Ok so im looking to get some new bits as the stuff ive got seems to be lacking in power, efficiency and stability and im looking for a nice little jump to intel's side (never went with Intel before) I'm a casual gamer but need the raw power for stuff like Supcom & Fallout 3 etc, I dont do much multitasking and im also also on a pretty tight budget = less than £350 Heres the stuff ive already got: MOBO: Gigabyte 570 SLI (I hate it so much its awful) CPU: Amd 5600x2 (stock) RAM: Crucial Ballistix 4x1gig PC6400 GFX ATI Radeon 3870x2 (Thinking about a later transition to 5 series) Tagan 2force 580w - u22 2x maxtor 160gig hd's in Raid 0 X-FI PCIx1 Xtreme cheapoo audio (the one that isnt a real X-fi) Thinking about getting the following: 2x 640Gb Western Digital WD6400AAKS (gonna raid them up again) Asus P5Q PRO iP45 Socket 775 Motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz (Retail 775) Did a bit of price matching and found Aria to get it all to me for Just a shade under £330 Overclockers do the same stuff for £370 Any reccommendations on alternatives or does this stuff seem pretty good?
not sure about the board you posted but i know a lot of motherboards have trouble with all their memory slots being filled.
That motherboard seems a bit much, as you're just using one graphics card. Have you taken a look at MSI motherboards? I've used them for my last few builds and they're pretty good, and from what I've seen, a little more reasonable than the P5Q.
Very good decisions! I've got two WD 640GB's aswell (not in RAID though). And I've got a P5Q Pro. I have all RAM slots filled with 800MHz RAM and no problems, though I've heard some stories about boards not booting with four sticks of 1066MHz RAM. But yours is 800MHz so you're good. Also the E8400 is a great choice, very good performer for it's price and even overclocks like h3ll.
Why not follow the Bit guide on hardware to buy? Their budget system's CPU and mobo choices total £100 ish. Leaving £230 to get HDDs. Personally, I'd get an SSD primary OS/games drive and a secondary large drive for storage. 60GB Core V2 SSDs are only about £150 iirc. Hell, you could get two smaller SSDs and RAID them instead?
You won't regret going 'intel' and the ASUS intel boards are very good in my experience. I have an X38 board (ASUS P5E3 Deluxe) and I like it a lot!
