Help Mooga buld his new PC

[Mooga]

My current PC was a hand-me-down meaning to last me only a month or two and has instead lasted close to a year and a half. I need some hardware that actually WORKS without all the "odd kinks" that I currently deal with.

My budget to ~$1,000 and I plan on buying slowly. I took most of the hardware off a wired mag so feel free to recommend any changes.

Needs:
- Support 2 monitors
- Upgradeable to SLI (2 GPUS) in the future
- Handle multitasking and gaming without getting bogged down.

Current Plan:
Motherboard - $144.99
GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Retail

Processor - $198.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail

Memory - $122.00
CORSAIR XMS2 DHX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Video Card - $189.99
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Power Supply - N/A
Needed!

Case - $119.99
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

Optical Drive - N/A
Needed!

Hard Drive - N/A
Needed!


THANKS!!!

[Innoc]

I love the 900 chassis. Good airflow...the only one I would probably be the Titan IIRC. Since you're going SLI at some point you're going to want a PSU that can feed that without having to buy again down the road. I'd also recommend on that has earned the 80plus certification. An Antec Earthwatts 650 will probably be perfect for you.

I don't like Gigabyte personally and, interestingly enough, I know at least 4 people that have the P35 based board who are waiting for replacement boards as theirs died on them. Granted that's not hard statistics...but of the 100 or so people that I know from the net....how many of them actually have gigabyte boards...and for 4 of them to have dead ones...that's too eerie for my liking. Also, with the P35 chipsets...watch the timing on the PCI-E slots for Crossfire. I believe all of them throttle the 2nd port to 4x speed and that's a P35 limitation. IIRC some of the X38 boards will do full speed SLI and my go to is ASUS.

Hard drive...how big and how much do you want to spend? I can't recall if the successor for Seagates 7200.10 series is out yet or not but that would be one I'd consider. I'd also consider certain of Western Digitals 2nd generation of SATA300 drives.

On Optical Drives...I'm not THAT picky. I've used some ASUS, Plextor, TEAC and LG over the years. Get a SATA one that you like and is cheap...

BTW, do you use a UPS for your system?

edited to fix sleep deprived brain errors.

[v3rtigo]

Unless I can't read or my brain is not functioning correctly, that mobo doesn't have 2 PCI-E slots, meaning no SLI. Also, if I'm not mistaken (again), the Intel Pxx series are Crossfire (ATI), meaning no SLI, again.

Personally, I'd go for the EVGA Nforce 750i FTW edition, though it doesn't support DDR3, not sure if you want that. Otherwise it's a pretty nice mobo for a reasonable price.

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by v3rtigo

Unless I can't read or my brain is not functioning correctly, that mobo doesn't have 2 PCI-E slots, meaning no SLI. Also, if I'm not mistaken (again), the Intel Pxx series are Crossfire (ATI), meaning no SLI, again.

Personally, I'd go for the EVGA Nforce 750i FTW edition, though it doesn't support DDR3, not sure if you want that. Otherwise it's a pretty nice mobo for a reasonable price.

My P35 based board, ASUS P5KC, does Crossfire albeit in a throttled fashion. It has two 16X PCI-E slots but only one can operate in 16X mode. Technically it can do it...but it will do a pathetic job of it.

[v3rtigo]

You mean that in Crossfire mode, they both switch to 8x?

That really doesn't impact performance much (yet), as I'm pretty sure the current cards don't even need that amount of bandwidth. PCI-Express 2.0 doubles that bandwidth making it even less of a problem.

Also, I meant that Crossfire != SLI, or at least I don't think that will work. Seeing as how he selected an nvidia card, he can forget SLI if the choses an Intel board as they only support Crossfire. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by v3rtigo

You mean that in Crossfire mode, they both switch to 8x?

That really doesn't impact performance much (yet), as I'm pretty sure the current cards don't even need that amount of bandwidth. PCI-Express 2.0 doubles that bandwidth making it even less of a problem.

Also, I meant that Crossfire != SLI, or at least I don't think that will work. Seeing as how he selected an nvidia card, he can forget SLI if the choses an Intel board as they only support Crossfire. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

No, I believe you're absoultely correct about the SLI/Crossfire confusion. I can't recall whether it's 8x or 4x on the secondary PCI-E port offhand...but P35 is NOT going to give him what he's after. I do believe he's going to have to seek out an NVIDIA chipset based board if he wants SLI....and I still prefer ASUS...

Personally I have zero interest in a dual card configuration...I've always figured that just waiting a while for the next gen card will yield as good if not better performance in a single card.

[Mooga]

First off: THANKS!
Second:
The Mobo is obviously a problem. Which Mobo within a similar price range would you recommend?

Does SLI really buy me anything? Because if not I might not worry about it. Aren't I better off with an Intel processor then AMD?

[Damascus]

Corsair PSU's are nice...

1) Intels are nice, but really, it's your choice

2) SLI? You'll need:
a) A really good PSU
b) Some sort of cooling that is NOT a fan.
c) $$. Need I say more?

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by Mooga

First off: THANKS!
Second:
The Mobo is obviously a problem. Which Mobo within a similar price range would you recommend?

Does SLI really buy me anything? Because if not I might not worry about it. Aren't I better off with an Intel processor then AMD?

I think you're still dealing with a preference more than anything. I like AMD but I felt that the better performance was to be had with Intel when I did my build earlier this year. Personally I don't think much of SLI or Crossfire. Like I've said before I'd rather buy a decent single card now and upgrade down the road to a better single card solution. The performance boost you see with SLI varies from game to game. Here's a link that illustrates that point (sorry about how old it is). I've always viewed it as being not worth the money.

As far as motherboard goes if you're not going after SLI or Crossfire AND you're going after an Intel based solution I'd look at the X38 based motherboard from ASUS. Take your pick based on the features you're after.

[Mooga]

Originally Posted by Innoc

As far as motherboard goes if you're not going after SLI or Crossfire AND you're going after an Intel based solution I'd look at the X38 based motherboard from ASUS. Take your pick based on the features you're after.

Will all those mobos support the ram I picked out? I'm sorta new to all this but should all DDR2 ram work with all DDR2 mobos?

Also: Is there any point at all in going DDR3?

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by Mooga

Will all those mobos support the ram I picked out? I'm sorta new to all this but should all DDR2 ram work with all DDR2 mobos?

Also: Is there any point at all in going DDR3?

The 800 MHz DDR2 that you selected should be fine. Once you select a motherboard check with either it's manufacturer or Corsair to confirm compatibility with that model. They should be able to confirm that for you.

This is from the specs on one of the ASUS boards

The P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP@n motherboard supports DDR3 memory that features data transfer rates of 1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066/800 MHz to meet the higher bandwidth requirements of the latest operation system, 3D graphics, multimedia, and Internet applications. The dual-channel DDR3 architecture doubles the bandwidth of your system memory to boost system performance, eliminating bottlenecks with peak bandwidths of up to 17 GB/s. Furthermore, the supply voltage for the memory is reduced from 1.8 V for DDR2 to just 1.5 V for DDR3. This voltage reduction limits the power consumption and heat generation of DDR3 which makes it an ideal memory solution.

Would I use DDR3 as opposed to DDR2? If the price difference isn't all that great I probably would.

[v3rtigo]

I agree with Innoc, SLI/Crossfire is nice, but not what it should be, so if you have little interest in getting an SLI/Crossfire setup, a mobo with one PCI-E slot will do fine.

And seeing the current situation, I would certainly go for an Intel. As for the mobo's, I suggest checking specifications and looking for reviews on the web. That's how I do it, anyway. I would suggest that it has at least a FSB of 1333mhz and a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot. DDR3 support depends on price, if it's not much more expensive than DDR2 then I would go for it.

[zSilver_Fox]

Originally Posted by Damascus

Corsair PSU's are nice...

1) Intels are nice, but really, it's your choice

2) SLI? You'll need:
a) A really good PSU
b) Some sort of cooling that is NOT a fan.
c) $$. Need I say more?

Many SLI setups use aircooling.

And Innoc, in SLI, both cards run at 8x, IIRC. But right now that really makes no difference. AGP was far from a bottleneck.

And, penis.

[Mooga]

Can anyone recomend a site to read up on mobos?
How much should I expect to pay for a mobo? More then I was expecting?

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by Mooga

Can anyone recomend a site to read up on mobos?
How much should I expect to pay for a mobo? More then I was expecting?

Toms Hardware and anandtech.com are fairly good sources for tech info. IIRC Toms got a black eye a few years back for trying to show that AMD CPU's (around the T-bird generation) had inadequate thermal protection in a rigged test. Otherwise they provide pretty good info. As far as price goes 144.00 is a good ball park for a decent motherboard. You can find mobo variations for a lower price but those are usually stripped feature barebones boards that may lack a feature or two that you might want....like an actual IDE or FDD port...

[SomeOldGuy]

http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/Motherboards
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/
http://www.hardocp.com/reviews.html?...50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.extremetech.com/category2...2279240,00.asp


Also you can go to Newegg and check out reader reviews... but you will get the full gamut from happy campers to this-board-is-crap for many of them. They do have a customer satisfaction award, though, if that helps. Doing without SLI/Crossfire is less. And at this point in time, DDR2 boards are cheaper (as is DDR2), and the performance gain of a DDR3 board is not as significant as one might hope (yet) to necessarily justify the cost. It may be better in the near future (as BIOS and other things evolve), and prices will no doubt drop, but from all I've read a good set of quality DDR2 RAM can give you nearly as good as DDR3 performance-wise.

Prices... that's another thing. Depends on what you really want. Essentially, the newer it is, the more bells and whistles and options (and overclocking abilities), then more $$$.

[zSilver_Fox]

Originally Posted by Innoc

Toms Hardware and anandtech.com are fairly good sources for tech info. IIRC Toms got a black eye a few years back for trying to show that AMD CPU's (around the T-bird generation) had inadequate thermal protection in a rigged test. Otherwise they provide pretty good info. As far as price goes 144.00 is a good ball park for a decent motherboard. You can find mobo variations for a lower price but those are usually stripped feature barebones boards that may lack a feature or two that you might want....like an actual IDE or FDD port...

THG and Anand are among the most biased websites on the internet. Anand has actually refused to publish negative reviews of sponsor boards, and THG's "test" was laughable, and destroys any credibility they have.

Seriously, find smaller, independant review websites, or big ones that are trustworthy. Though the latter is hard to find.

[Mooga]

I've been looking at newegg and this hit my eye:
ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

it seems quite cheap. Would that do what I want from it?
Does it not have any PCI slots?

EDIT: The reviewers seem to hate the thing ><

How does this one look - ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail