Old CV needs help with final Intel build

[CVSiN]

hey gang been gone a while..

anyway my Rig thats in my sig finally went the way of the dinosaurs and I'm gonna go back to the Intel side of the house.

Of Course I came back here for final advice as ya'll have never let me down.

anyway rough plans so far are
Asus P5KC 1333 $154
C2D E8400 (found in stock at local frys boxed $275 bucks)
Patriot DDR2 PC8500 4 gig kit $159 x2
Vista Ultimate system builder X64 $120

all new parts..

now the carry overs..

my trusty 7900 GT till the 9800GTs come out..
Antec truepower 500 PSU

I know as soon as I get a new card that 500 has to go...

but other than that..
please post suggestions for MB/CPU combos or makes that may be better..
after coming from the AMDX2 side of the House where the only real choice was Nforce Im a little intimidated by all the choices of chipsets.

Fairly heavy gamer..
will OC if its fairly straight forward.

 

[chinaman1472]

Abit IP35-E or Gigabyte P35-DS3L are very basic, inexpensive motherboards (sub-$100), if you do not need any extra features.

Everything seems pretty nice. Mild overclocking shouldn't be a problem on stock cooling.

The 500w PSU should hold up fine even for the 9800GT I think.

 

[Roguestar]

Go for some DDR2-800, like this:
$80 for 4GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231122
That'll take the E8400 all the way up to 3.6GHz before you even have to push it.

I'm with chinaman on the motherboard, too. The P5K-C supports DDR3, in my opinion unnecessarily, seeing as DDR3 is so incredibly expensive for the tiny improvement it offers.

 

[DSF]

For what it's worth, $275 is overpaying for the E8400. It was expected to retail around $200. Low supply has driven prices up to $230-240 sometimes, but $275 is too much. You can wait on a better deal in my opinion, unless getting the computer now is more important than saving a little bit of money.

 

[CVSiN]

Ok, some good advice here thats I I've stayed a member here all these years.

That Gskill Memory is ok stuff?
I was getting the PC1066 stuff thats SLI certified from patriot.
Was told by another friend to get the memory speed up as fast as possible without breaking the bank so thats why I was looking at 1066 and 1150

Seems that both Frys and Directron both have the E8400 in the mid to high 200s this is the boxed set not OEM.
and both are local to me here in Houston I was thinking instant RMAs and no waiting for internet parts to arrive is worth 25 bucks.

As for the ability to run DDR3 It was kind of attractive to me but only in the method of elongating the lifespan of this build another year or so before next upgrade cycle.
You guys dont see DDR3 dropping in the next few years down to DDR2 prices?

Ok Off to look at the suggested boards and will check back here later.
was thinking about getting all this tonight at Frys on way home from work.

 

[CVSiN]

Fry's special this week just happens to have E8400 with Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mb for 309...

buy or pass on that deal?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Thats a pretty good deal the DS3L sells for $90 at the egg so your basically getting the E8400 for $219

 

[CVSiN]

Toms doesnt even seem to have a review of this board at all..

I Cant find any worthy reviews on google.

Makes me think it may not be a very good choice..

Hmm also only 1 IDE port.. that means I lose 2x300gb in storage.

crap..

I was running 3x300 GB IDE and DVD burner

as well as 4 SATA 300s

bummer..

 

[Roguestar]

Almost all new motherboards have only one IDE port. The P5K-C has only one IDE port. You could get a PCI IDE card if you wish to use a lot of older hard drives.

The Gigabyte DS3L is a pretty good motherboard, for the record.

You don't need to get RAM that's "SLI certified"; it's seriously a load of nonsense, memory is just memory and has nothing to do with graphics except when marketing BS is involved.

I can't see DDR3 being attractive until at least a year away, by which time it may still be cheaper for DDR2 and by which time you may also need to upgrade your motherboard to use newer processors.

 

[vailr]

I concur: go with the Fry's E8400/Gigabyte DS3L combo deal, using DDR2 memory.
For re-using older IDE drives, another option would be to use an external USB 2.0 hard drive case.
I would suggest going to a SATA DVD-RW instead of re-using any IDE optical drives.

 

[DSF]

A change to DDR3 isn't going to extend the lifespan of a computer, just like a change from DDR to DDR2 wouldn't have. Replacing the GPU, CPU or both would have a much greater impact on the power of the computer. Whenever you decide to buy a new CPU you'll likely need a new motherboard, and that's the time to buy DDR3.

 

[CVSiN]

Yah Thanks guys Im gonna jump on that deal.

I also thought about the replacing my old burner with a SATA one and being able to salvage 2x300gigs

Im gonna give that board a shot and will watch those 2 new chipsets to mature over the next year and then upgrade if needed.

SLI certified I was refereing to that new EPP cert is all.

http://www.patriotmem.com/prod...oupid=65&id=698&type=1 is what they have speced for me.

Oh and ya'll think for now the 500 Antec will be ok?

 

[Zepper]

Yeah, I have two DVD burners and a mobile rack that are PATA, so I added a Cheap, two channel PATA card (Syba) (supports RAID too, but you don't have to use or install any drivers for it but I did anyway) so I could have a channel for each of them. If you get a PATA card, be sure it supports ATAPI drives (burners, LS-120, etc.) if you want to run some of those off it - some support only HDDs and you have to dig into the fine print to find it out.

And for most folks, an AMD setup is still perfectly fine. Still get a lot for low bucks. Don't fall to the hype!

.bh..