PSU: 500w Seasonic S12-500 (Too high wattage? cheaper to get lower wattage?) Motherboard: Asus P5B-E Plus i965 CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz RAM: 2 x 1GB probably from crucial. GFX: 256MB nVidia 8600GTS HDD: Seagate Barracuda 250gb SATA Case: Undecided anything < £50-60. OS: Vista - Home premium or Ultimate. Any improvements you guys would recommend? budget roughly £550-650. This one currently comes in at roughly £585. Is that value for what it is? It will be used for gaming, mainly WoW, CoD2, CSS, FEAR etc.
You probably would want to go the extra money for an 8800GTS 320mb, the 8600s are very underwhelming performance wise. You could drop down the E6600 to an E6320 and overclock it, as the P5B-E is quite a good overclocking board. I'm not the one to ask for a power supply, but 500w should be fine. For Vista go with Home Premium, Ultimate is not worth the price increase.
So the 8800GTS would be better future-proofing than the 8600? What's the stock clock speed of the 6320s? Definately go with Home Premium now - on aria the OEM is only £58 if you include the £10 off Google checkout offer Thanks for help
The 8600 series is a really poor performer, the 8800GTS 320MB OEM can be picked up for £170-190 mark, which will be far better! As for the E6320 is 1.86GHz, which isn't slow for that core, they clock well and easy. and will save you £40. i would go for the Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 as it gives and SLI future. As for PSU i have a hiper 480w running my gaming rig below, and the machine is water cooled, so a 500w seasonic will be pleanty for your needs.
i got the 8800gts and must say i more than happy with it, playing at 1680x1050 and playing every game at max settings
If you want SLI capabilities, then as Burnout21 said go with the P5N-E SLI, if you don't need SLI then a P5B or GigaByte DS3/DS4 should be good board choices. Crucial DDR2 is a good choice as its all made withthe extremely overclockable Micron D9GMH chips.
Okay, thanks Not too interested in SLI at the moment.. but who knows maybe later on I will. Still I don't have the money at the moment, so I'll stick with the P5B-E. 8800 GTS... does it affect performence that much between manufacturers? The Inno3D one is a good £30 cheaper than the Gigabyte or Asus. Will this make any difference? Crucial memory uses Micron chips.. does this mean that http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=527001 uses the same?
definitely get an 8800 if possible, 8600 = meh...good psu choice and plenty of power. definitely drop down to the e6320...has the 4mb cache and oc's on air so easily you will have no issues getting e6600 performance. crucial memoery is, at leaast here in the usa, overpriced. go with some good g-skill or something. between the drop down to e6320 and cheaper priced ram by not going crucial, you should be able to snatch a 8800 gts and a p5n-e sli...if not quite there, sell a kidney...
Gigabyte DS3P is the king daddy of the C2D 965 chipset mobo's. also its cheap as chips. People are getting crazy OC's with those.
most 8800 series cards are still OEM based, meaning nvidia reference heatsink, and PCB design. some brands are puting a factory overclock on so people buy a faster version, little do they know a standard OEM card can clock just as well, just needs the know how. All you pay for is the name. buy a Palit or inno3d card, or an overclockers OEM card. you will be fine. stay clear of the 8600 series they will dissappoint you greatly!!
So after putting all these together Iv'e got a sort of final-ish list: PSU: 500w Seasonic S12-500 Motherboard: Asus P5B-E Plus i965 - stick with it as I have no need for SLi at this time. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 RAM: 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS (Any good?) GFX: 320MB nVidia 8800GTS HDD: Seagate Barracuda 250gb SATA Case: Undecided anything < £50-60. OS: Vista - Home premium Actually, how does the ATI X1950 compare to the 8800 GTS? Thanks
got my 8800gts 640mb from novatech £245, it was on there site as a novatech brand which shows it to be a albertron but the one i got was a point of view the guy in the shop said to take no notice of the web site as the novatech branded ones were what ever they had cheapest and at one point were selling bfg 8800 as a budget card.
On the subject of memory, Corsair does not use Micron D9 chips for anything besides Dominator anymore. Usually the cheapest Micron D9 based chips is the G-Skill F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ. This list: http://ramlist.ath.cx/ddr2/ shows the chips in most DDR2 modules, you want Micron D9*** listed in green, the ones listed in red are no longer being used.