New Rig - advice/tips please! :)

[ray_gillespie]

Hello chaps,

I've not been on here for a while, I hope you're all keeping ok!

Anyway, I'm in the market for a new rig which I'm building for my cousin, who is 15. He's got about £300 - £400 in mind, which he's going to try and earn over the summer holidays so I have a few weeks to get this planned.

It's been a couple of years since I've bought any serious components online, and a few of my usual haunts are either a bit crap now (Novatech seems to be loads of own-brand stuff) or closed down (RIP Komplett). Where is a good place to get stuff these days? Dabs has always been reliable but a bit expensive. What's Microdirect like?

The other big question I have is on the rig itself. He's going to use an old PCI express graphics card of mine, as well as his existing screen, keyboard and mouse, and my old version of Vista x64. Basically I need to get a motherboard, a PSU, a case, some memory and a hard drive.

So far I have the following in my wishlist from Dabs:

MSI S775 Intel P45 DDR2 ATX Audio Lan

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 S775 2.8GHz

Tagan TG680-BZII PipeRock "Lighting" Modular DC-DC PSU

CoolerMaster Elite 330 ATX No PSU Black

Western Digital Caviar 500GB S300 16mb 7200rpm

Crucial 4GB (2x2GB KIT) 800MHz DDR2 PC2-6400

That lot comes to about £380, which is on the high end of the scale. Idealy I'd like something closer to £300. The PSU seems to be pretty awesome as I'm a big believer in having a good PSU, especially as he'll want to get a better graphics card next year. That said, do you think it's overkill?

What about the rest of it? I'm a bit concerned that the motherboard is a bit old and may have some compatability issues with either the CPU or Vista x64. If there's an issue with the CPU then I won't get it but I can easily flash the BIOS if it's just a problem with x64.

Any thoughts or opinions you guys have would be really appreciated. Thanks.

 

[epk]

hey ray!

mm... that psu may be a bit too much.. it's 680w, right? cant find the number anywhere on the link
i think something branded around 550w should be enough even with a new gpu, since most of the other components arent really very power hungry

the motherboard should be ok, it's a p45 after all (in fact its the same as i have... supports fsb's up to 1333, and i never had any issues with x64)

everything else looks pretty good

 

[ray_gillespie]

Hi epk,

Thanks for the advice. I reckon this one might be ok then:

http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-memory-550w-vx-psu-4Q0T.html?refs=48870000

That brings the cost down to £350, which is probably ok. Any other tips will be appreciated!

 

[epk]

yeah, that one seems good

and the rest is fine.. i dont think u can get better deals than that hehe :]

 

[LordOfLA]

P45 will hamper the core 2 duo. You should be looking at X48 or nforce 6 series or higher.

 

[ray_gillespie]

Oh ok, thanks for the info Lord - what about this one then:

Asus S775 Intel 750i ATX A ?

 

[epk]

why would a p45 hamper a core 2??

 

[LordOfLA]

The MMU on the P series boards isn't designed to take advantage of some performance enhancing technologies on the core / core 2 cpu cores.

 

[epk]

well.. the difference between p45 and x48 is almost 100$.. i would say they do fine for their price

as for nforce chips.. they didnt get very good reviews for core 2's, mostly recommended only if u're going sli.

 

[LordOfLA]

nforce boards had more throughput before X48 came about

you want nforce or X48. Ignore P series altogether for core/core 2. If you are dead set on P series get a single core pentium.

 

[epk]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/252721-30-nvidia-chipset-750i-intel-winner
i've seen 20 discussions like this

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-nvidia,1385-10.html
here you can see the nforce 6 barely surpassing the old 975x

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/msi_p45_platinum/9.htm
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-p45-chipset,1961-15.html
these two articles show marginal difference between the p45 and the x48 (a few times the p45 even comes out ahead)

im not saying they're not better, im just saying that for the kind of pc he wants to build, a p45 is good enough

 

[LordOfLA]

good enough never is. Ignore the P series for core / core 2 processors

Being someone who replaced a 975x for a nforce 680i I can state with certaintly that the nforce 6 was superior to it. However the x48 would be my preference over nvidia chipset if not needing SLI.

 

[epk]

oki.. i respect your opinion

randomly off topic after readin so many prices around the web, its time for a cheaper i7!