Building a Mid Level pc.

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 7:10 pm

My current pc is on its way out. It has always been a dud.
I am hanging on to my monitor, hard disks, optical drives and case. I wanted to stay around the €550 mark. With vat and delivery, this comes to about €570. Any tips or recommendations? Am i doing anything wrong? Many thanks to zeekay for helping me with all this. I know next to nothing about the current state of hardware. Any input would be appreciated.

EVGA S775 nForce 650i Ultra ATX A L Non SLI, which is fine for me.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 S775 2.33ghz 4mb Cache 1333FSB the 4mb cache is supposed to be handy.

Sapphire Technology Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 PCIE Dual DVI 580/700 Was originally going to go with the 7600Gt, then the 2600XT. This outperforms them both.

OCZ Technology 2x1GB 240DIMM PC2-6400 DDR2 Gold

Antec SP-500PGB A little expensive, but I wanna be safe.

Antec 120mm Smart Cool Picked this becuase it was cheap and seemingly quiet. I know nothing muchabuot case fans.

ReRuss · Post by **ReRuss** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:58 pm

Sapphire isnt a good brand IMO , I never personally owned one , but always heard of them overheating to death...

If it was me , I'd go with ATi , Asus , or even PowerColor

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:59 pm

going nVidia is fine too

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:07 am

kieran_ wrote:My current pc is on its way out. It has always been a dud.
I am hanging on to my monitor, hard disks, optical drives and case. I wanted to stay around the €550 mark. With vat and delivery, this comes to about €570. Any tips or recommendations? Am i doing anything wrong? Many thanks to zeekay for helping me with all this. I know next to nothing about the current state of hardware. Any input would be appreciated.

EVGA S775 nForce 650i Ultra ATX A L Non SLI, which is fine for me.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 S775 2.33ghz 4mb Cache 1333FSB the 4mb cache is supposed to be handy.

Sapphire Technology Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 PCIE Dual DVI 580/700 Was originally going to go with the 7600Gt, then the 2600XT. This outperforms them both.

OCZ Technology 2x1GB 240DIMM PC2-6400 DDR2 Gold

Antec SP-500PGB A little expensive, but I wanna be safe.

Antec 120mm Smart Cool Picked this becuase it was cheap and seemingly quiet. I know nothing muchabuot case fans.

For the motherboard I'd recommend buying a crossfire motherboard if you can find a decent one just because you plan on using a Radeon. The X1950 Pro is a decent choice but it's beginning to age, you're better off getting a 256MB X1950 XT instead of a 512MB X1950 Pro. The 512MB RAM won't help unless you play at high resolutions. The price difference between the X1950 XT and Pro is small so I'd recommend going with the XT.

Keep in mind that the Radeon X series and HD series cannot be crossfired together despite what sales sites might say... they are of different architectures.

As for you hearing the 4MBs L2 cache is handy... well generally the more the better but the performance difference won't be huge. Based on benchmarks I've seen the extra 2MBs helps by anywhere from 0% to 10% so it's usually a very small boost. The E6550 has a 1333MHz FSB so make sure whatever motherboard you get supports that, also that probably makes it worse for overclocking.

I may as well mention that K10 Opterons are out, so it's not going ot be long before the desktop versions (Phenoms) will be released. You might want to wait for some benchmarks and price comparisons to see if AMD or Intel has the better value.

ReRuss wrote:Sapphire isnt a good brand IMO , I never personally owned one , but always heard of them overheating to death...

If it was me , I'd go with ATi , Asus , or even PowerColor

Find whoever told you that and punch him in the face because ALL Radeon cards are manufactured in the factories of Sapphire. So when choosing a Radeon, pick the one that has the best bundle/cooling/price/warranty, don't buy one based on brand alone.