Nate wants a new: Mboard, Processor, Case

[Nate]

Ok, I'm mainly a gamer so thats the priority. Money isn't a big deal right now so I don't mind spending a bit of wedge if it's worth it(although the first processor looks a bit ott.). This is what I've got from PCG:

CPU

Core 2 Extreme QX9770 £875 - A blistering 1600MHz front side bus, but frankly too expensive
Core 2 Quad Q6600 £137 - Go for a G0 (Energy Efficient) one for huge overclocking potential.
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 £85 - The new budget Wolfdale CPUs are a bargain and overclock well

Motherboard

Asus Striker II £235 - Ludicrously well endowed, but expensive with it.
Foxconn Mars £125 - No PCI Express 2.0 support, but that's not imperative yet.
MSI P35 Diamond £70 - Fine P35 chipset, but lacks 1600MHz FSB support.

Case

Antec P190 £234 - So huge it has two power supplies. Holes for water cooling pre-drilled.
Coolermaster Cosmos RC-1000 £104 - Expensive, but an immaculate case on what looks like aerofoils.
Coolermaster CM690 £40 - An incredible case for the money, but there's no PSU included.

I currently have:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
ECS 945G-M3 Motherboard
Advent T9217 Case
Oh and 2x1gb sticks of DDR2 Ram

Also, is Vista worth buying now for a gaming machine? Or should I stick with XP? I'm guessing I'm going to need to get a new OS with all this(currently working on the Advents XP) Might also get a new HD, like the sound of these velociraptors

 

[Kryten]

Stick with Vista, it'll serve you just fine and will mean you can run more than 4gb of ram should you go 64bit.

CPU : As per my Hot Purchases thread, the Q6600 is now at £105 on Ebuyer. I know money isn't an issue but still, that's a helluva lot of processor for not much money.

Motherboard: Personally I'd go half half and get a more recent P45 chipset board such as the Asus P5Q-E, keeps you up to date, very reliable and overclockable, and will be as futureproof as you like

Case : Not many come with PSU's anyway, so it's best to assume otherwise unless you find a bundle deal. That Cosmos is a very nice case indeed, i've seen them house some impressive systems. They provide plenty of space for any gadgetry you'd want in your system and keep it all nicely cool too.
That 690 won't fail you either, honestly: you won't quite have the build quality of the Cosmos.

Plenty of other cases around that are very popular: Antec especially providing a couple, the 900 for instance, p182. If you're careful, you can merely pick and choose a case to suit your own taste Just, obviously, make sure you pick a suitable power supply to match it.

 

[Nate]

Cheers Kryten, what do you think about this processor btw? When compared to the Q6600 Core 2 Duo E8500 Dual Core Processor (Intel-BX80570E8500) - Compare Prices | Tom's Guide the Core 2 Duo E8500

 

[Sar]

TBH, I wouldn't bother with a Quad core. Just go for a really fast dual core.

I have a Q6600, bought in October last year, thinking that new games would start taking advantage of the surplus cores, but that still hasn't come to pass.

Quad cores are clocked a lot lower than dual cores, so the fastest dual core you can get would be best for games.

The only time my quad core has come in handy was running some rendering programs - all 4 cores get used then, and it speeds things up immensely.

Games however don't even touch the 3rd and 4th cores at all.



However, that said, if you can get the G0 stepping version of the Q6600 you can apparantly whack it up to stupid speeds on air cooling alone. And if you're water cooling then it can go even higher.

I have a G0 stepped Q6600, but I personally don't OC for 2 reasons. 1 being I'm afraid of burning something out by doing something wrong, and secondly I'm not confident or experienced enough to OC in a knowledgable manner.

 

[Kryten]

I do agree to an extent re the extra cores not being used as much as they should; I'm a bit disappointed in developers getting very lazy/rushing things out, but there's nothing we can do about it. Either way, it doesn't change the fact that the G0 Q6600 is a very, very powerful processor for a smidge over 100 notes.
It's going to be a close call though, I really don't think the E8500 is worth £30 more than the Q6600, performance wise they're pretty much equal in most gaming - the Q starts to slap it around a bit in games that do like the extra cores like Crysis (well, I use the term game loosely there!) and UT3.
If you do chose the newer 8500 though certainly make sure you stick with the P45 chipset and nothing less.

 

[Helme]

Have a look at the newer P5Q Asus motherboards, you get ALOT for very little cash when it comes to these mobos - especially the P5Q-Pro which has 2 PCi-E ports that'll run at 8x each during Crossfire, and a 1600MHz FSB on the CPU socket.

The Intel C2D E8400 is also pretty awesome, it clocks easily to 3.6-3.8GHz with standard cooling depending on what batch you get. With a good custom cooler it's pretty common to see a 4.4-4.5GHz score, I think the record was actually around 4.7GHz with air stable! And even if you don't clock it, it's still an awesome CPU that is very very cheap(cheaper than the Q6600), it beat the Q6600 in most tests Sweclockers did, think it only lost out on video decoding - and it was pretty much equal or beating the newer much more expensive 9000series quads. Overall for gaming, Quads are overrated currently - the only game that actually uses it full out is Flight Simulator X, which uses the extra cores to process sattelite map data. Also I don't really see a point in getting the E8500, it costs alot more but you can easily get the same clock from an E8400 in 10 seconds.

Regarding case, I'm not really that into cases but an Antec 300 Gaming seems pretty okay(aswell as it's bigger brother, the 900)

And harddrives, yeah the raptors sounds nice but it really doesn't make much of a difference in todays games - the Samsung Spinmaster F1 HDD's(at 320gb or 640gb) are fast, and come in twice the size at half the price of a raptor.

Regarding Vista, it's a solid OS if you have a system that isn't borderlining its minimum requirements. Most of Vista's so called problems weren't really problems with Vista at all it was with nVidia or ATi's drivers, which has since then been sorted out.

edit: Get an Corsair 450W/550W or 650W PSU and you'll be solid. Alternatively the Antec Sonata case comes with an Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU at a very reasonable price.

 

[Raven]

I have the cosmos case and is it lovely, stacks of space and very quite. well worth the £100 i paid for it at the time.

 

[Yaka]

i managed to source the p190 cases preety cheap thru a mate, somat like 160 squids plus postage which was around 20 squids could always ask him if he can get some more

 

[Sar]

I have the Antec 900, and I still find it a squeeze, with cables everywhere