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I'm upgrading my rig

JasonSix78

Platinum Member
After spending weeks trying to diagnose what's wrong with my socket 754 rig without any luck, I think it's time to move on to bigger and better things. This is where I need some help. Here's what I have picked out so far:

Cooler Master Centurion 5
ASUS A8N5X
eVGA Geforce 6800GS
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 120GB

I'm going to use my 2x512 DDR400 from my old rig. Also my 430W Thermaltake PSU that I just bought, optical, and floppy drive.

I'm trying to come out spending the least amount of money as possible, these parts here have already blown my budget a little. Can anyone suggest anything else in the CPU department? Could I skimp a little a go for something a little slower/different core? I don't know much about the different cores (Venice, San Diego, etc. etc.). Also, what about the video card? I'll also add that I don't plan to overclock. I'll primarily use this new rig for college work (MS Office), movies, and gaming.

Thanks,
-Jason
 
If you don't plan on o/cing I would stick with what you got. I was gonna suggest getting a 3000+/3200+ and o/cing. You should be able hit 3700+ speeds no problem on stock cooling with a 3200+ Venice. You might not even have to up the voltage. Just up the FSB some and add a divider so your memory runs close or at stock speeds.

Just by doing that you can(or almost) up that 6800GS to a 7800GT(or just pocket the rest).
 
Awesome Sniper, thanks! The 3200+ Venice is $169 at the Egg right now. Could I use that Asus board I have picked out for OC'ing or would I have to go with a different one?

-Jason
 
According to some reviews on Newegg it's suppose to be a decent overclocking board. Either way if I was you and wasn't into o/cing much I would just bump the FSB up to whatever you can get at default voltage or you can try upping the voltage just a little. My 3000+ Winchester is 1.8ghz and I got it running 2.4ghz with 1.45vcore and the default is 1.40vcore. You could get another couple hundred mhz with just a little vcore uppage. I just wouldn't go crazy with it.

When you get your stuff just post if you need any help on o/cing or you can PM me.
 
Hey Sniper, I OC'ed my CPU tonight and it looks like 2.4 Ghz is the ceiling on stock voltages. I dropped my RAM clock down to 333MHz and after the OC it brought it back up to 418MHz. I set the CAS Latency at 2.5 with 3-3-7 timings. I'm not sure where to gto from here. I'm an OC'ing noob so I'm not sure if there was something else to tweak in the BIOS. CPU temps are good @ 38-39C under load. I had it up to 2.55 GHz but after running Prime95 for 20 seconds it threw up an error. At 2.6Ghz it would get to the XP splash screen then poop out. I'm going to run Prime95 tonight and see how it does right here at 2.4Ghz. In the meantime if there's anything else I can do let me know, like acceptable V-core voltages and such.

Thanks again,
-Jason
 
Thats a good o/c on stock voltage if it's stable. But all looks good on memory and stuff. Have you ran memtest86 to see if your memory is stable? Not sure what your default voltages are on your CPU but say it's 1.40 I wouldn't go past 1.50 on stock cooling. But if you got good airflow you might be able to go a little higher. Let us know what you finally end up with.
 
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