD 4870 1GB < HD 4870 X2.

(I'm only mentioning Crossfire cards because the P5Q Pro is a Crossfire board. This allows you to add a second card later when it 's cheaper if games become more demanding than they are now.)

How a HD 4850 will do:
30 fps in Crysis on a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, 78 fps in Call of Duty 4, 86 fps in Quake Wars, etc.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=7

How a HD 4870 1GB will do:
40 fps in Crysis on a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, 48 fps in Oblivion, 113 fps in Quake Wars, etc.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3415&p=4

Both are very good cards. The HD 4870 1GB will do better and last longer but (at least at USA prices) the HD 4850 is better bang for the buck. For example I'd pay 50% more for the HD 4870 1GB, but not 100% more.