My 1st Core 2 Duo Build!

[Dragoon42]

As far as PSU goes, it is enough but it's just not as good of quality as some of the other ones. Getting top notch components on everything else cept the psu seems a bit backwards. If you wanna shave money, PSU is the one thing I wouldn't shave from. I'd get OCZ gamextreme or one of their modular PSU.

And you can stick with 667 memory if you're not going to be overclocking.

Any reason you don't want to overclock? You could really save a lot of $$ by getting a e6300, and you could hit 2.4ghz pretty easily from these chips. Going for 2.4ghz isn't "aggressive" at all. Some people have hit that with air cooling.


Also you're spending an extra 50% more cash on the HDD while getting only a 20% increase in hdd space. Seagate 320gb is going for like $100. And if you checkout the hot deals section, there's a WD 500gb for $170 w/o rebates at bestbuy and a 250gb can be had for like $250 w/rebates.


Anyways if you decide to try to OC:

e6300 - $190 (www.zipzoomfly.com)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler - $50 (xoxide.com, svc.com, etc... these are sold out pretty much everywhere, but that's coz they're good cpu coolers)
Teamgroup DDR2 667 2gb - $255 (www.tankguys.com)
EVGA 7590x2 - $540 (www.zipzoomfly.com)
Gigabyte DS3 (not s3) - $155 (www.zipzoomfly.com)
Seagate 320gb SATA 7200.10 - $95
OCZ Mod 520psu - $100 ($20 mail in rebate) (www.newegg.com)

Total: 1385


Those prices are pretty much shipped cept for the CPU Cooler, ram, and psu (extra ~20). On the seagate HDD, it's newegg's weekend sale and there's actually a promotion going on that if you type in Barracuda you get -$5 from the hdd.

If you don't want to oc you could still go:

e6600 - $350 (zipzoomfly)
Corsair 2gb 667mhz - $200 (30 rebate, zipzoomfly)
EVGA 7950 - $540 (zipzoomfly)
DS3 Mobo - $155 (zipzoomfly)
Seagate 320gb - $95 (newegg)
OCZ 520mod PSU - $100 (newegg)

Total: 1440 + $6 shipping for the PSU. Everything else is free shipping.

 

[Dragoon42]

bah I didn't see that you switched to 320gb also. I kept looking up prices on zipzoomfly so I posted a bit late

 

[Lokan]

Dragoon,

I don't want to OC because I have little to no experience with it. A friend of mine is nagging me to do so and has told me to get the DS3 w/ 2gb of GSKILL ram because he's built 10+ systems w/ that setup and all have reached 3.0-3.4ghz OC'd with a Zalman cpu cooler...

I dunno. I'm keeping the 6600 because I can afford it right now and the extra 2mb of cache may someday become more useful. I'm aware that it's not a tremendous advantage now, but I can afford it, so I'm going with it. As for the PSU from OCZ, it's only 26A on the 12v rail which seems low. Shouldn't I be concerned? And is OCZ a reputable PSU company? I realize they've been a player in the RAM market, but I've never heard of them for PSU's (mind you, Sparkle and Antec used to be considered decent PSU's last I looked into upgrading!!)

Thanks for the advice though; I need to make a decision soon because I wanted to get this stuff ordered. I'm most likely switching back to the DS3 (though I love the case connector of the ASUS boards.. like, really love it.. I *hate* connecting case wires to mobo's.. :/) and the gskill HZ ram; just because I know it will OCshould I ever grow a sack

 

[Dragoon42]

Originally posted by: Lokan
Dragoon,

I don't want to OC because I have little to no experience with it. A friend of mine is nagging me to do so and has told me to get the DS3 w/ 2gb of GSKILL ram because he's built 10+ systems w/ that setup and all have reached 3.0-3.4ghz OC'd with a Zalman cpu cooler...

I dunno. I'm keeping the 6600 because I can afford it right now and the extra 2mb of cache may someday become more useful. I'm aware that it's not a tremendous advantage now, but I can afford it, so I'm going with it. As for the PSU from OCZ, it's only 26A on the 12v rail which seems low. Shouldn't I be concerned? And is OCZ a reputable PSU company? I realize they've been a player in the RAM market, but I've never heard of them for PSU's (mind you, Sparkle and Antec used to be considered decent PSU's last I looked into upgrading!!)

Thanks for the advice though; I need to make a decision soon because I wanted to get this stuff ordered. I'm most likely switching back to the DS3 (though I love the case connector of the ASUS boards.. like, really love it.. I *hate* connecting case wires to mobo's.. :/) and the gskill HZ ram; just because I know it will OCshould I ever grow a sack

OCZ is just a rebadge of the FSP if i'm not wrong. They are reliable PSU's. I used to be a fan of antec =/

Also did you mean that you were switching back to the S3 instead of DS3? One difference in the two is that the DS3 uses better capacitors or something. I can't remember exactly, but I just know that it uses better components then the S3 (made to last longer).

 

[Lokan]

Nope, switching back to the DS3. I had read about the solid capacitors and my friend said the DS3 was better suited to OC because of it. Thanks for the knowledge of the OCZ rebadging; I didn't know that.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The DS3 is definately a good board once you get the latest BIOS in it.

 

[sygyzy]

Originally posted by: Howard
If you need to buy from Newegg, the Masscool PS-PSU460 is perfect unless you plan to add another 7950GX2.

If mild OCing is up your alley, DDR2-667 is fine. 533'll work too, but I don't know how far the average 533 sticks go.

What would you consider mild overclocking?

 

[skinnyj]

ds3 or p5b?

both these boards seem pretty similar... whats swaying people to one away from another?

 

[Lokan]

Well, from what I've read and been told, the DS3 has solid capacitors -vs- electrolyte, meaning the board stays a bit cooler and allowing for higher OC speeds. The OC my friend did was a 6400 2.13ghz -> 3.4 ghz stable. That's not shabby at all. I've used Gigabyte boards in the past and all have performed well. I've never shelled out the $$ for ASUS, so I can't comment, but they seem to have a nice reputation. I also LOVE the idea of the Q-connector.