11 replies to this topic

[gavin19]

I already have a tower/case, PSU, 2 SATA HDDs and a SATA DVD burner. All I'm trying to piece together are a new CPU, motherboard and RAM. I do have an old AGP GeForceFX 5600 card which I can use temporarily until I get a newer gfx card, or just settle for decent onboard gfx. My monitor is an old Philips 19" CRT which I will be keeping for now. Here are a couple of quick setups which I thought looked good for the money -

Kingston HyperX 2x1GB 1066MHz OR 2x2GB 800MHz (same price)
Athlon X2 7750 2.7GHz Black Edition
Asus M3N78-CM uATX AM2 (w/ Geforce 8200 onboard gfx)

Total : £192

Corsair XMS2 2x2GB 800MHz
Intel E5200 Dual Core 2.5GHz
Gigabyte EP35-DS3L

Total : £187

I don't use my PC for gaming but if it could run say, Oblivion/Fallout 3 at a decent rate then all the better. I do a fair bit of video encoding too but that aside it's just the normal web/burn dvds etc. Main demands would be -

- 4 DIMMs for RAM, support for 8GB and 1066MHz or higher
- Dual Core CPU at least. Tri and Quad core seem to be too expensive and unnecessary for my needs anyway
- em.. that's about it really

I have a few questions too like would 4GB 800MHz be better than 2GB 1066MHz, and could I get away with a lesser Intel like an E2200 or AMD like a 5600+? I will be overclocking my CPU too.

Thanks for any guidance.

[Inky]

I'm running an anthlon 64 x2 4800+ 2.5 ghz
and 4 gigs ram

I've got no complaints, my weak link is my vid card. a $100 geforce 8500.

for basic actions like web surfing, word processing light photoshop, burning dvds torrenting and stuff it is just fine. it also has no problems running older games at full settings and some newer games at medium settings. if I updated my graphics card I'm sure I wouldn't have any problems running anything current.

If you aren't making a monster gaming rig, I see no reason to go overboard.

[ken_cinder]

Since you do alot of video encoding, and I would imagine given where you are posting this you enjoy emulators like the rest of us and MAME would be one of those......

2GB of 1066mhz RAM will be a better choice than 4GB of 800. For the most part, no emulator will touch more than 2GB of RAM (In certain cases yes) and the faster that RAM is the better.

Nothing wrong with picking up a quad core if the price is right. Future proofing FTW

If you aren't big on PC gaming, just get a video card that will do what you need. Only HLE emulators like N64/Gamecube etc will need a powerful video card, stuff that's older and LLE like MAME aren't going to make use of an insanely powerful video card.

[gavin19]

Since you do alot of video encoding, and I would imagine given where you are posting this you enjoy emulators like the rest of us and MAME would be one of those......

2GB of 1066mhz RAM will be a better choice than 4GB of 800. For the most part, no emulator will touch more than 2GB of RAM (In certain cases yes) and the faster that RAM is the better.

Nothing wrong with picking up a quad core if the price is right. Future proofing FTW

If you aren't big on PC gaming, just get a video card that will do what you need. Only HLE emulators like N64/Gamecube etc will need a powerful video card, stuff that's older and LLE like MAME aren't going to make use of an insanely powerful video card.

Thanks. One technical question I'm lost on though. On the spec sheet for the motherboard it says -

*Due to AMD CPU limitation, DDR2 1066 is supported by AM2+ CPU for one DIMM per channel only.

I read this at Neowin which sort of explains it. Looks like I'm going to have to go for a better mobo. Not only that, the 7550 CPU I'm set on apparently *needs* a 790GX Nvidia chipset or better to get the most overclocking out of it, meaning the mobo is going to cost almost double my original choice. At this rate I might just go with the Intel setup :S

[ken_cinder]

Why the hell does anyone insist on overclocking? If you need to overclock, buy better components instead.

Overclocking kills hardware, period. The ONLY reason to overclock, is to squeeze what little you can out of it at the end of it's life cycle.

Overclocking for the sake of saying you did so is just plain stupid.

[MILF]

Why the hell does anyone insist on overclocking? If you need to overclock, buy better components instead.

Overclocking kills hardware, period. The ONLY reason to overclock, is to squeeze what little you can out of it at the end of it's life cycle.

Overclocking for the sake of saying you did so is just plain stupid.

I agree......to an extent. I have a Q6600 these days and i did OC it a bit....it ran perfectly stable until i put in a new video card then all sorts of problems started coming up, so i defaulted back to original settings. These days, there's GPU based video encoding applications coming around (badaboom and more recent versions of TMPGENC come to mind for nvidia cards) that will plainly bury CPU only encoding. On the note of emulation and ram....ram is cheap these days, get as much of it as you can (or as your motherboard allows) at the quickest speeds you can. If your in the states, newegg.com is your friend.

[gavin19]

I agree......to an extent. I have a Q6600 these days and i did OC it a bit....it ran perfectly stable until i put in a new video card then all sorts of problems started coming up, so i defaulted back to original settings. These days, there's GPU based video encoding applications coming around (badaboom and more recent versions of TMPGENC come to mind for nvidia cards) that will plainly bury CPU only encoding. On the note of emulation and ram....ram is cheap these days, get as much of it as you can (or as your motherboard allows) at the quickest speeds you can. If your in the states, newegg.com is your friend.

I've had my CPU on virtually a 25% overclock for the past 2 years solid, not a problem. If I can get 2.8GHz instead of 2.2, and it's stable, then I'm happy.

As for the RAM, I settled on 4GB of 1066MHz OCZ. I was going to just go for 800MHz but I deliberately picked a board and CPU that supports 1066 natively (BioStar TForce 790GX + 7750 Black Edition). Altogether coming in at £205 delivered. It is depressing to see the prices of some of the things on Newegg compared to here in the UK. The stuff is more or less half price. Luckily I already have all the other bits and pieces so no extra expense

[emsley]

866808036GT ?

[gavin19]

866808036GT ?

I'll not be needing no 8800 or 4850 or whatever. Don't game (except Settlers or AOE3). Maybe later.

[svt_lightning]

I never did like overclocking and you run the chances of damaging other comps...

[smithjones]

As per my review you can use this latest configuration.

CPU: Intel i6 2.66 Ghz
Motherboard: Intel 43GT 3YW
Monitor: Asus 20”TFT
Graphics card: Nvidia graphics card
RAM: 3GB DDR2 800.
Hard Drives: 260 GB
OS: Windows 7