What do you think of this i5-750/Biostar T5 XE etc?

legoflamb

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Dec 16, 2005
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Ok so my cpu
died recently and I'm just going to do an overhaul of most of it rather than messing about replacing it and then upgrading in a while anyway.

I'm thinking:

i5-750
biostar t5 xe mobo: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

and this ram? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MICRON-4GB-2X-...item1c0ea0d06f

I have a gfx card, psu and HD already.;

Any thoughts on this? Like Is the ram completely rubbish, or is it better to buy mobo and cpu separately and get something else?

I've never heard of biostar before (are they useless like asrocks with pci-e not running at 16x etc?)

I don't really get what I'm looking for with regards to ram, I just know that if you want ocz or kingston etc it'll cost you an extra £25 at least...

I'm just trying to keep costs down a bit.

I'll be buying in the next few days.

I do a lot of multitasking (who doesn't?!) and I do like to play games but I'm not interested in having the sickest overclocked pc with watercooling etc...

Thanks in advance!
 

p55ibexpeak

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Neither asrocks nor biostar are useless. They target the budget crowd. Naturally, their boards may not have all the bells & whistles of the more expensive boards like ASUS & Gigabyte. They do a few overclocking boards.

Don't buy computer parts from ebay if you don't want the hassle to deal with returns. What's your budget? What do you need?
 

legoflamb

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Hey thanks for the reply.

The last time I had an asrock it only ran pci-e at 4x etc they're very vague about how bad their stuff is, but you get what you pay for I guess.... Is the biostar as bad as this, I've heard they're budget boards but very good for the price?

For the computer I have that's just died I had an asus p5b vm-se which was much more preferable to a pony asrock but I managed to get it at a good price. If you can make any recommendations I'll see what I can do. I've been using cpu-upgrade.com but they don't seem to have any info for mobos that'll work with i5-750.

I want ram, mobo and cpu for less than £320 or so if possible.

I was thinking i5-750 is good and worth upgrading to without being top of the range and stupidly expensive.

I am semi-concerned about buying stuff from ebay but I've bought 2 psu's 2 graphics cards 1 set of ram and 1 mobo from there without incident but it just seems to be the cheapest - especially with bundled deals.

Anyway I've gone on enough. Let me know what you think!
 

p55ibexpeak

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You've been lucky when buying from ebay.

--
My cart:

Remove from cart Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor 172755 37 in stock £143.72 £124.97 £143.72 £124.97
Remove from cart Asus P7P55 LX P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio Out ATX Motherboard 176820 28 in stock £89.98 £78.24 £89.98 £78.24
Remove from cart Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix Memory Kit CL7 (7-7-7-24) 1.65V 179278 179 in stock £67.58 £58.76 £67.58 £58.76
(click if you have changed any details) Cart total inc vat: Cart total ex vat: £301.28
Shipping Charge:
Subtotal:
VAT:
Total:

£9.99 £8.68
£270.65
£40.62
£311.27

ebuyer.com
------

After shipping & vat, it comes out to 311.27 pounds. Not bad an i5 build. The mobo supports CrossFire at x16 & x4. The ram is CAS 7. Pretty good if you ask me.
 

vznoobie12

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As p55ibexpeak said, biostar's t5 xe is aimed towards the budget oriented consumer. With that said, t5xe is an excellent board. I own an i5 and t5xe (CFX/SLI version) and wow am I impressed with its performance. With a hyper 212+, I'm OCCT/Prime stable at 3.9 @ 1.264vcore AND 4.2 @ 1.4vcore.

With that said, your dual gpu will run either at x16/x4 with the regular t5xe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138160&cm_re=biostar_lga_1156-_-13-138-160-_-Product

and x8/x8 with the version I have
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138162&cm_re=biostar_lga_1156-_-13-138-162-_-Product

Note that at the moment, the performance difference from x16/x16, like on an AM3 or x58 platform, and x8/x8 is marginal.
 

legoflamb

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So basically don't bother buying that mobo because it won't run my gfx card at the right speed? What would be a good quality mobo without being the sickest but not sacrificing stuff like these budget ones seem to do?

And what about the ram? It looks cheap but says it uses micron stuff?