Ordering Possibly Tomorrow

[Animage]

Notes:
-Will be used mainly for gaming.
-I can go up $10-$20 per item listed
-Will be ordering my parts from newegg.com
-Prefer Intel and Nvidia other then that no real brand prefrences
-I ordered an Antec Sonata III for this computer being as it was onsale with free shipping. It has a 500w earthwatts power supply.
Also bought a Samsung 24" LCD off bestbuy with 1920x1200 res.
-I have been reading into the parts quite a bit and reading reviews and what not.
-I do plan on overclocking the system.
-By gaming i mean WoW and CS:1.6

Now for the meat and potatoes:

Motherboard - Asus P5E $230
CPU - E6320 $177
RAM - Transcend 2x1gb PC2-9600$113
Vid Card - EVGA 8800GT 512mb pci-e 2.0$250
Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 320gb 7200.1 Perpendicular$85
Optical Drive - Asus DVD Burner $40
Operating System - Win XP MC edition $115
Heat Sink / Fan - Zalman CNPS9500 $45

One of my goals is to beable to upgrade to newer things in a year or two as they come out. which is the reason for the expensive mobo. I'm also pondering going to the e8400 for the mere $50 diffrence. Any and all suggestions are appreciated and thanks for taking the time to look at this for me.

 

[MarcVenice]

Heh, rather funny. Why x38 and not a p35 mobo, for half the money? The e6320 = OLD JUNK. Haha, look at this one for example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...E16819115037&Tpk=e8400 For a little more money you get almost twice the speed, or you can get this one, almost the same price, 1ghz extra http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2146151&enterthread=y Rather get the e8400 though. I think this cooler outperforms the zalman by quite a bit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835154001 And what's with the Win XP mediacenter edition ? Why not Vista ? The Sonata III with PSU is a good case/psu combination.

 

[Doclife]

You will not be able to upgrade much with socket 775 in a year or two. Next year, Nehalem CPU will be released and it will have a new socket, DDR3 memory. Having said that, if you need a computer now, then your best bet is to build your system around the E8400 with a reasonably quality mobo and RAM.

CPU: Intel E8400 $190 (buy it from Microcenter B&M)

Run very cool so no need to buy expensive CPU cooler. Try with the stock cooler first then determine if you need an aftermarket cooler (Arctic cooler Freezer 7 is a good choice ~$20).


MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R Rev. 2.0 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard $123

http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4830711


RAM: Transcend 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $76

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820208353

Jedec standard memory so compatibility should not be an issue here.

 

[Tullphan]

I used that (~$5AR for 2GB) HP ram in my IP35-E.
I overclocked it to DDR2-800 @ 1.8V 5-5-5-15 w/no issues. Ran memtest & prime95...passed w/flying colors. I may get a(nother) wild hair up my butt & bump up the voltage & try to tighten that timing up a little.
You may wanna look at the XFX cards...the double lifetime warranty is a good selling point should you wish to upgrade down the road & wanna sell the old one. Also, you don't have to worry about registering it within a certain amount of days to get the lifetime warranty.
The Gigabyte motherboard is a good recommendation from Doclife. You might also wanna look at the MSI P35 Neo2-FR...good overclocking board.
Since the new Intel chips will be out next year, get an E4300 & overclock the snot out of it & save some bucks. Otherwise, dish out another $15 over the E6320 & get that E8400.
But that's just me. I'm a tightwad.

 

[imported_wired247]

I have the asus p5e board, and yes it is fairly expensive when you can get something that performs just as well but half the price.

The reason I got it was because of the arrangement of the expansion slots. If I had found a cheaper board with the same combination of expansion slots, I would not have gotten the x38 chipset.

However, if you like it, it is an excellent board.

Definitely get the E8400, IMHO. There are other options, but it is a very good option.

For the P5E motherboard, it does not like anything more than DDR2-800. Look at the asus forums. Tons of people having issues with DDR2-1066, let alone DDR2-1200.

I would recommend either 2x1GB DDR2-800 or 2x2GB DDR2-800 if you are willing to go for 64bit os.


Just a thought, but you could basically get the e8400, set FSB at 400 and with DDR2-800 have a 1600mhz fsb 3.6GHz cpu and 1:1 cpu:ram ratio... very nice setup and not much strain on the e8400 chip.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Animage
RAM - Transcend 2x1gb PC2-9600$113

2GB for $113?

More like 2x2GB for $55