Ok I give in... New rig here we come! Need advice/comments

[ray_gillespie]

Ok, I just give up with my computer problems, no-one has been able to help I I'm all out of ideas. I can't replace my motherboard as I can't find an AGP socket 939 one anywhere, and I think I might as revamp my whole rig.

Basically, I've narrowed it down to being Core 2 Duo for definite, and I'm inclined to get the 6600 version as it has 4MB of L2 cache as opposed to the 2MB for the 6400. This one on Dabs looks fine.

I'm going to need a new mobo, I don't O/C or anything but I want a good solid board. This MSI one has had amazing reviews and isn't too much money so that's what I'm looking at getting so far.

RAM - I'm not sure whether to get the 6400 DDRII or the 5300 DDRII. I've heard that there isn't that much improvement in going to the 800Mhz 6400, certainly not enough to warrant the price difference. This 5300 is what I have my eye on.

Eventually I'm going to get a Geforce 8 card but I can't really afford that on top of all of this at the moment, especially as I'm moving into a new flat and buying a new car! So the compromise is this 7600GS card, which should still be fine for all my existing games (Oblivion, WoW, HL2 etc) and isn't too much money.

What do you guys reckon to that lot? I'm going to use my new Tagan 600W PSU to power this lot, and I'll keep my 320GB Seagate 7200rpm HD, along with my Creative X-Fi card and my DVD drives. One of the important features of the motherboard is that it has 2 PCI slots (for my wireless network card and my soundcard) and also at least 1 IDE channel for my DVD drives and also my old IDE HD to which I will be backing stuff up. Phew!

Any comments would be very helpful 🙂

 

[epk]

i don't know much about the ram, but the rest sounds great

msi is one of the best (if not the best) brand of mb for core 2's, the 6600 is way better than the 6400 and the 7600gs (which i own) is a great cheap card for waiting for the 8 series

again, im not sure about the ram speeds, but apparently if you're not overclocking ddr2 pc4200 should be enough for a e6600 (you can get pc5300 just to be sure)
and btw, you didn't specified how much are you gettin... you should get at least 2gb

 

[kcnychief]

This guide may help you Ray - goes over low/mid/high end options for most components 🙂

http://www.techspot.com/guides/41-highend-pc-buying-guide-200701/

 

[ray_gillespie]

Yeah, I'm going for 2GB of matched RAM for dual-channel. I'm going to have to wait a couple of weeks now, so I'll come back for final advice regarding coolers/fans etc!

Thanks for the help, reps out. 🙂

 

[ray_gillespie]

I got bored of waiting and just ordered the lot! Should be here next week 🙂 I'll post back with comments/any problems I have!

 

[LeeJend]

Looks solid.

The 667 RAM will run synchronous with the 2.4G CPU clock at 14.5 multiplier and even if the MB doesn't support 0.5 multiplier increments the larger 4MB cache in your CPU will compensate for the non-synchronous operation. Or you could just use a multiplier of 15 and slightly overclock the RAM. The crucial should be good for it.