C2D Bang for Buck...

[xxxAgentxxx]

First off, it's been quite a while since I've posted on here. I see alot of new faces around here these days, the Members List has grown significantly, props to you all for making XS a force to be reckoned with!

Anyway, it's that time of year, colder temps outside, a less appealing outdoors to go out and have fun in, and I'm getting that itch to upgrade the comp.

My question; What is the cheapest C2D combo you peeps would recommend to hit, say, 3.4ghz 24/7. Combo consists of Mobo, CPU, and RAM ONLY. Feel free to flex your opinion in your recommendations.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to reading your responses.

[dinos22]

wait a little bit for E4300 CPUs they will be bang for bux

also Nvidia competing in Intel mobo market should bring downward pressure on prices in general at the same time......2 months and good news all round :D :toast:

[LudLud]

right now, most likely e6400 + ds3 or s3 i hear the s3 is also good for OC'ing but i haven't seen many people use it. as for the ram probably you can try the super talent 800mhz( cheapest place is ewiz.com, use froogle discount) or team group

[ryaan]

right now, most likely e6400 + ds3 or s3 i hear the s3 is also good for OC'ing but i haven't seen many people use it.

i use it... i also would say e6400 & s3 and g.skill or corsair ram.

check my sig for specs & highest oc so far [still on stock cooling :( ]

[xxxAgentxxx]

Nice quick reply, and you raise 2 very good points, the question is, can I wait for 2 months...? It's hard to get the itch, and not scratch... ;)

Consider this a competion of XtremeSmartshoppers. As of right now, who can hit 3.0-3.6ghz conroe @ the lowest possible price - Mobo, CPU, RAM. Hah, call me cheap, but I'll bet 9 out of 10 of the people with a full time job in on this site get paid more than I do, and spend 1/2 the time on computers that I do. :D

[xxxAgentxxx]

Damn, you guys are posting faster than I can reply. Haha, I like how XS has grown!

[LudLud]

think about it, you can wait 3 months, buy that stuff, and when u buy it, 3 months later someting better will come out, you just have to buy something really..., there's always new stuff coming out, and that's how it will always be

[bofors]

Ditto on the E6400.

It was at Fry's / Output.com for $207 shipped (apparently that deal has just ended).

[dinos22]

Nice quick reply, and you raise 2 very good points, the question is, can I wait for 2 months...? It's hard to get the itch, and not scratch... ;)

Consider this a competion of XtremeSmartshoppers. As of right now, who can hit 3.0-3.6ghz conroe @ the lowest possible price - Mobo, CPU, RAM. Hah, call me cheap, but I'll bet 9 out of 10 of the people with a full time job in on this site get paid more than I do, and spend 1/2 the time on computers that I do. :D
LOL

find an E6300 and P5B Deluxe and you'll have a 3.3Ghz 24/7 system in no time and bit more benchable depending on the CPU and RAM you get :).....my current setup is that at i run 3.2GHz 24/7 undervolted to 1.24v and can bench at 3.7GHz ......heh :toast:

[FatRakoon]

I got a DS3 and at first, I was very impressed with it... So much so, that I bought 2 of them... Well, another one anyway.

In one, is a Prescott 660 3.6 @ 4.3 and its been to 4.7 and stable too, but temps have forced me to knock it down, and in the other, my E6300, which is running sweeties pies thank you very much at 3.3.

Now, I say at first for a couple of good reasons...

1 - My main PC has been using 4 DVDRW Drives till now. I burn lots of Disks and ( yes, legally... Im in a Ghost hunting group, and I do the video editting and burning ) and the DS3 has only 1 IDE line, and so I have used an IDE Card to add the other 2 drives on.

2 - I have a few IDE PCI Cards and none of them work perfectly in the DS3... They either conflict with the OnBoard, or in one case, works seemingly fine, but hangs the PC if I try to access the BIOS with it in??? EH?

3 - Its cured now, but its a swine to add another Audio card instead of its onboard rubbish, especially creative cards.

4 - Need For Speed Underground 2 wont play without crashing after a few minutes... Does this on both boards.

5 - OnBoard RAID. What a crock of shh.... I did managed to get it to install to the onboard RAID, but ONLY if I had the MBR on a SATA Drive... Remove that and you are wasting your time trying.

6 - The NB Cooler... Utter waste of spaceand it takes a lot of it too! - Try overclocking just a little bit and that cooler gets hot... Clocking a bit more and your finger will start to melt to it... 2.8 and over and you are melting the lead in teh Mobos contacts... 3.0 and over and Lava stays away from it, so get that thing thrown away before you lose the board. I still got mine as stock, but its got a cooler blowing directly at it and its helping, but its no cigar.

All in all, I while I am glad I got mine, I am also a little bit annoyed I didnt go for anything else instead, or even with the issues I had, I amd thinking that although bechmarks such as SuperPI are giving genital raising scores, the PC does not really do work any better than any of my other PCs and so perhaps I would have been better off upgrading my AMDs setups instead?

[xVeinx]

The E6300 would probably suffice; as well, a number of ppl have used the Biostar P965 variety with good success, which is cheaper than the asus...

[dinos22]

USE A ATA-SATA adapter

i've been running my drive with one off ebay since my first DS3 :toast:

[bofors]

As of right now, who can hit 3.0-3.6ghz conroe @ the lowest possible price - Mobo, CPU, RAM.

You can certainly do that with a retail E6300. Fry's / Outpost.com has them now for $169 shipped: http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4893640

You might be able to get away with using the stock cooler too.

[dnottis]

E6300 ($180), Asus P5B-E ($150) and 2Gb Crucial 10th Anniversary DDR2 533 ($230) that runs ddr 1000. Check my sig - 3.6 Ghz.

[bofors]

2Gb Crucial 10th Anniversary DDR2 533 ($230).

Not that I am really recommending it, I know you can now get 2 GB very overclockable "value" RAM (Elpida ICs) for $200 now.

[LudLud]

crucial 10th anniversary is no longer available it was limited quantity and i believe its gone now :(

[dinos22]

Not that I am really recommending it, I know you can now get 2 GB very overclockable "value" RAM (Elpida ICs) for $200 now.
which ones and got any OC links

[p0tter]

Not that I am really recommending it, I know you can now get 2 GB very overclockable "value" RAM (Elpida ICs) for $200 now.


any benchmarks or links? Im looking for overclockable "value".

[bofors]

Well I am sure that this is no secert here, but what I am basically talking about with Elpida ICs was covered by AnandTech in July: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=17

Of course, RAM prices went ballistic since then, but they have actually started to come back down a little.

Personally, I have had really good results on my BadAxe 305 with Consair ValueRAM (2 x 1GB, DDR2-667) which I described in NewEgg's reviews (and I have not spent any time trying to find the optimum timings either):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145098

I started researching the "value" overclocking RAM market last week, but did not get to far because I ran into the Corsair 5400UL thread here and jumped on that instead: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=123720

This Corsair 5400C4 looks like it might be a good deal for $200 after rebate, but I did not determine what kind of ICs it was using: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145015

There seem to be a lot of potentialy good choices for a little above $200 and some of this PQI Turbo RAM may be worth checking out too (but it seems to fail quite a bit by customer reviews):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141199

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141211

I suspect that one could also find some Elipia deals for under $200 too, like perhaps this A-Data Vitesta:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820211061

[bofors]

This might be tough to beat: CAS 4 G. Skill (F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK) DDR2-800 (2 x 1GB) is on sale at NewEgg for $199 shipped: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231087

But again, I have not checked it out.

[xxxAgentxxx]

Thanks to the Mod who moved this, sorry for posting in the Intel forum the first time.

E6300 ($180), Asus P5B-E ($150) and 2Gb Crucial 10th Anniversary DDR2 533 ($230) that runs ddr 1000. Check my sig - 3.6 Ghz.

This is what I like to see, and I may as well leave the CPU out from this point on, since E6300 can easily clear 3.0, it's just working around the low multi. So dnottis has 3.6ghz @ $610. Can anybody do better? The range is 3.0 - 3.6 :fact:

Thanks again you guys!

[ryaan]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128017 - 115$ [ga-965p-s3]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115005 - 180$ [intel c2d e6300]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231094 - 130$ [g.skill 2x512mb ddr2-800 4-4-4-12]

or if u need 2 gigs of ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231098 - 215$ [g.skill 2x1gb ddr2-800 5-5-5-15]

so it could be 425$ + shipping/tax for 1gb ram
or
it could be 510$ + shipping/tax for 2gb ram

you'll definitely hit 3.0 easily with both.

also for best bang:buck hs/f get:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835186134 - 30$ [arctic cooling freezer 7 pro]

or you could refer to my sig. i hit 3.5 easily, but i need a better hs/f to break it cuz my idle temps ate ridiculous.

[dinos22]

donno if you guys can get these in US or not but i'd say they are great bang for bux (just found out about these a couple of days ago)

E6400 with 4MB cache :)
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00004341

[ryaan]

donno if you guys can get these in US or not but i'd say they are great bang for bux (just found out about these a couple of days ago)

E6400 with 4MB cache :)
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00004341

why? e6600 are only 308$ in the U.S.

[dinos22]

why? e6600 are only 308$ in the U.S.
that's Australian dollars including tax ;) (around USD$218) and CPUs are topping out high 3Ghz in general on normal cooling which is reachable on 8xmulti anyways

[KingThot]

Snap that's good stuff for $218 USD why are those only in the land down under?

[dinos22]

Snap that's good stuff for $218 USD why are those only in the land down under?
cause we're special i guess hahahah

[bofors]

donno if you guys can get these in US or not but i'd say they are great bang for bux (just found out about these a couple of days ago)

E6400 with 4MB cache :)
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00004341

Umm... what is the story with the 4 MB of cache on an E6400? Are you sure that is not a typo?

[dinos22]

Umm... what is the story with the 4 MB of cache on an E6400? Are you sure that is not a typo?
E6400 allendale ES with 4Mo L2 ( stepping 1)
Noctua NH 12 + 120 mm paspst
asus P5W DH bios 0065
2Gigs Gskill 6400

Vcore 1.4v
Vfsb 1.5 v
Vmch 1.65 v


http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/8436/snap1eo0.jpg

can boot@400 mhz but not stable with benchs and multi is locked at x8 :(
:) .