Please comment on prospective PC parts

[roulette6]

Hello, everyone. I'm going to be building a Core 2 Duo gaming/Photoshop system and want some advice on whether the components I've chosen are good. Also, I was wondering if I should get a 10,000 RPM hard drive for my new system. Is the difference in speed really profound?

 

Anyway, here are the components

Processor:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775

Motherboard:

MSI P6N SLI-FI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Video card:

PNY VCG88GTS32XPB GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP

Memory:

G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) (2 sticks)

Hard drive:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS

Case:

COOLER MASTER Praetorian PAC-T01-E1 Silver

 

I was thinking of keeping my current PSU (OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI ATX12V 600W PSU) but was wondering if I might need something more powerful. I have an Audigy 2z, but I might stick to integrated sound. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Angry_Games]

processor = excellent choice (mine is doing 3Ghz without voltage increase)

motherboard = not all that fond of MSI, but 650i boards are supposed to be solid clockers!

vid card = stick to eVGA, BFG, XFX, Foxconn for a couple dollars more

memory = good stuff from what I hear. DDR2-800 from anyone will serve you well if you overclock to 3Ghz as you still won't break 800Mhz by using a divider

hard drive = got 2 of them myself

Case = purely a personal choice. I prefer CM STackers because of their size, Lian Li because of their size and all-aluminum materials, etc.

 

psu = excellent psu, will easily run your rig with room to spare

Audigy2 ZS = have about 7 of them, superior to onboard sound in every way

[roulette6]

I really appreciate your comments. I might look into other cases, particularly something that looks pretty good for about $100. I'll check out the CM STackers and see how I like it.

 

BTW, what brand would you recommend for a motherboard? Would EVGA work well if I opt for an EVGA video card?

[Angry_Games]

my motherboard preferences are in order as follows:

 

Gigabyte

Abit

Asus

Foxconn

ECS

eVGA

MSI

 

you do not need to match mobo and vid card. eVGA makes great vid cards, but I'd stick to Gigabyte/Abit/Asus honestly for motherboards.

[suedenim]

Is it necessary for your case to look good? I can highly recommend the Antec P180's - lovely and cool and quiet and your PSU has just enough reach in its cables to be happily located in the bottom compartment.

[AnUnknownSource]

Audigy2 ZS = have about 7 of them, superior to onboard sound in every way

 

 

That's like... 35.7 surround sound ^^

[roulette6]

Suedenim, I'm going to look into Aluminum full towers.

 

Angry (or anyone), how's the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 1.3) LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail?

 

I'm gonna have to read an article on choosing motherboards, b/c I don't really know the difference between the north and south bridges--as in what makes one kind superior to the other.

[red930]

I've become quite fond of eVGA 680i motherboards over the past year or so.

 

They're on my test bench at work and in my home lab right now. Four of them are running in a CFD data cluster at a local foundry doing excellent work in record time for the user.

[Kingfisher]

Angry (or anyone), how's the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 1.3) LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail?

I had that board paired with my E4300, ocdb entry in my sig.

It was fine as long as you don't shut off your PC. When that happens the cold boot feature rears it's ugly head.

The thing would power on and off every few seconds, sometimes it would do it only 3 times, but most often 8-10 times.

Another annoyance is their BIOS, Overvoltage controls +.01 or +.02 but what is stock voltages?? :mad:

It drove me crazy, shipped it back to the Egg and picked my current Asus which has slowly climbed my all-time favorite list.

Maybe I had a lemon but it soured me on Giga-bites.

[roulette6]

I had that board paired with my E4300, ocdb entry in my sig.

It was fine as long as you don't shut off your PC. When that happens the cold boot feature rears it's ugly head.

The thing would power on and off every few seconds, sometimes it would do it only 3 times, but most often 8-10 times.

Another annoyance is their BIOS, Overvoltage controls +.01 or +.02 but what is stock voltages?? :mad:

It drove me crazy, shipped it back to the Egg and picked my current Asus which has slowly climbed my all-time favorite list.

Maybe I had a lemon but it soured me on Giga-bites.

 

I'm guessing most people here use XP since many of us are into gaming, but do you know how well your Asus handles Vista? I think I'm gonna have a dual-boot system.

[Angry_Games]

Vista is all about drivers for your hardware, not the hardware itself (mostly lol). Drivers are a pain still, as are apps, games, etc that still don't work properly yadda yadda.

 

the rule is 90 days AFTER Service Pack 1 for any OS is the time to start moving over to a new OS IF it offers you something that your current OS does not.

 

programs and drivers spend the first period of a new OS's life hardly working properly for the majority of users, while Microsoft works on Service Pack 1 to squash all manner of bugs, security holes, compatibilities, etc. By the time SP1 hits for the new OS, most software, drivers, games, whatever, finally work, then SP1 breaks most of them.

 

So it's usually another 90 days before all the software that was broken is patched to work proper again.

 

Usually after SP1, its a pretty stable, useful OS and eventually becomes THE operating of choice.

 

This has been true in my experience all the way back to Windows 98 (skip Millenium as it was a hybrid piece of trash).

 

The Gigabyte boards are great as far as I've read around from the majority of users. I myself have an S3 as it was only $100, but overclocks easily to whatever I need (I only run E6600 @ 3Ghz, I've no need for more).

 

I'm also interested in the 650i SLI boards. They look to be just as good as the more pricey 680's in terms of performance, overclocking, and most of the features. I'm sure the 680's will probably have more robust RAID/SATA and possibly onboard audio etc, but I've yet to see them be any more value than the 650's.

[roulette6]

Okay, I'm gonna look at Gigabyte, Abit, and Asus to look for a good price/performance value. Something with two PCIex16 slots in case I want to go SLI later (extremely unlikely).

 

Thank you, everyone. Me'thinks this thread is resolved. See you in the other sections, when I decide to overclock.