First Gaming PC Focus

[TheeVagabond]

Good evening, I'm new here on this board. I wanted to get some input on my future build. Here's the information you required and the parts are on the bottom.

Prior Info

1. The Build will be a solution for gaming, music, and internet tasks. It's future will probably involve school work and Office Suites, but my old first build is still running strong for those tasks.

2. My budget can go up to $2,000, but I would like to keep the price low without sacrificing performance if possible. Performance is priority however. This part is difficult (lowering the price that is) because I procured a Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor QX6850 back in November with the Intel Retail Edge program. So my build revolves around maximizing it's efficiency, even though it is not i7 technology. I also have the goal of one day overclocking it to a 1600 FSB with 4.0 GHz for the CPU, and the memory DDR3 1333 going up to 1600. (I'm still researching and trying to learn this.)

3. The parts will be procured Newegg via USA.

4. I am not really a fanboy as I am of laisse-faire and buying a good product for a good price, but I'll be focusing on brands I got word of mouth from as well. These include, ASUS motherboard (MSI is close to my heart too since my first build has a MoBo that hasn't had any problems since May 2004.), Intel, ATI, and WD.

5. I have currently the chip I mentioned in 2. I also have a Antec 900 case.

6. I have been researching and looking at parts and price drops since November.

7. Planning on future overclock to 4.0 Ghz for CPU (10x Multiplier) RAM to 1600 while spending the money on DDR3 1333 (Should I just pay the money for 1600 RAM?), and 1600 FSB (400)

8. I plan to buy parts by May 09, constructions immediately after all parts are procured.

Personality

- I don't like clutter or bulk software with my hardware, I seldom install the suites packaged with them. I usually only like the driver. One control panel is good enough for me, however I'm starting to warm up to is, and if my computer can handle all the junk then sure why not.

- No flash, just performance and for a good price.

Parts

The good stuff, here's the build I'm looking at, it is still changing as I research more, right now I'm stuck

-P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP

-Sapphire ATI Radeon 4850x2 2GB

-SILVERSTONE ST70F 700W

-Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

-Saitek PZ30AU Keyboard

-Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB

-ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" LCD Monitor

-Logitech MX518 Mouse

-LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS30 (Should I invest in Blue Ray? I really don't plan on using the PC for Blue Ray movies, but could games in the future on PC be using them someday?)

-ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 Channels PCI Express Interface Sound Card

-Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit (Is XP 64 driver support still awful?)

-ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

-Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speaker

 

[imported_wired247]

that's still a pretty nice CPU.

Please just forget about DDR3 for an LGA775 CPU. your RAM is not even close to being your bottleneck. when you go with core i7 then you can worry about ddr3.

get yourself a P45 mobo, 2x2GB of DDR2-1066 (1.8-1.9V) RAM... lower volts indicate better quality product. DDR2-1066 can go up to FSB 533, if you can achieve that then you're ahead of most in terms of overclocking.



Blu Ray is nice to have if you like watching movies on your PC. the extra resolution makes a huge difference on computer monitors, which show all the flaws of DVD.

the velociraptor is fine, if you need extra storage you could consider a WD Caviar black 1tb

I hope you're not paying $$ for that sound card.

XP 64 bit? forget about it... why?!!?!? yes, vista is fine.



there are a lot better CPU coolers these days. for value go with the sunbeam core contact freezer. for best performance get the thermalright ultra extreme (TRUE)


and this goes without saying, but you have an extreme edition CPU. you better overclock the bejesus out of it or the CPU gods will frown at you.

your video card is fine, but for my money i'd rather have gtx 280/285. just my opinion. (it seems most games I play perform better with nvidia)

 

[Denithor]

Sell the QX6800 - you can build a whole i7 system for what you'll get for it.

 

[TheeVagabond]

Denithor,

I considered selling it, but actually I would not get a very high price for it. Thanks to the warehouse of the world (Ebay), it goes online for about 300 dollars the last time me and my brother checked in November. Also unfortunately due to my own impatient stupidity I opened the box back in November expecting to have the parts sooner. The money was put in a different direction until now.

If I'm wrong or anyone knows if a untouched CPU but opened flap still fetch a decent price, let me know.

Wired,

I was wondering about the DDR3 issue, I'll have to take another look at some motherboards. I do plan on maybe one day doing CrossFire with box at 16x so I want to keep a lot of flexibility with my motherboard in other areas as well.

Storage is not my concern, I don't think I've ever gone past 100 GBs in my life. To this day I don't understand how people use up so much storage. Then again, I don't download a lot, or mess with a lot of media except photos every now and then.

I might stick with DVD instead of go Blu-Ray, it might seem this build will be fast, but obsolete at the start and spending too much might be not smart at the time.

LOL XP 64, I don't know why, thought I just ask.

How would I judge a good cooler, when I look at its specs and features, what helps me tell it could be a good buy?

Thank you both for your input, I really appreciate this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Jump on the UD3P bandwagon. C'mon, you know you want to.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Sell the QX6800 - you can build a whole i7 system for what you'll get for it.

:thumbsup:

I was thinking the same thing..

 

[TheeVagabond]

I'm still new to overclocking, so I have a question about DDR2-800.

My CPU FSB starts at 1333 (1333/4 = 333) and the multiplier I believe starts at x9. I want to set the CPU to x10 and a FSB of 1600 to get a clock speed of 4.0 Ghz (I'm not sure which review told me the 6850 CPU was able to get to that with air cooling alone practically, but I want to try).

The memory divider I want set to 1:1 so if I got DDR2 than the DDR2 800 would be satisfactory right? What is the point of going higher than that (DDR2 1066)? Could my chip go farther than 4.0 with just added heatsink/fan alone?

As for the Motherboards, I want to be able to use full 16x crossfire on both cards. I want that added flexibility for maybe the future. Is there another good motherboard that allows that and makes use of DDR2? If not, I do like the Gigabyte UD3P and similiar models.

Also, as for Gaming. I like Strategy/FPS/RPG related games. So my popular games are D2/WoW/CivIV/CS:S/TF2 and future Diablo 3, Starcraft 2. I want to be able to play these games on 1920 x 1080 23.6" resolution with full features (AA, etc) and get a minimum of 60 FPS. Is there a Single Card solution for this, I know this isn't possible for games like Crysis, etc. I'm aiming for a majority of the games I play now to be able to do that?

Sorry for all the possibly amateur questions. I've been getting information overload lately reading forums like these and Anandtech reviews and articles.

 

[VirtualLarry]

4.0Ghz on a 65nm quad, on air, is virtually impossible, IMHO.

Water or phase, sure, but not air.

If you want a 4Ghz quad, sell the QX6850, and built a Q9650 instead.

Good luck with your build.

 

[imported_wired247]

Originally posted by: TheeVagabond
I'm still new to overclocking, so I have a question about DDR2-800.

My CPU FSB starts at 1333 (1333/4 = 333) and the multiplier I believe starts at x9. I want to set the CPU to x10 and a FSB of 1600 to get a clock speed of 4.0 Ghz (I'm not sure which review told me the 6850 CPU was able to get to that with air cooling alone practically, but I want to try).

The memory divider I want set to 1:1 so if I got DDR2 than the DDR2 800 would be satisfactory right? What is the point of going higher than that (DDR2 1066)? Could my chip go farther than 4.0 with just added heatsink/fan alone?

As for the Motherboards, I want to be able to use full 16x crossfire on both cards. I want that added flexibility for maybe the future. Is there another good motherboard that allows that and makes use of DDR2? If not, I do like the Gigabyte UD3P and similiar models.

Also, as for Gaming. I like Strategy/FPS/RPG related games. So my popular games are D2/WoW/CivIV/CS:S/TF2 and future Diablo 3, Starcraft 2. I want to be able to play these games on 1920 x 1080 23.6" resolution with full features (AA, etc) and get a minimum of 60 FPS. Is there a Single Card solution for this, I know this isn't possible for games like Crysis, etc. I'm aiming for a majority of the games I play now to be able to do that?

Sorry for all the possibly amateur questions. I've been getting information overload lately reading forums like these and Anandtech reviews and articles.

DDR2 1066 will let you go up to 533 FSB = 2132MHz effective. You won't hit that.

DDR2 800 will let you go up to 400 FSB = 1600MHz effective. A lot of CPUs and motherboards can handle that easily.

The purpose of getting DDR2 1066 is if you want to go past 400FSB, it will give you overhead space for overclocking. But that doesn't mean you need to run it at the full 533 FSB. with 1:1 dram:fsb





Single card solution for 1920x1080, sure I would say GTX 280, 285, 295 will all be great for that res.

If you're hell bent on antialiasing the newest games then more power is going to help.

Of course I generally favor nvidia cards because they tend to run a bit faster in games that I like.

I think your 4850x2 is probably fine as well... but 4870x2 should enable a bit more eye candy for you.