The goal To build two gaming PCs out of the following selection of components. One of them I certainly want to overclock (the one using the Intel E8500), and the other one will be running at stock speeds. I want each system to make the most of the components in them which is the main reason I'm creating this thread - I don't know which motherboard is better suited to overclocking the E8500, which memory to use with which motherboard/processor, and things of that nature. Any help would be appreciated! The components CPUs Intel E6600 Intel E8500 Intel Q6600 RAM Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 XMS2 Dominator Memory OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC Motherboards Asus P5B Deluxe Asus P5K-E Graphics cards Nvidia 8800GTX BFG Geforce 9600 GT OC
Do you already have these parts? If so, you probably will want to use the Q6600 and the E8500 and leave the E6600 behind. For the ram, it doesn't really matter which one goes with which processor, as you aren't really going to need more then DDR2-800 speeds for either setup, but just put the dominator in the overclocking one. Your best bet is to put the E8500 in the P5K-E as the P35 chipset is newer and should support the 45nm CPUs better, I also don't know if the P5B-Deluxe will get a BIOS update to support .5x multipliers like the E8500 has. Is there any reason you aren't overclocking the Q6600? Even on the P5B-Deluxe you should be able to easily hit over 3GHz.
I'd put the E8500, the Corsair kit, the P5B Deluxe and the 8800GTX together for a gaming rig. If games start using multiple cores more then you could swaPut everything else (the Q6600) in the other rig. Looks like the E6600 will have to go though.
agree with above. q6600 + P5B + OCZ + 9600 for multitasking rig e8500 + P5K + Corsair + GTX for gaming
Thanks for the advice everyone. I already have the E6600 and the E8500, and the Q6600 is in the post. One question about the processor choice though - both PCs are going to be gaming rigs, and as far as I know there aren't many games that would make use of 4 cores. Since the second gaming machine isn't going to be doing much multitasking, is there going to be any performance boost over the E6600 to make it worthwhile? (I'm thinking I might return the Q6600 and stick with the E6600 unless there's a good reason not to.) I'm completely ignorant when it comes to memory speeds, so sorry if this is a stupid question - but wouldn't the more powerful rig benefit from faster RAM? (If not, why not?)
Core2Duos aren't too sensitive to memory speeds from my experience, at least not noticeable. Leaving my ram at DDR2-667 was not noticeably different in games from setting up to DDR2-800 with the same timings. Same thing with running it with 5-5-5-15 timings over 4-4-4-12. If I ran 3DMark or some benchmark I might notice, but in real games it didn't have an noticeable effect. You may as well return the Q6600 if you are just playing games, as an E6600 is still a great CPU for gaming purposes, since no games seem to make good use of 4 cores yet. By the time games start to make use of it you can probably get a faster quad-core for less money then you can pick up a Q6600 for now.
