Build For Cousin

[BrokenWall]

My cousin came to me asking for a decent build for him to play new games and WoW. Sitting with him at my computer we were able to order the listed parts.

Cooler Master 690 ATX Case
PC Power & Cooling 610watt

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
ASUS P5N-D 750i SLI
G.Skill 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-1066 (2GBPK)
LG 20x DVD-RW Drive SATA
Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm SATA
eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 512MB (678 core/1944 mem)
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer
Windows XP Home


All for $1200 after shipping from NewEgg


Hows the build look, All he asked was me to get the CPU to 3.5-3.6Ghz

[BrokenWall]

Any Input?

[zanzabar]

that MB is a bad idea look at a p35 like the dfi DK p35 or abit ip35 pro, and switch to windows xp pro home is trash

other than that it looks fine but the sound card wont really matter u could move that money into a raid array or 4gb of ram and vista biz x64 or xp x64

[Leeghoofd]

No SLI required don't go for an Nvidia board then...indeed P35 is the way to go in that budget for Asus P5K Pro , Dlx premium, P5K-E,...

Also 4gig is not so expensive anymore and even if ya run it with XP home or pro it will still be a bit faster in loading times etc... and if ya really tight on budget get a stock clocked eVGA 8800GT, there isn't really much between GT and GTS 512...

For the PSU you can also opt for eg an OCZ StealthXtream 600 watt, that will power that rig too...

[BrokenWall]

He wants the choice of adding SLI later, but didn't like the price point of the 680i or 780i. He will not do Vista, doesn't care about DX10 at the moment. And he is looking to power not only a nice set of 5.1 speakers but looking to plug into his nice home theater system.

He basically wanted my system with the option of SLI, but I told him that Intel is more powerful and he can get a cheaper dual core that will outperform the 9850 so we went that route. If I experience problems with the motherboard I could always look into switching to a 680i for a bit more money or see if he will do with a P35.

[cowpuppy]

here is a 8800GTS 512 mg for 169.00 after rebates http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16814134037

I'm planing on ordering 1 myself :-)

[zanzabar]

the 680i will give u more problems than the 750i (and 750i and 780i are the same), but sli isnt a viable upgrade path, for sli u need identical cards and by the time that u need the upgrade the cards arnt made anymore or at the EOL so they shoot up in price and cost more than the next gen but the next gen will get better than 2 of the old card (this last one was strange becouse NV had to build a new architecture so they held out), and since the new architecture is out in nov/dec there is no point to buy for sli now

if anything wait till june get the 4870 and an xfire board since that card will be xfireable for years to come with crossfireX if u want a duel card upgrade path (im still not advising that its stupid to buy for multi gpu unless u do it from the start but then there are x2/gx2)

[BrokenWall]

well I told him I would put it though some testing if I notice any performance problems with the motherboard at stock ill send it back.

[loonym]

Tell him choke up the extra $40 for the evga FTW

[zanzabar]

Tell him choke up the extra $40 for the evga FTW

why that board only has 8x8 pci-e the asus has 16x16, other than that they are about the same

[wa2000]

Change to this G.Skill 4GB kit.

[Leeghoofd]

why that board only has 8x8 pci-e the asus has 16x16, other than that they are about the same

The asus got 8 x 8 , EVGA has 16 x 16... you got it mixed up... Asus advertises 2 x 16X PCI-E lanes though apprently once you pop in a 2nd card it goes 8 x 8 PCI-E

And really if he's on such a budget, ditch the SLI thought..; SLI is nice but only worthwhile if you tend to game at extreme high resolutions and then the 512 MB limitation of the GTS becomes the bottleneck...and you will need a beefy CPU OC...

And the person that even considers to still buy a 680i must be completely mad and didn't do his homework... one of the most troublesome mobo's ever created !!

[jonny_ftm]

No more need to nvidia to have sli like performance
The 9800GX2 is an option, but the best would be the claimed "dual core" 9900GTX finally giving the needed performance gain on most recent games (did I mention Crysis at high resolution?). Those cards will be expensive, but will fit your current P35 board, hopefully skipping the Nehalem step :-)
Nehalem advantage will be multicore. By the time games go multicore, they'll stop to 2 cores and 4 cores stations before 8 cores step. The claimed memory bandwidth increase is till useless when you see full real test reviews of DDR2-667 compared to DDR3-1600. So, old Q6600 with top end GPU on old motherboards could still have some times to live.

[Bobsama]

How about E7200 instead of E8400?

[jonny_ftm]

How about E7200 instead of E8400?

In French, but tables easy to understand:
http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/8...ryn-du-pauvre/

It is a good chip, usually overclocking at 3GHz without increasing vcore, but needed 1.48v for 3.6GHz

So not a very good overclocker despite the multi of 9.5 but very honorable compared to the price. You could get some 3.4GHz at acceptable voltage. The lower cache shouldn't limit you too much