building a new system

[ubercaffeinated]

Hey guys, thanks to that incredible stickied thread of recommended parts, I've decided to build a new rig. With that said, I haven't built a rig in years.

Here's the run down of what I got:
Core 2 Duo E8400
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
EVGA 512-P3-N975-AR GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Antec Sonata III
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB


Am I missing anything? I'm planning to run the thing stock and I have all the peripherals already and I plan to use a scavenged liteon sata dvd drive. As far as cables and stuff go, everything will be included with what I ordered right? I can start putting the thing together the day UPS hits my door? How will this rig run?

 

[yh125d]

Looks like you made some good choices

The caviar black edition of the WD 640gb is known for being super fast (almost raptor fast from what I hear) so you might want to consider it.

This rig should run quite well for awhile, even at stock speeds. However, if you get the OC bug that 8400 should clock up to about 3.6 or so on stock cooling, closer to 3.8+ under a good cooler

Yep, all the cables/screws/etc should be included unless you're buying open box. Chances are your HD will be OEM (meaning no cables, maybe not a manual or screws) but your motherboard will come with all the sata cables you need and you'll get a little bag of screws with the case.

That said you might want to consider a new psu. 17A x 2 on the 12v rails is a bit low for a 500w unit (sorry antec, I just don't trust your PSU's like I do your cases) but I'm probably being paranoid.

 

[ubercaffeinated]

nice, thanks for the quick response

i'll consider a new psu and OCing it in a year or so, when i need a new vid card.

the stock fan on the cpu is good enough right? also, i haven't picked up any artic silver or whatever i used to use back in the day - do i need it?

finally, i'm planning on running plain jane windows xp pro on this (i have an unused copy laying around). i realize only 3200 mb of the ram will register, but i'm using the thing only for gaming, and i don't have to pay for another os if i use this. what's the general thought on this?

 

[DSF]

OEM hard drives come with screws in my experience.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: DSF
OEM hard drives come with screws in my experience.

I've ordered many OEM hd's and I've never seen them come with anything except the drive. Everywhere I've seen it's just the drive wrapped in the static bag.

Also I just upgraded to Vista64 2 days ago and it's been nothing but good vibrations lol but it's a good OS. I've been playing Fallout 3 and have had no hicups. It's takes some getting used to since things are in different places but it's stable and if something crashes it kills only that program. I haven't had the OS crash once on me. It's very pretty and it runs fast. Superfetch makes everything very snappy and it uses your RAM much better than XP ever did.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: zerocool84

Originally posted by: DSF
OEM hard drives come with screws in my experience.

I've ordered many OEM hd's and I've never seen them come with anything except the drive. Everywhere I've seen it's just the drive wrapped in the static bag.

Same here, no screws with OEM, but most cases come with plenty of screws.

 

[ubercaffeinated]

damn, they didn't provide any thermal grease. just assumed they would. ah well. what's a good one these days?

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Originally posted by: makoto00
damn, they didn't provide any thermal grease. just assumed they would. ah well. what's a good one these days?

I've never had any trouble with Arctic Silver 5. Xbitlabs just did a TIM roundup, check it out if you're interested:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...interface-roundup.html

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: makoto00
damn, they didn't provide any thermal grease. just assumed they would. ah well. what's a good one these days?

Which heat sink? If you're using the stock heatsink the thermal interface material is already applied to the base of the cooler. That's what that gray patch is. You don't need to do anything to it, just pop the heat sink on.

 

[ubercaffeinated]

Originally posted by: DSF

Originally posted by: makoto00
damn, they didn't provide any thermal grease. just assumed they would. ah well. what's a good one these days?

Which heat sink? If you're using the stock heatsink the thermal interface material is already applied to the base of the cooler. That's what that gray patch is. You don't need to do anything to it, just pop the heat sink on.

i realized that after the fact. oh well. heh i have some spare arctic silver 5...

everything booted up perfectly the first time around. have yet to get around installing any games on it, but it'll probably be getting christened later on by some left 4 dead