Conroe build, not really on a tight budget

[Pahonix]

As mentioned, I'm not really on a budget, but I'd rather not jump over the $2k mark for what I need. I already have two Dell 2005FPW 20" widescreens, keyboard, mouse, LiteOn 16x DVD-ROM, NEC 3520 DVD+-R Dual Layer drive. I just need the rest.

Primary purpose is World of Warcraft as well as other games that I might want to get into at a later date. I multitask quite often while playing WoW on one screen and on the other with Firefox, Ventrilo, Excel and mIRC as standard apps that are always open. I will frequently have either Photoshop or Irfanview open as well to review screenshots as I take them. Needless to say, I tend to run a lot of stuff simultaneously that I would like to run smoothly and still keep decent framerates in WoW.

That being said, here's the component list.

Motherboard
-ASUS P5B ATX P965 Express

CPU
-Intel Core2 Duo E6600

RAM
-2 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 TWIN2x2048-6400C4

Case
- Antec Performance I P180B

Power Supply
- SeaSonic S12-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply

Video Card
- XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB DDR3 Extreme Edition

Sound Card
- Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card

CPU Cooler
- Zalman CNPS9500 - not necessary?

10k hard drive
- Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

7200 SATA drive
- Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

I'm am looking at monarchcomputer.com for getting the motherboard/cpu/ram as they will test the combination and warranty it for 15 days (extra charge for longer periods, I probably wouldn't mind paying $25 for the 6 month warranty w/30 day DOA freight paid) at a slight premium which is about $50 over prices for individual items I could find at newegg and such. Comments about this decision are welcome.

Also, I suppose I'm undecided on a CPU cooler. Monarch will install the fan that comes with the retail E6600, so if I do decide to get a different cooler, it would replace that. I have little experience in building PCs these days (the last one I built myself was a 486dx2-66 OMG) so I don't have any kind of feeling as to how well these components keep cool in a p180. Seeing as the p180 is a popular choice, I hope to get a few comments along these lines.

All told, it comes to ~$1990, so I'm under my $2k mark before taxes. Did I miss anything?

Thanks.

 

[joex444]

If you're open to RAID0, you could replace the 500GB drive with two 250GBs for the same price.

The case seems to get good reviews, it should do well.

With that sort of budget for pretty much just the core parts, it's hard to pick something bad.

Going for DDR2-1066 wouldn't really help for the extra money, an E6700 would also be available for the extra money (~$200) and provide better performance. I'll assume no overclocking, though.

As far as the cooler goes, I'd use the box one and see how loud it is and how well it cools before I flip it out for something else. You may find you can't hear the CPU fan over the case fan, the raptor, graphics card or PSU.

So far as Monarch's CPU testing, 15 day or 6 mo warranty stuff... Asus has a warranty on the motherboard, and since its an Intel box cooler, they give you a warranty as well. Any decent vendor will have atleast a 14 day RMA policy. Shipping back to the place is going to be less than that $50 premium they're charging you. They also are only saying that they will have Conroe in stock by the end of the month...that's not encouraging. I'd wait to buy until they have them in stock, or until newegg gets them. Paying somebody else to put a cpu in the board and then ship it out for a fee like that doesn't make sense to me, but maybe because you haven't built anything this century you don't feel confident or are afraid you'll break the board? The CPU doesnt have pins, so its pretty hard to break the CPU (esp with that heat spreader thing, can't crack the cores anymore).

Good luck, should turn out to be great.

 

[dakotagts]

DIE HORSE DIE...

 

[Pahonix]

Originally posted by: joex444
If you're open to RAID0, you could replace the 500GB drive with two 250GBs for the same price.

I'm not overly famililar with RAID0, but I understand the concept. That being said, I'm assuming this would result in a performance gain? I wouldn't be opposed to that, particularly at the same price point. Is there any chance I'd lose any amount of reliability doing that?

So far as Monarch's CPU testing, 15 day or 6 mo warranty stuff... Asus has a warranty on the motherboard, and since its an Intel box cooler, they give you a warranty as well. Any decent vendor will have atleast a 14 day RMA policy. Shipping back to the place is going to be less than that $50 premium they're charging you. They also are only saying that they will have Conroe in stock by the end of the month...that's not encouraging. I'd wait to buy until they have them in stock, or until newegg gets them. Paying somebody else to put a cpu in the board and then ship it out for a fee like that doesn't make sense to me, but maybe because you haven't built anything this century you don't feel confident or are afraid you'll break the board? The CPU doesnt have pins, so its pretty hard to break the CPU (esp with that heat spreader thing, can't crack the cores anymore).

I was more looking to prevent any DOA parts and incompatibilities that I don't have advanced knowledge of (bios settings, etc.). If I have parts in hand and then something doesn't work and has to be sent back while I'm putting it all together, grrrr. I don't mind paying a slight premium to help avoid that.

Another thing, I forgot a sound card. I'll probably use up the rest of my budget with the base model X-Fi. But this is a part where I didn't do a whole lot of research, so if there's glaring problems with the X-Fi whereas an MAudio or something else would be better for primarily headphone gaming, please chime in.

 

[Pahonix]

/bump for the raid0 question. Is putting 2x250gb drives in a raid0 config going to result in better performance? What about reliability? What happens if one of those drives fails? Like I said, I'm not overly familiar with the ins and outs of the spec.

I've decided against the monarchcomputer route. No one has 6600's anyway (at least at a decent price), and I didn't like that they were going to charge my credit card when I ordered instead of when it shipped.

One last thing, a couple of people have mentioned to me that the Intel chips run very hot compared to AMDs lineup. I have a feeling these people are referring to older Intel chips and not the new Conroes, but I couldn't find any evidence of this in the 10 minutes I spent reading through various Conroe reviews/benchmarks. Anyone have a resource for this info?

Thanks.

 

[Pahonix]

Oh and would it really matter that much to spend $30 more for the 600W Seasonic PSU? If the answer isn't "it's completely unnecessary for your system to have a 600W psu", i'm gonna get the 600 instead of the 500W.