[DexMoney]

Allright guys so right now I've decided on some parts and the total cost is $1300. If you can I would like some input on how good this rig will be and possibly how I can make it a little less expensive but not sacrificing to much performance.
Here are the Parts I'm considering:

• Liteon LH-20A1P 20X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive
• EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card
• ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus nForce 650i Socket 775 ATX Motherboard
• ViewSonic VX922 19" LCD Monitor - XTREME 2 ms, 650:1, SXGA 1280x1024, Silver-Black, DVI, VGA(D-sub), 170º Viewing Angles
• Ultra / X-Finity / 600-Watt / ATX / Dual 80mm Fan / SATA-Ready / SLI Ready / Titanium / Power Supply
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6600 2.4GHz 1066MHz 4MB LGA775 CPU
• NZXT Apollo SILVER case
• Windows XP

OCZ 2GB Kit DDR2-800 PC2-6400 Gold Gamer eXtreme XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory

• Seagate / 320GB / 7200 / 16MB / SATA-300 / OEM / Hard Drive

[DexMoney]

Plz guys a little help on this

[cfhpantera]

First, that graphics card is exactly what you need. Don't settle for anything less. In most cases the 320MB 8800GTS is faster than AMD's HD 2900XT which costs around $370 right now I believe. The 640MB version of the 8800GTS is unneeded unless you play games at very high resolutions where the extra memory is a benefit.

Your motherboard is good but if your looking to save money I don't reccomend it. The EVGA 650i ultra board is excellent. It costs $99 retail and believe it or not is slightly faster than most overpriced and exotic boards except for a few 680i boards. Not only does it perform well, it is also one of the best overclocking boards available. Several sites have a review on it and I highly reccomend getting it. A chipset fan over the NB heatsink and a heatsink over the SB is reccomended for this board.

600W is overkill despite what most people are going to tell you. The most demanding system that you can possibly build right now will not draw no more than 550W under full load. You can easily drop down to a high quality 450W power supply. I reccomend Cooler Master.

Don't bother getting an E6600, instead get a E4300. It has a 9x multiplier and an 800FSB which means it can be easily overclocked. I have an E4300 with the EVGA 650i ultra I reccomended above. I have it overclocked from the default of 1.8Ghz to 3.2Ghz on stock cooling. At this speed it is much faster than an E6600 and costs around $114 right now. It will probably go to 3.4Ghz, I just havn't tried it yet. The only downside to the E4300 is that it has 2MB of L2 instead of 4MB but this is not a big deal considering the clock speed you can get out of the E4300 for the money.

Your memory is a waste of money. Look at newegg for a Transcend Jetram 2GB kit of
DDR2 800. It costs around $74. There is a 0-2% performance difference between "exotic" memory and the cheap stuff. If you get the E4300 cheap memory will not have an affect on a good overclock.

Do you really need 320GB? Your hard drive could be a lot cheaper. 80GB is plenty enough for me and I probably won't even use 40GB of it. Despite that, drives with an 8MB cache are cheaper than ones with a 16MB cache and there is no performance difference if you look at benchmarks.

Consider getting Vista, your buying a DX10 card so your going to want Vista to play DX10 games.

[DexMoney]

This is alot of great info! The reason I chose that RAM is because it currently is $35 dollars off and only cost $65 great deal at zipzoomfly.com.

I just have a question is overclocking a difficult process? This will be my first build and I'm pretty good with computers but not really good. Also you havent had any problems with overclocking have you? The CPU stays cool enough with stock cooling??? Is the FSB going to limit the speed?

Is Vista going to take away from the 2 gigs of ram I am getting? I heard that its not worth it.

What do you use to cool the NB heatsink and what heatsink did u put over the SB?

Thanks

[cfhpantera]

Overclocking is not difficult especially with the E4300. All you have to do is raise the FSB speed on the E4300. There is no need to change the multiplier or mess around with voltages. It is as simple as going into your BIOS and adjusting one setting (the FSB speed), this will raise your actual clock speed by running in sync with the multiplier. If you have a good case and good airflow the stock HSF will easily cool the E4300 at 3.0-3.2Ghz. The low FSB speed is good because the higher the FSB the harder it is to maintain a good overclock. 800mhz FSB is prime, so if you purchased the reccomended motherboard above you simply go into the BIOS and you will see the default FSB at 800 simply change it from 800 to 1422 and your clock speed will now be 3.2Ghz instead of the default 1.8Ghz.

Be sure you purchase a case that allows fans to be mounted at the front so you have some air intake as well as some exhuast fans. Keep in mind you want to have more fans blowing out than blowing in as this creates an air vaccum effect inside the case.

You can buy a small heatsink to put over the SB as there are mounting holes available on the motherboard. You can also get a small fan to wedge on the NB as well. In my case I had a small Cooler Master Blue Ice chipset cooler laying around. I took the heatsink off and applied it to the SB and then I wedged the fan itself on the middle of the NB. What I am referring to is this http://www.coolermaster.com/products...te=152&id=2526

And yes Vista uses more resources but if you know how to properly configure your computer then it's nothing to worry about. Also if you have 2GB of RAM you don't have to worry about resource savings as much as you would with 1GB of RAM. Vista has an advanced prefetcher that loads parts of frequently used applications into memory for faster access so it will appear like Vista is using a lot of memory. The truth is vista is simply using your RAM as a cache and it will release what it has cached if you play a demanding game that requires all of those resources. This is a very well designed performace feature as Idle RAM is wasted RAM. If you want to play DX10 games on DX10such as the highly anticipated Crysis you have to get vista, otherwise you are stuck on DX9 and you will be missing out on a lot of the eye candy your 8800GTS is capable of showing.

[DexMoney]

Wow thanks alot you have been a great help!

[cfhpantera]

Sadly, I have nothing else to do with my time.

[DexMoney]

At least you are putting it into some good use.

[DexMoney]

Just one more question... I need to get Serial ATA cables and was just wondering whether i should get this one:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...04524&CatId=84
or
this one:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...76135&CatId=84
I have a Seagate 320GB 7200 16MB SATA-300 Hard Drive
Also as you would know the motherboard supports Serial ATA - II

[cfhpantera]

The motherboard comes with TWO SATA cables. There is no need to buy them seperately.

[DexMoney]

Nice thx man and seriously you are a great help

[Azelino]

I would personally get a less expensive power supply theirs no need in 600w in my opinion 400-500 would be good enough =)
with the money you have earned from downgrading your power supply you could get more RAM

[DexMoney]

Would there be much of a difference if i used a e4400 or an e4300? would spending 9 bucks more be worth it?

[ZoomZ]

Get the e6600 instead of trying to push a e4300 so hard .

If your on a tight budget get the wimpy chip but the e6600 will rock at 3.4-3.6 clock speeds for years to come .

If your gona get an 8800gts get the 640 meg card , the 320 is not enough for hard core gaming .

[frankjohn]

Most gamers lean toards AMD-