This is my list so far. (I'm only building my block btw.)

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16819115030

Motherboard: ???

GFX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16814130038

RAM: ???

Case: http://www.newegg.com/product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16811119068
(combo with PSU for $119.00)

PSU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16819115030

HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16822148262

As you can see, I'm stuck on which mobo to get. I favor Nvidia over all, after having the nForce2 mobo for so damn long, =] BUT, I dont care much for SLI...and all nVidida chipsets have SLI. Also, I seem to favor ASUS stuff, but are there any other good companies you can sugest?
Third, perhaps I can just get a board with a single PCI-E X16 slot? and a nVidia south bridge?

I alreadly listed my video card confusion in this theard here: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=29627

Thank you.

I really don't know much about mobos, picked mine by price.

But this one might be good for you.

Then to go with that, some high quality ram .

GFX, well, as you said on the other thread, you have a budget of thousand dollars. The parts on the list and the ones I linked sum up to $600.46 so that would leave you with 399.45 to spend for the GFX. Like Tweaker, I would suggest you to spend some money on it, as it will pay off later. With that almost 400 dollars left, you could easily afford the 8800 GTS . That is if you don't need a monitor and I calculated things correctly.


BTW, all those parts are incredibly cheap compared what we pay over here, the price tag is switched to euro and then increased with some. Bargain prices I say.

What sort of mobo would you be looking for? Enthusiast? Semi-enthusiast? Budget?

the eVGA 650i mobo is fairly nice, although i love my P5K.

RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16820146565 - Great RAM, D9 chips, low timings.

I'd also have a look on eBay to see if you can find a "Xeon X3210" for sale, it's a great "budget quad"

Quote from Jakg :

What sort of mobo would you be looking for? Enthusiast? Semi-enthusiast? Budget?

the eVGA 650i mobo is fairly nice, although i love my P5K.

RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16820146565 - Great RAM, D9 chips, low timings.

I'd also have a look on eBay to see if you can find a "Xeon X3210" for sale, it's a great "budget quad"

isn't that ram awfully slow for his processor. 1333 mhz FSB processor with 800 mhz ram?

A. You can have the RAM run on a divider to make it faster (got them sticks running at 1000 MHz, 5-5-5-15 timings) and B. Good luck getting cheap 1333 MHz RAM.

wait, so having a 1333fsb on the c2d and 800 RAM is going to be bad?

Then, what about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16820227178

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16814130038

Also, how about skimping on the proc and getting a good, but cheap mobo.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16819115015

This proc seems like it it is so much worse for only being a little cheaper... wtf?

Also, why is the E6400 more expensive when it has lower specs?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16819115004 worse, and $205

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16819115030 better and $178

WTF????

Ok, maybe this mobo then?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16813131180

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16813131184

Check the spec of the motherboard again, the FSB is 1333, but the RAM standard is 800.
Without using whatever overclocking options the board has, any RAM you put in it will only run up to 800, so getting faster RAM only makes sense if you plan on overclocking the system.

Well, im looking to get a 1066mhz proc, 1066mhz fsb/mem standard motherboard, and 1066mhz ram to have everything run in sync with each other.

Through, do you notice that while ASUS makes good boards, there is always SOME glitch with them? Be it the bios, raid, sata, etc not functioning properly ought of the box...At least that's the picture I get from the reviews.

Install board=crap, then mess with it and fix everything, and= great product... what puzzles me is why can't asus do all this BEFORE shipping their boards, so that people like us dont have to fawk aound with it to get it to work?

Quote from Mako. :

Ok, maybe this mobo then?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16813131180

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16813131184

The P5K pwns :P

VERY nice Overclocking board, runs 1333 MHz CPU's, the RAID ONLY works for an internal and external drive though (the most rediculous implementation of RAID i've ever seen, tbh)

Quote from need :

Check the spec of the motherboard again, the FSB is 1333, but the RAM standard is 800.
Without using whatever overclocking options the board has, any RAM you put in it will only run up to 800, so getting faster RAM only makes sense if you plan on overclocking the system.

It's easy enough just to drop the multiplier down by one and set the FSB to 400 and *bam* your memory is running at stock speeds and your CPU's running a little faster - ie when i did this on my CPU it let me go from 2.13 GHz stock to 2.8 GHz, on stock voltage, without seemingly getting any hotter - and this is on a B3 Quad (or "Space Heater" as you call them :P). I then looked in the SPD of my memory (Crucial Ballistix PC6400) and found that it's rated for 1,000 MHz with looser timings (4-4-4-12 vs 5-5-5-15) and bumped it up using a divider, which gave it a little performance increase.

TBH these Core 2 CPU's are so quick that even I, "t3h overclock whore" can't really see a point in trying to squeeze out every last MHz, but imo it is worth just getting your memory running back at the speed it should be.

Quote from Mako. :

Through, do you notice that while ASUS makes good boards, there is always SOME glitch with them? Be it the bios, raid, sata, etc not functioning properly ought of the box...At least that's the picture I get from the reviews.

This is my second Asus board, and while the first one went a bit fubar'ed overclocking with a flashed BIOS they've both worked great out of the box.

I'd like to point out that NewEgg reviews contain some of the most idiot "experienced IT professionals" i've ever seen, tbh, as the "review page" is more of epenis bragging about their 8800 Ultra with no way of replying with "No, the mobo is not broken, your just trying to put an AM2 CPU in an LGA775 motherboard..."

It's up to you - if you have no plans of overclocking, then you can always use a divider to make the RAM run the right speed, although it seems to be faster if running at the same speed as the CPU.

/me is now tempted to drop the multiplier even lower and go for 500 FSB which means great memory bandwidth and 3 GHz *evil grin*

so is my idea of running everything at 10066 and going with the E6430 and getting better ram good to go then? This is what I'm thinking of now:

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16819115015

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16820227178

Videocard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16814130038

Motherboard: P5K... but which one??? there's like 10 of them...

What do you guys think of this HD?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... aspx?Item=N82E16822148262


Also, I don't realy know the ins and outs of raid... and therefore see no point of having it at all, so can you please show me a link that explains it? And thank you for the help so far!

RAID:

RAID0 uses two identical HDD's to almost double HDD read/right speed by storing one half on one disk, and the other half of the data on the other drive BUT if one drive dies, all the data is unrecoverable - but tbh HDD's are VERY durable.

The P5K, The P5K OEM and the P5K-SE

The P5K OEM comes in a crappy box, and with the minisclue price difference i'd get the "retail" P5K as if you come to sell it the box will make it more valuable. The P5K-SE is the same (afaik) only with really crappy Chipset cooling - if you want to overclock, you'll want new chipset cooling - but then if you planned to buy new chipset cooling, why bother with a mobo that has decent ones your taking off.

If i were you i'd get the P5K (the "plain" P5K is reffered to as the "P5K Vanilla" on some forums) Retail. Of course, there are P5K's that support DDR3 (When DDR3 becomes mainstream you'll probably be wanting a new mobo), WiFi and tons of other pointless crap.

Ok, so I'm getting the retail then... that's the first link, right?

And what about all my other stuff? like, can you clarify about the 1066mhz idea? Did i get that right?

and this is the PSU i finaly selected: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16817103937

will it run everything ok?

Well, just ordered all this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16811119068

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16813131180

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16814130038

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16817103937

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16819115015

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16820227178

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?Item=N82E16822148262

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... asp?Item=N82E16826104191-

Quote from Mako. :

Ok, so I'm getting the retail then... that's the first link, right?

And what about all my other stuff? like, can you clarify about the 1066mhz idea? Did i get that right?

and this is the PSU i finaly selected: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ ... .asp?item=N82E16817103937

will it run everything ok?

In the motherboard you can just set the DRAM to "1066 MHz" and it will be fine.

That should be a very nice PC, i just hope the PSU takes it (One area i know little about is PSU's, thus why i have a pretty crappy one), but i'm pretty sure it will.

That PSU should do it, but at least XFX recommends using 600W PSU and 400W is minimum for their 8800 GTS. Don't know about that manufacturer, but I guess it can't be that different as they are the same cards after all. It wouldn't hurt having some reserve.

Amps are MUCH more important than Watts - i've run an 8800GTX on a 580w PSU, and i've seen people do the same on a 480w, but the amount of Amperage you've got is king

Well, it doesn't mean it doesn't run. But I guess the recommendation is there because under heavy load, depending totally what kind of computer you have and what kind of other part it has, you might run out of power.

And I've been under the impression that amps and voltage are the same with any PSU and standardized, well, depending what line you measure. But I'm not that good with electronics stuff, so I might be talking nonsense.

They aren't, but usually the more watts a PSU has the more amps they tend to have - then stuff like £10 700w PSU's came out which were utter trite, and now you might have to do a little research into it.

Usually a decent (ie not made by a company called "BANZAI POWER!" or similar) PSU from a decent manufacturer should be fine, and i'd imagine that will run an 8800GTS fine.

Quote from Jakg :

They aren't, but usually the more watts a PSU has the more amps they tend to have - then stuff like £10 700w PSU's came out which were utter trite, and now you might have to do a little research into it.

Usually a decent (ie not made by a company called "BANZAI POWER!" or similar) PSU from a decent manufacturer should be fine, and i'd imagine that will run an 8800GTS fine.

Yes, yes, I don't want to get pickering about this issue. I said it should be ok, but they might recommend more powerful PSU, but it's not like he is having that power hungy combo there.

Of course, sometimes the power they claim the PSU has is utter bs in the first place. So if a cheap 700W doesn't work like you thought it should, it might have nothing to do with amps, it just doesn't have that 700W they said it had!

Well the PSU should be fine, but what i'm saying is that amps are just as important as wattage.

In the case of the super cheap PSU's the Quoted Figures are Peak, NOT under load, and often drop alot of wattage under load whereas most decent PSU companies supply their figures with lots of load.

The moral of the story? The first PSU i ever bought saved me £20 in buying a better quality one - it also cost me £90 in the mobo it burned out, which then made me HAVE to spend the extra £20 (and the rest!) on not only a better PSU, but also on a new mono. Moral? Cheap PSU's = False Economy

Hmm, I'm guessing you cant install a part and then return it to get a different one, can you?

And to me, Antec is a more trustful name than OCZ... but still, I have no Idea. Also, I already went $16.00 over budget, but I think that adding a little more from my pocket is not too bad of an Idea for ashurance of quality.

Antec make cases, then they made good PSU's, then they made really terrible PSU's and they're now making decent ones to try to save their reputation iirc

OCZ are NOT a good brand - their only "great" PSU is made by either Targan or PCP&C iirc

Quote from Jakg :

OCZ are NOT a good brand - they're only "great" PSU is made by either Targan or PCP&C iirc

Isn't "they're short" of "they are", because if it isn't that sentence really makes no sense. You meant their, right?

Jeez I need to put more thought into my sentance if a Finn is correcting a Native Speaker :X