Looking at building a new PC

[Godfather]

hey guys, I've been contemplating building a new PC as I have always done in the past 12 years. Here's what I'm looking at:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.60GHz / 1MB Cache / 1000MHz FSB / Dual Core (Windsor) / Socket AM2 / Processor with Fan ($312.00)

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition NVIDIA Socket AM2 ATX Motherboard / Audio / PCI Express / SLI Ready / Gigabit LAN / Wirelss 802.11b/g / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID ($265.99)

OCZ Platinum Revision-2 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 x 1024MB) ($234.00)

Western Digital / Caviar SE / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / SATA-300 / OEM / Hard Drive ($106.00)


These prices are just in general. I'm going to price around but curious what others think. Let me know, thanks.

Pat.

[jayson]

Nice setup that will be

[Godfather]

Well I'm not totally worried about the dollar value but I am looking at building a gaming PC because that's always been my weakness in every system built. Now I'm going all the way, this will be a big change from my AMD Athlon 2800+ system I have at home right now. I'll check with my distributor in Nova Scotia to see what sort of pricing and return on my old equipment that he can give me. I get a discount with him because I have been purchasing parts and pc's from him for the past 10 years, my father and mother do as well and a couple friends of mine, so it's repeat business. We'll see what I can do, I'm a little iffy about the board and memory at the moment.

[jayson]

I am running the asus m2n -e and it works great and i am running kingston 667mhz ram and I cant slow mine down

[SaskSask]

You should consider an Intel E6400 or E6600 with Asus P5B Deluxe or the ASUS P5B Deluxe / WIFI-AP

The E6400 performs just as well as the 5000+, but runs way cooler. And if you ever wanted to consider overclocking the e6400 .....well I would do a little research to see.

I've had AMD chips for the last 8yrs and broke down and bought an Intel.
Last AMD chip I had was FX-60 and this E6600 runs the games noticeably better.

[Godfather]

I'll have to look into that, sometimes it will depend on the prices as well and trade in value.

[Dynamic]

Rumor has it that Intel will be dropping their prices sometime around April 22. If you’re in no rush it might be worth the wait.
I’m assuming these prices are USD


http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o312/dynamic_1/intel-dpmcp2007-q2.jpg

[Godfather]

I'm not in any hurry to get my new pc built, I'm pricing around and the E6600 Intel processor dual core looks remarkable for my needs. Now what's so special about the ASUS P5B Deluxe MOBO ?

What memory should I go with, I was looking at memory that matched the FSB on the board but need to look around.

I also heard that SATA Drives over 300 GIG are impossible to setup with XP, but Vista loads beautifully on it. Problem is I don't want Vista, I wanna stick with Windows XP period. Suggestions for all of these ????

Pat.

[masterflex1]

sorry

[SaskSask]

Well the P5B Deluxe is pretty good board overall and very popular for its overclocking abilities.

Now memory....well if you think your going to play around with overclocking...then you'll want to do some research.

I am running Team Xtreem and it doesnt seem to mind my OC'n it. It is around $320 for PC2-6400 2GB. Even if you didnt want it for overclocking purposes....its pretty stable.

OCZ is pretty good ram also....from what I have read online.

As for installing Windows Xp onto a 300+ GB hard drive. I have always made a partition of 30-40GB on large drives ...so whenever I want to format and reinstall windows....I don't have to worry about 300+GB of potential data lose or offloading it onto another drive.

[JIm C.]

Nice little set up...

I would almost wait a little bit and go quad core....but it may be alittle

bit before they drop in price... amd quad cores slated to be out

within the next month or two...when they do the dual cores will drop even

more than they already have..


Nice little set you're planning.... the intel's run hot very hot....

make sure you got good cooling


but also if you're going to run ddr2 pc- 6400 check to make sure

the ram is compatible with that mobo you wouldn't believe how many

people buy the 800mhz ram and then find out it won't work

in their mobo..... that's why most local shoppes only stock

533/667 ddr ram still a lot of ram issues...

anyway good luck

you can get the 5000 cpu or a 5200 x2 for a little cheaper now...


Also spend a few extra $$$ get the sata 2 16mb hard drive the larger buffer size makes a huge difference in preformance

well worth the extra $$$

[SaskSask]

There are all kinds of articles you can read ...

This and a few other articles is what finally helped me decided on the E6600 vs any of the AMD cpus at this time.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=1

And if you look at the gaming performance
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=9
It helped me decide even more.

Near as I can tell the E6600 (at stock speeds) has better performance then the 5000+. When the E6600 is OC'd it kicks the snot out of the 5000+ and higher AMD chips.
If there is something out there that says otherwise I would really like to read about it.

At stock speed for the E6600 ...I have an idle temp of 40C and at full load 47C. Thats way cooler then the old intel cpus use to run at? Could have sworn I read about 5000+ idle of 50C but im starting to wonder about that.

For what I understand there was an issue with the P5B's not booting cause the mem volt was set low 1.8v? But the boards come out with a later bios version ...and the boot problem is a none issue now.

Jim C makes some valid points ...Quad is just around the corner.
The ram issue ...I would still make sure it wasn't going to be a problem.
Not to mention the prices on the intels seem to be crip'n up (greedy buggers).

[Godfather]

Good points, all well taken, I'll have a look at all of this, especially the mobo if it can handle the 800 MHz ddr2 ram. Thanks guys, I appreciate all of this.

pat.