£500 quid to spend

[mickey]

Hi guys, messed about with a laptop for a couple of days but its not for me, So will you guys recommend me a Cpu,M/B and graphics card for this money. main use is hd fims/media centre use but want a card that will play most of the games now ok, i was thinking an 8800gts, core2duo and motherboard maybe an asus or gigabyte but any suggestions welcome, cant believe how many new proceesors are out in the 2 months since i sold my last one. cheers Mike

 

[SeanT]

Is that money for just mobo, cpu and graphics, or do you need to get ram and / or hdd out of that budget?
Budget should go nicely on a 35 Asus, Intel Quad and an 8800 of some description, maybe even try a 2900 card for a bit of change and maybe better hardware acceleration.

 

[mickey]

hi thanks for the reply,money is just for cpu/mb and graphics, will use my pc-60 case and existing hard drives i have, will also buy a silent power supply but nt icluding that in the £500, do you think a quad will be a worthwhile buy then?, i do do some video encoding.cheers Mike

 

[SeanT]

If you are gaming then more processor power doesn't hurt, and as you have the budget you may aswell - it's not required for HTPC use as there's only so much you can do (and so much noise you can stand) whilst watching media content - watching and recording using DScaler with a hungryish codec and lots of filters hits about 68% on a slower dual core AMD - but if the money is there then why not go quad - depends how much you need to allocate to graphics really (you could spend over 300 quid on a graphics card and bang a decent processor mobo combo out for just shy of 200 - might have to be amd though!)
Asus boards are good imho but the gigabyte seems to be ticking all the boxes atm too.

 

[mickey]

will go browing now and let you know what i find i seen a few things before that took my eye , will post a list when i have picked a few see what you think. thanks again Mike

hi, here are some items I found
motherboards

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(17596)Gigabyte-motherboard-GAP35CDS3R-Intel-P35.aspx
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(17692)Asus-Motherboard-P5K-Intel-P35-LGA775-Core2.aspx
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(18216)Asus-Motherboard-P5KC-Intel-P35-LGA775-Core2.aspx

cpu
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(19964)Intel-CPU-Core-2-Duo-E6750-266GHz-1333FSB.aspx
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(21806)Intel-CPU-Core-2-Quad-Pro-Q6600-95W-Energy.aspx

graphics
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(21009)Gigabyte-GF-8800GTS-SLI-320MB-DDR3-PCIE-DVI.aspx

i dont seem to be able to find a ati2900 in the right price bracket, but the above items are just a few of my options i think. cheers Mike

 

[SeanT]

The 2900XT DDR4 512 meg is about £230 at both aria and ebuyer, seems to be about the cheapest price for it, with the topmost of both of the above components would put you at about £505-510
The third mobo is a no-brainer imho, because it supports DDR3, will work ok with either of the processors listed, will leave that upto you

 

[mickey]

hi, thing i cant get my head round with these asus,s is the web specs one minute they support quad core the next they dont, if you read the info on asus webpage for the p5k you will see what i mean the last line of the specs say it doent support quad core yet the general list says it does??. cheers Mike

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1694&modelmenu=1

 

[tinners]

Yes it does according to the support page
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

Q6600 GO support:
Board ~ BIOS
P5K ~ 0603
P5K Deluxe ~ 0404
P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP ~ 0404
P5K Premium/WiFi-AP ~ 0204
P5K SE ~ 0309
P5K WS ~ 0307
P5K3 Deluxe ~ 0604
P5KC ~ 0701
P5K-E/WiFi-AP ~ 0503
P5KPL ~ 0126
P5KR ~ 0201
P5K-V ~ 0402
P5K-VM ~ 0401

 

[mickey]

hi guys, after much browsing I ended up getting the gigabyte board, The q6600 cpu g0 version??
, one thing now comes to mind is it gonna sound like a tank with an 8800gts in it?.As I said before want to play some games as well as watch hd films.cheers Mike

P:S is the 640mb version worth buying over the 320mb to futureproof for future games?

 

[tinners]

My 8800 is quiet-ish at idle (1400RPM) but when the fan needs to go up it gets very "whooshy"

The cooling needed for an overclocked Quad Core will also not help silence, but with automatic fan control set up if you're not stressing the CPU and you have decent fans then you should be OK. But let's face it it wont be a silent media center !

P:S is the 640mb version worth buying over the 320mb to futureproof for future games?

Some reviews say not but TBH the performance of any DX10 card with DX10 games at the minute is pants. Maybe this is a driver issue maybe not.
I personally went for the 640Mb as I cant see how double the memory can hurt performance.

 

[mickey]

Hi,thanks for the reply, I dont foresee me overclocking the quad anyway so hopefully not to much noise from that, I expect some fan noise from the 8800gts when watching hd stuff, and not really bothered how loud it is when playing games, most of the time i would have a headset on for games anyway.cheers Mike

P:S q6600 just arrived how do i know its a G0 version?

 

[tinners]

P:S q6600 just arrived how do i know its a G0 version?

It should say on the CPU p) and I believe the product code should have SLACR at the end rather than the old stepping which has SL9UM

 

[mickey]

cheers, code does end in slacr only other thing i can find is pcg 05a. havnt opened it yet as if it was the wrong one you know what these shops are like. cheers mike

 

[tinners]

Good news, but I dont think many places would change it anyway just for the stepping. I know at Scan you need to buy the specific GO SKU (for a few quid extra) if you want a guarantee.

Anyway it's reasonably academic if youre not overclocking.

 

[Tejstar]

I personally went for the 640Mb as I cant see how double the memory can hurt performance.

Agreed, although if you plan on playing at higher resolutions then the extra memory will come in handy.

 

[mickey]

thanks for all your advice guys,i did get a 640mb 8800gts in the end,as you said wil probably come in handy when more dx10 games come along, as for noise i would say most of the noise comes from my power supply and case fans so will have to replace them i think, Any suggestions?, no mega bucks please. cheers Mike

 

[Tejstar]

The Akasa Amber fans are quite well received.

 

[AdvWar]

The Corsair PSUs are supposed to be pretty quiet, and are very efficient.

 

[mickey]

Hi Guys, Which do you reckon i have up?. got a new corsair power supply and all booted up fine and dandy,now since pc was now apart i thought i would put some artic silver on the cooler now i knew everything worked ok. now pc wont boot at all, unless the atx 4pin cable is not connected, even though it boots without this cable it wont actually show any kind of display at all no beeps etc, all the fans start ,power supply fans, cpu fan case fans etc but no display which i think is normal anyway if the 4 pin atx is not connected. as soon as i connect the 4 pin atx cable no boot at all, the fans go for about 1/4 a second then nothing. so my question which do you think i have killed?, the motherboard or cpu, I know I had to press rather hard to reattach the intel heatsink so my thinking is I have damaged the mb somehow, broke a tracer or something,I suppose it had to happen sooner or later about 200+ pc builds and never damaged one yet.anyway question is more to see if any one has actually seen this effect before .cheers Mike

 

[enablerbro1]

I'd take it all apart and then rebuild making sure to secure/connect everything and try it again.

 

[mickey]

yea done it a couple of times but still no joy, can get it to boot up or at least the fans all keep going and the power supply fan keeps going as well with the 12v 4 pin connector in as long as the cpu is not in the m/b, so either the cpu is damaged or the cpu socket. will have to purchase anothe m/b i think since it is the cheaper of the two. cheers Mike

 

[enablerbro1]

Fingers crossed it's just your mobo, as you say it's the least expensive thing to break. You must have been really using some elbow grease to bu**er it.

 

[mickey]

well it was the m/b that I broke, on close inspection looks like i bent a couple of pins on the cpu socket( got a load on nice new gigabyte spares now anyway) , got an asus p5kc m/b replacement ,(nearest place didnt have the gigabyte in) and all now works again ,cpu ok(whew!!!). Only thing is now I cant get my corsair ddr2 1066mhz to run at that speed,I cant suss out how to do it in the asus bios(it was easy in the gigabyte change ddr voltage to 2.2 and ddr mem speed to 1066. Done) So any asus owners who can advise me or better still tell me how to do it i would appreciate it.cheers Mike

its ok got it sussed now