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My new build

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tell me what you think of my new budget gaming rig i am about to make if there is anything you think i can improve on please let me know, the specs are as follows:

Core 2 duo 3.16GHZ
XFX nforce 680i sli motherboard
4 gig of mushkin ddr2 sdram
XFX gtx 260 or 275 GPU
850 watt PSU
Zalman black cpu cooler
WD Black 1tb hdd

all running vista 7

So tell me what you think :D 

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First of all, the P55 motherboards are here. But if you want to go with Core2's:

What kind of PSU?
Do you plan on eventually running SLI'd video? If not, the 850 watt PSU is overkill. For a single card, I would use a Corsair 550VX; for two cards, a TX750.

There are better coolers than Zalman's. Here's two:
Xigmatec Dark Knight
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Sunbeam
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I am not wild about using the 680i chipset with the 45 nm Core2 CPU.

I think that I would go with GTX275 now. But check the Tom's regular best buy video card articles.






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smithinator101 said:
im going with the c2d cos they fit my budget and will be fast enough for what i require, eventually i will get a second GPU in sli mode so thats why im getting the 850w


What's your budget, what country are you in, and what parts/hardware do you already have (don't need).

Do you still find 680 mobos around? Serious. I thought they were gone by now.
My suggestion is that you go for a 780/790. Asus has good products with these chipsets, better than EVGA.

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"New gen" stuff often has a much higher price tag just because it is new. An Intel C2Q (or even a C2D) or an AMD PII X4 or X3 will likely readily meet the OP's needs for much less than i5.
"850 watt PSU" sounds suspiciously like a generic. If so, it is probably only really capable of 600W, and not efficiently at that. Of course, it could be a Corsair or Antec, in which case it is solid, but as jsc pointed out is likely overkill.
If you can wait two weeks, ATI's 58xx GPUs are coming out. Early leaked reports suggest they will severely abuse anything currently out there, which means they will have a nice effect on prices. I5 coming out will also most likely cause prices of older but still perfectly capable CPUs and mobos to go down too.
For gaming on a budget, most of the money usually needs to go into the GPU. An AMD 720BE would be a solid inexpensive CPU option for you, on a 790GX mobo that would allow for Crossfire later if you wanted it. An Intel Q9450 on a P45 board would cost somewhat more, and perform a little better, unless the cost hurts how much GPU muscle you can get. An i5 build would likely leave too little for the GPU, so it would be outperformed by the others. I am not familiar with the exchange rate of USD to New Zealand currency, but $1350 USD would build a very nice machine. It would depend on the games you [want to] play, but that looks to me like a combination similar to i7+HD4870 or AMD X3 or X4+HD58xx or AMD X4+2xHD4870; in some other threads I've commented on why (in general) I think that i5 remains an answer in search of a question.

Isn't the Q9550 and the i5 750 in the same price range? And the P55 and P45 in similar rangers? The only difference would be DDR3 vs DDR2, which is not terribly different anymore...

It's really up to the OP, but I think for that price getting a socket that will still be alive in a few years would be a good idea.

Wouldn't that mean AM3? That's a risk; does AMD have any hope to beat (or even match) Intel in a year or two, or will Intel continue to dominate the high end?
For socket longevity, if I were building a gamer, I think I would choose AM3, but if I were building a number cruncher, I'd probably go LGA1366. I don't think I'd build a new LGA775 any more.

I don't think Newegg will ship outside the US, or the Canadian Newegg outside Canada; has that changed?

And no, you cannot use DDR2 in DDR3 slots.

As to i5, no, I see no use for it today. I can't help but think I'd either regret not coughing up the dough for i7, or end up feeling certain I could have met my needs with the less-expensive Phenom II and bought a heftier GPU.

i really like the better chips but i really think that the core 2 duo is good enough for my needs, it will play all games for a while to come and they aren't that expensive. the gigabyte turns into x8/x8 when running 2 GPUs isn't that a bad thing when running things like the GTX275?

You can only use two ATI cards on the Gigabyte mobo (and only nVidia cards may be paired on the other). You may use any single card on either mobo. Crossfire = ATI, SLI = nVidia.

im not sure about the i5 cos the only boards it runs with are p55 which cant run multiple GPU's on full x16, and also the added price tag, what do you mean what type of dual core i just mean any dual core versus the same speed core 2 duo.

smithinator101 said:
im not sure about the i5 cos the only boards it runs with are p55 which cant run multiple GPU's on full x16, and also the added price tag, what do you mean what type of dual core i just mean any dual core versus the same speed core 2 duo.


The P45 boards run 8x and 8x when Crossfired. It doesn't make all that much difference.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403... <--- here's the benchmarks/review on that
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