I will be getting a free computer from an office that are decommissioning 10+ of them + 30 TFT screens they are all going to a charity (that charges for collection so sick..), it is the Hp DC 7700 VPRO. Pretty sure the CPU is the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, the E6400 or E6700 Processor. Its going to come with a nvs4400 quad card and I get two HP 1965 screens coupled with my plained 24" tft screen upgrade my desk is going to have some screen real estate for cheap isnt it. My question is, if I can get a good overclocking system board, get a good cpu cooler, maybe I can have a decent little home pc for work, web browsing, itunes, poker and education. The system board uses sata so any drives I buy can be fully used if I decide to upgrade in the future, I want to try to stay away from gaming on the PC hence wanting to get a 24" with a HDMI port for a possible xbox 360 or ps3, (I feel like I missed out on the halo series and might go back and revisit it) Overclocking System board recommendations with a cooler for the e6600 up to the e6700?
I regard myself as somewhat of an expert on this The e6600 is a prettty nice chip, because when overclocked it will beat any of the Wolfdale cores. Standard practice is 3.6GHz after a bit of work, when it's a e6700 3.6GHz is easy because you don't need any more than 360MHz on the FSB. In terms of motherboards, pretty much any overclocking board will do. If you want motherboards of the period, a P5B or P5K Deluxe or -E will suit you fine, they'll all hit an FSB over 400 which is 3.6GHz (a usual maximum). On the other hand, if you want better value a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3(R) will also be good, and there are a couple of Abits that work well. It's really up to you. Any recent LGA775 motherboard will work with the chip you have, but the older ones will work fine too. You can get P5B Deluxes for around £50 on eBay, which in my opinion is a steal, but you may want something newer. It was the CPC elite motherboard for a good six months, and the P5K offered not much extra with anything, as far as I remember, apart from a newer chipset and guaranteed support of newer processors. (The P5b, through virtue of BIOS upgrades also supported (last I remembered) most of the new LGA775 chips. It certainly supports the extreme ones, I stopped checking when LGA1366 came out and it became clear that I wouldn't be using my P5B-D much longer.)
Go for a P45 chipset if your budget can stretch to it, otherwise a good quality P43 should do. For overclocking, make sure you get a quality m/b that has good power phases as well as good cooling on the northbridge/southbridge. For example, one of the Gigabyte Ultra Durable models are a good bet - these have a UD suffix in the model name. You should also look for boards that have good quality capacitors/VRM's. Whilst some people don't have problems with them, I would avoid a m/b that has on-board VGA. Make sure the m/b can overclock RAM speeds as well, sometimes you need to do this to get a stable FSB.
I was thinking about suggesting a P45 motherboard to him, but at the price it really isn't worth it. You're thinking about £100 for a P45 motherboard where you can pick up a P965 one (very little difference with a Conroe core) for just £50. When this is invariably a budget build, due to the free processor, it probably isn't worth stretching to a premium motherboard, unless it's an older one - and believe me, the top P965 ones were little rockets, 500MHz, easy overclocking and they are now cheap. What more could you want?
Using a p5b deluxe and an artic freezer 7 pro myself. Great board and cooler and as said above, nice and cheap these days
P5q-Pro http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus...-DDR2-1300-1200-1066-SATA-3Gb-s-SATA-RAID-ATX And a Geild Tranquillo For 25 pounds or a artic freezer 7 pro for 15 pounds What sort of ram is in it?because you will need higher speed ram for overclocking to 3.6 ghz Hope this helps
yes i agree with Bakes the P5B Deluxe at the time was one of the best boards i have ever used i had one that would run stable with 520Mhz FSB and yes for the E6600 an Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Rev 2 would do the job nicely spending £100 on a 775 board would be a waste. If the ram is only low speed make sure you set it to the lowest divider that will allow you to push up the FSB
Thanks for all the speedy replies guys, yeah was thinking about the p5b deluxe, I remember in previous CPC magazines like a year ago they had a cpu recommended under their "budget pc" section... it was a dual-core in disguise as they called it and was very cheap... anyone remember what that was? I don't wanna spend too much at this... it's just to run a cpu intensive program 24/7... no games or anything graphics based though. Does the p5b have its own VGA output though? Or would I need a dedicated gpu? If not then no bother I could just use something like a EAH4350 or something cheap. Yeah will just get some 800mhz ram... that will be ok to run the cpu @ 3.6ghz right?
Also what would be a cheap psu that would be enough power for that? something small like a 300w would be ok right if I'm not adding a gpu?
And would an e8400 be a better choice over the e6600? Don't think there's much difference in price is there and an e8400 will easily go past 4ghz?
elliotuk this will do the job nicely http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Power+Supplies/OCZ/OCZ+OCZ400SXS-UK+StealthXStream+400W+Silent+ATX2.2+Power+Supply+?productId=39205 plenty of power and any PCI Express Graphics card will do for what you need you should be able to find a used card for around £10 or a cheap new one http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/ATI+4000+Series/XFX+ATI+Radeon+HD+4550+512MB+DDR2+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=39620
For the same price the e8400 would be better, correct. By the way, it's probably a good idea to start your own thread when you have a question that's on a tangent - it can sometimes divert the topic entirely which is often irritating for the original poster.
dont worry its fine, your right thou bakes, were all very lucky to have each other to touch base with and ask questions for what we need help with, im happy with that and the top bit of the thread is for me thanks rb Edit; Reference the memory speed I remember it said 5300 off the top of my head, pc2-5300 is it? ill check on monday.
Just to mention, I realised after I hit submit that you can't project emotions over the internet very well without the use of some kind of indicator. Because of this, I've edited my post to try to make it more friendly. PC2-5300 is 667MHz. This is adequate, but it will need to be overclocked to allow you to reach 3.6GHz. On it's own without overclocking, it would be good for 3GHz. You should try to pick up some old 2GB 800MHz kit from someone, I'm sure they're going cheap. New, not worth it though. I'd try to overclock the 667MHz ones if I were you, and if you can't get either them or the e6600 past 3GHz (unlikely) then you can try some faster ones. Try with the e6600 at stock and just see whether you can get the RAM stable at 800MHz. There's a good chance it will be possible, I remember Crucial ValueRam starting at 533MHz capable of being overclocked to 1066MHz with ease. Just be warned that it may be a limiting factor.
Yikes sorry I just realised that I posted in the wrong thread... thought it was my thread as it has a similar title, lol sry
ok you will need 800mhz ram(1066 ram if possible)and probably a cheap card, If you have the choice go for the E8400 as it overclock alot better, run cooler and has a higher multiplier so wont put as much stress on you ram or board. i would recommend a corsair 400w power supply http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W...eries-PSU-ATX-PS-2-UK-Version-3-year-warranty
Hi, I was just going to say that unfortunately an E8400 is not anywhere near as cheap as an E6600, for an E8400 you're looking at around £75 (second hand) whereas an E6600 is more like £45. However I am having an issue with mine on stock cooling as it reads as 60C on core temp.
