Hi there, I'm building a new computer and would like to run my part choices by you fellas. Intel Core™2 Duo Processor E6850 3.00GHz w/ 4MB Cache Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Aluminum Heatsink for P4-775 / AM2 Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R w/ DualDDR2 1066, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, PCI-E x16 Mushkin XP2-6400 Xtreme Performance DDR2 SDRAM, 2GB Dual Pack Thermaltake VA8003BWS Armor Super Tower w/ 25cm Fan, Black Steel Corsair HX 620W Modular Power Supply w/ Triple +12V Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II w/ NCQ, 16MB Cache LG Super Multi DVD Writer 18x18x10 DVD +/-RW Dual-Layer, SATA, Black (OEM) eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDTV-Out Few questions: 1) Why is the E6750 priced higher than the E6850 when the latter is clocked higher? 2) Is it worth to get the Q6600 right now (even with the price cut) considering the only applications that utilize all four cores are limited to professional encoding/rendering and benchmarking software? 3) My local part store has the thermalright heatsink, but it does not include a fan. I would like to keep the new build as quiet as possible so what would be a good fan to slap on it? 4) To anyone with experience with the Armor case with the 25cm side fan, does it make a huge difference in cooling? because the side panel with the 25cm fan is hella ugly, so if the fan doesn't make much a difference, i would much rather get the plain side panel with no window to keep everything as clean as possible. 5) and finally regarding the video card choice, is it worth it to get the 'Superclocked' version? wouldn't i be able to overclock the video card to that speed on my own? Thanks for reading
1 - not sure what you mean here. I would assume that if the 6700 is priced higher, then its because its an older processor. Kind of like how an FX-62 is way slower than an x2 6000, but costs way more. 2 - That depends entirely on how much multitasking you do, and whether you use those programs. If you have hundreds of windows open at once, or if you like to use cubase at the same time as photoshop, then itll help you a lot. If you just do one thing at a time it wont help much. (Although, bear in mind that VST instruments benefit a lot from more cores, if you do music synthing and stuff) 3 - Good fans are Yate Loons if you can find them. Other than that, panaflo fans are well recieved. Don't use a noctua fan with it, and be wary of SilenX fans, you should ask around for those, since silenx are good at number fiddling, but are supposed to give great results. If none of those do it for you, the S-FLEX series of fans are supposed to be the best all around fans around at the moment. 4 - With your parts list, a side panel fan would be pretty pointless. Your heatsink design wouldn't benefit because its a tower, and the shroud on the 8800 cooler means the only benefit would be fresher air from outside, but you'll get that through the front anyway because the air from the front won't have been heated before it hits the GFX cooler fan anyway. I say you can get away with it since it might only shave a couple C from your temps at best. 5 - That depends on whether you can afford it, and whether you want the security of it. No overclock is guaranteed, is you may or may not clock it as high as that, you might even clock it WAY beyond that. On the other side of that coin, you wont have a warranty then, and you'll be playing the pot luck game. Although, to be honest, you shouldn't need to overclock a GTS 640. the 320 maybe, but not the 640, because that card will handle most anything you can throw at it. Think of #5 this way. the OC version is a guaranteed faster card, but you have to decide whether you want the guaranteed overclock with a warranty, or the non guaranteed overclock with no warranty, but that might net you an even faster card than THAT if you're careful.
Hi there, I thought that I would quickly run through your setup and make any recommendations rather than answering the questions, GuitarBizzare has already done that. OK, no changes there lol. If I were you I would change the processor to a E6750, it is the best value chip in the range, if you wanted to stick to a dual core. But, if you wanted a quad core, which is probably a beter idea to buy now considering the fact that they will give a major performance boost soon, you should of course buy the Q6600. I would of course stick to EVGA, but I would not by the overclocked versions of the card. They are much more expensive and only offer a small performance boost. I would buy the stock EVGA card and overclock it to the same level as the top end EVGA cards. This way, you wouldn't have to test whether the overclock would be stable as these clocks would be well in the chips capabilities.
Just to amend my response slightly - The HD 2900XT is currently beating the GTS in most benchmarks, and performance is increasing with each driver release. Consider one of those.
True actually, which is expected considering that it requires so much power! But they are both good cards that will do you fine. Also, if you really needed it, there is also a 1Gb version, which of course makes it the graphics card with the most memory available in a gpu at the moment.
Exactly. Unless you count the 7950 GX2, but thats last gen tech. And, although memory isn't everything, that does actually make a lot of difference on the 2900XT because thats its weak point. The core is better, but the lower memory size means the TS 640 and the GTZ/Ultra, have it beaten in tests that require a large framebuffer. (IE, a lot of memory)
i had originally planned to grab the Q6600, but it seems to me that multicore consumer applications are gonna take a while to come out due to the higher development time and costs. the way i figure is that, by the time the majority of software makers start releasing applications that support multithreading, there will already be much better quad core cpu's available. gah... its a hard decision i keep flip flopping on.
It doesn't, but you can power an 8 pin connector with a 6 pin plug anyway. You should have made a new thread for that though.
Well, put it this way, a few hundred mhz will NOT MAKE ANY PERFORMANCE DECREASE! It will be hardly noticable. I would go for the Core 2 Quad. You will have amazing multitasking abilities. If a single core processor can do some OK multitasking (my Powermac G4 733mhz runs iTunes, OpenOffice, Firefox, MSN Messenger, plays video from youtube (2, actually), Colloquy IRC, Entourage, and more open at the same time absolutely fine). Imagine what that Core 2 Quad could do!
current HX 620's COME WITH an 8 pin pci-e. If you receive one without, contact Corsair's support and they'll hook you up.
+1 to the Core 2 Quad 6600 as well. Depending on your habits, more physical cores will help a great deal.
