PC rebuild Advice please!!

tripolitrx

Hi all, I am deciding to do a bit of an upgrade on my system. Currently its a a Barton 2800 on an Abit NF7S board. I have been looking around at new hardware that out there and after a while of not paying much attention to new developments, I am pretty baffled whats going on.

Im after another AMD, ive decided on a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core 6000+ what i dont know is a decent motherboard, what speed/amount of ram, what this SLI/Crossfire stuff is about, little confused about PCI Express also (is AGP no more??). I like Abit boards and was happy with an N force chip set, but i cant seem to find many Abit boards about now, maybe im looking wrong, any recommendations would be nice though, I dont want an MSI though, had bad experiences with them. I do want it to have gigabit LAN, dont really care about onboard sound as I would like to stick my soundblaster audigy plat in there, so something stable with creatives useless drivers would be helpfull. Overclocking is not really on my to do list

All I plan to be buying is a CPU, Board, and Ram (probably Crucial), I already have around 3 terrabits of storage and a nice looking Lian Li case. Do I need to upgrade my PSU for this new gear at all? (its a 450W Enermax now) I was concidering a new graphics card too but untill i get an understanding of this SLI/Crossfire stuff i am unsure. I dont game on my PC much as i have a PS3, but something that will last a while, a good mid priced card that can cope with new and future games might be a nice addition. Currently I have a Abit GF4 ti4200 64 meg, which is getting on a bit now and struggles some. Not bothered whether AMD or N Vidia, although i prefer Nvidias software and i gotta have TV out also. So some card recommendations would be cool.

If my confused ramblings dont make sense i appologise, i type as i think:) Hopeflly you guys can throw some ideas around for me though:) I would like to try out Vista as seen as i am upgrading however.

So i guess thats its, any sugestions are welcome, money is a concern though, id say around £300 - £350 all in for now, if its worth it i could stretch the upgrade out to get something better, but my current rig has developed some issues so a quicker upgrade would be preferred

Cheers

Trip

Thrax

I have one question:

Why not Intel?

tripolitrx

No reason really, just always had and liked AMDs, they were always a bit cheaper:)

cambrose

Not anymore man, take a close look. Our beloved AMD of 2-5yrs ago is dead.

RIP OLD AMD

tripolitrx

AMD really that bad now? Man im out the loop lol Would not have ever concidered Intel to be honest.....You think thats the way i should go now?

primesuspect

Trust me, it's a bitter pill to swallow - we all feel the same way, but the truth is the truth - Intel is currently the best value for price, performance, and power consumption.

edcentric

http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2973
Start here. They give some good advice and explain their choices.
And trust us to give you advice as well.
Yes, you want to use Intel Core 2 Duo.
Yes, AGP is dead.

What do you use the machine for? Besides folding. You do fold right?

tripolitrx

Ok, usefull info there, I never thought the day would come but I guess im going Intel. Il have to have a good look to see what i can get within my budget i think. I use my computer for listening to music, watching Divx/Xvids, Encoding Mp3s, Divxs, Photoshopping, Macromedia Flash, I also use VMware to run different operating systems quite often, and usally am buring something to DVD around the same time. I havnt gamed on it in a while, mainly due to the PS3, but some of the newer games out there look pretty sweet, but the card i curently have wouldnt touch them. But gaming would probably be in the cards seen as I am upgrading. Im not a frame per second junky though, just pretty sweet gameplay is all i ask (why i enjoy consoles more). Its also a media store for my whole network. So its quite an important machine that does a fair bit of processor intensive stuff. It does fold also in the background

tripolitrx

Ok, after hours of deliberation, I have chosen (i think) Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz 1333FSB Socket 775 4MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor and a Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX. From what i can find, they seem to go well together, and is sorta in my budget....Is it neccesary to get a decent HSF or will the bundled item be fine...Now I have to figure out a graphics card option....and Ram....and power......

primesuspect

If you're not planning on overclocking, the OEM heatsinks are just fine. I've built four Core2 Duo systems, all using the OEM heatsink, and they all run 24/7 folding with no issues.

tripolitrx

Sounds good for me.....Does anyone have some sugestions for a GFX card out there within my budget, with the board and CPU im upto around 200 notes.....So i guess a good N Vidia based card, for around a hundredish?? Can go a little higher if need be...

Thrax

For PSU, I suggest the HiPer 580w PSU. Amazing production quality, and good output.

tripolitrx

Thanks for the PSU advice, had a look at it and i gotta say its one sick looking psu!:D Managed to find a blue one for a bargain 60 notes:D Just GFX and RAM to get me head around now

Thanks for all the tips also guys, much apprecaited

MAGIC

8800gts is you best mid priced card, 7900gt is a great lower end card. If you can wait a little while till the 9 series comes out 8800s will be a steal.
Memory, if you dont plan on overclocking just go for some OCZ gold ddr2 800

muddocktor

' wrote:

[v][AGIC']Memory, if you dont plan on overclocking just go for some OCZ gold ddr2 800

Newegg has some great prices on the Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 ram right now and is a better bet than the OCZ Gold. Even if you don't want to overclock the proc, you can bump the vdimm on the Crucial up to around 2.1-2.2 v and run some really tight ram timings. And it uses the legendary Micron D9 GMH chips, which the OCZ Gold doesn't. I haven't looked at the OCZ prices but they'll be hard pushed to match the Ballistix prices.

tripolitrx

Hi guys, thanks for all the advice, unfortuneately my barton seems to have bit the dust as of yesterday, so i had to rush an order together. Heres what i went for

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86Ghz) Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX
OCZ (OCZ2P8002GK) 2GB (2x1024MB) DDR2-800 PC2-6400 CL 4-5-4-15 PLATINUM XTC EDITION DUAL CHANNEL KIT (LIFETIME WARRANTY)
Hiper 580W Type-R Modular PSU SLI/CrossFire Certified - Blue
Zotac 8500GT 256MB GDDR2 128bit DVI VGA TVOut PCI-E Graphics Card

Not as initially intended, but im out of time and way out of money, hence the cheaper CPU, but I may look into this Overclocking business, apparently that chip clocks well, obviously I will need a decent HSF, so will leave it stock for a while, giveme chance to see how it all works, Overclocking is something ive always been a bit wary about. Asus board as it has great reviews, and is good for Overclocking also, and seems a decent mid price board.

I was going for Crucial Ram, but the OCZ ram was on offer, so i grabbed that, looks kinda trick too:)
PSU as per recommendation, I fell in love with it, a very pretty piece of kit
The graphics card is weak i know, but I am out of money, and basically need something to throw in there that works, and it was only 50 quid. I will probably upgrade a bit later down the track, but for now, it seems a nice little card. And to be honest anything on the market has to be an improvement over my GF4 ti4200 right now, and although this isnt the quickest of setups, it has to blitz my deceased Barton

Again thanks for the advice guys, very much appreciated, thats why i like this place. Seen as I am in teh mood, can anyone recommend some good resources to learn some tips about Overclocking? It looks like something i could get into, especially given some of the performance hikes ive read people can achieve with not too much hassle.

Peace

Trip

tripolitrx

OK, received all my gear today, ripped out my old rig, and bolted in shiny new stuff to hit a huge wall. The computer just powers on for like a second and then stops. I finally traced this back to the processor.....with nothing elce pluged in the board except the main power conenctor, i hit the power button, and the PSU whirs away happily....As soon as i put the new chip in there and power on, it cuts power after around a second.....Does this mean the chip is a DOA??? Ive been staring at it for about 2 hours now, wiggleing the chip around, hoping it will work, but no joy, as soon as its clamped in and powered on, it cuts out. PLEASE give some imput here....Have i just been a muppet and not done something right.......cant think what, or should i RMA the chip and go from there....Or could it even be the board?

Cheers

Trip

Thrax

Did you connect the auxiliary power connector next to the cpu socket?

tripolitrx

Thrax wrote:

Did you connect the auxiliary power connector next to the cpu socket?

Hmmm might have forgot that one!!:) I am a muppet it seems lol..Thats what you get for hours tyring to get something to work......and always using AMD's....Thankyou for your moment of clarity, it powered on fine and beeped its little A** off seen as theres nothing elce in there. I try agian tommorow lol

Thanks:)