Hey all I've been a little out of the loop, I used to build systems very often for friends and myself. But I've taken over a year Hiatus... so now I'm running a fairly old system a AMD 3800 x2 with 1 gig of ram *bletch* and I haven't been keeping up with the recent architecture so I'm thinking of upgrading but I'm out of the loop, I mostly game with a little bit of photoshop and Music creation thrown into the mix what I'm thinking of so far: Core 2 duo E8400 (will put a mild OC on this, probably keep stock cooler for the time being) CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (wow! I'm surprised how cheap dd2 is these days $93 for 4 gigs ain't bad) Nvidia 7900 GS (recycled from current system, don't have money to upgrade) HDD's WD 74 gig rator, 500 gig cavier and a 120Gig Pata drive E-MU 1820M DAC ($400 audio card, for music creation, pci) 1 dvd combo drive Now I'm a little confused on mobo selection It's crazy to see all these mobo's now topping $200+ I'm going to put a slight oc on the e8400 but nothing amazing all my needs are 1 PCI slot for my DAC 1 PCIe slot (don't have the money to be tempted by SLI right now) 4 sata slots (I hear some mobo's now aren't shipping with pata) 1 pata slot onboard ethernet I don't need anything fancy like onboard wifi, video, or even sound (but that last one would be impossible to find and wouldn't lower cost) So can anyone reccommend me a good mobo with money in mind. I don't mind paying for quality but I don't want to buy one of these extreme super OC hyperx buzzword enthusiast mobo's for features I won't be needing or things I set once and never look at again. Futhermore I'm a little confused by all the different northbridge chipsets right now in terms of performance. Final question as of now is it cheaper or better to say get DDR2 800 at faster timings or ddr2 at a higher clock? Futhermore I hear on the core 2 chipsets you don't do mild OC's by raising FSB am I correct in thinking that? any help?
I'd suggest a intel p45 chipset board. Gigabyte had some great budget performance p35 and p45 boards (i would suggest p45 since its newer, so it has some new features, and it's more recent) I'd suggest staying away from foxconn, heard some bad things recently. You can get yourself a nice DFI lanparty too, those are available. Really based on budget and what features you need, but p45 chipset is def. worth looking in to.
I looked into p45 and p35 chipset boards, performance seemed to be almost equal but you're right p45 supports PCIe 2.0 among other things anyone have any input on the Ram issue ddr2 800 at faster timings or ddr2 1066 at slower timings?
I'd save the cash and get some good solid GEIL DDR800. I'm not fully clued up about mem but only reason I can see in getting higher clocked memory is so you have more headroom for increasing your FSB. DDR800 supports up to a 400Mhz fsb so with a voltage boost should do more. If i'm wrong please correct me anyone!!!
