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Advice needed

T

tate

n00b
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
25
Hello,

I'm looking for advice on a good cheap motherboard, I'm upgrading from a P4 2.53, 1gb PC2100 and an X800XL 256mb. Don't have alot of money to spend so I'm looking for the best bang for my buck, so I'm thinking I should get one of the cheaper C2D and a decent board and overclock?

Think I would like to go with ddr2 as its so cheap right now, so a board that supports 4gb in dual channel would be nice and I do still use some ide drives. PC will be mostly for games and a bit of video encoding.

Dont think sli or crossfire matter much as I will only be able to afford one card (8800 gts or so). So any advice of boards to look for or specific deals would be much appreciated!
 
How many and which IDE drives?

If you want advice for your entire system, I recommend going to the General Hardware forum.
 
A HDD and maybe a DVD drive. Mostly looking for a good motherboard here but if anyone has anything else to throw out there I'm listening! Oh yeah and I have built a few PCs but have not overclocked much at all so one thats easy to work with would be a plus.
 
What's your overall budget? Which CPU do you plan on getting? What size monitor do you have?

If you need something that can OC nicely, doesnt have a lot of bells and whistles, and just gets the job done, the IP35-E from Abit is an affordable option at just $90 - $20MIR from mwave. If you need legacy ports for old peripherals, go with the Gigabyte P35-DS3L. If you need raid, get the P35-DS3R. If you need raid and firewire, go with the Abit IP35. If you want higher end boards, check out the Asus P5K-E and the Abit IP35 Pro.
 
I would like to spend maybe$80-$100 on a case, 2gb of ddr for $50-$60 maybe two sets for 4gb, and around $200-$230 on cpu/mobo, and $200-$350 on a video card. Already have windows,HDD, DVD drive and a decent 500 watt PSU that I hope is good enough :p

As for my display its a 37w3 so i run everthing in 1080p.
 
What's the make and model of that PSU? Remember that wattage doesn't count that much these days. It's where and how those watts are being delivered thats important.

Having a individual parts budget actually limits your selection of hardware. It's better to just have an overall budget. So what would your overall budget be?
 
If you want to game at native res on that westy, you'll need at least a single GTX, which is around $500.
 
Around $700-$800. my PSU is a Ultra Xfinity. And as for the GTX comment, I game on it a bit still with the X800XL, I hope thats not true $500 for a video card is too much for me. I have a friend with a 8800 GTS 320mb and he plays in 1680x1050 just fine.
 
A few more questions, do you need more than four SATA ports and RAID? Also, will you be overclocking?

Oh and that X-Finity should be fine.
 
Nope dont think I would need more than 4 SATA or raid, but would need IDE for the 2 drives I have. Yes I would like to overclock.
 
Well unfortunately for you, most good and newer mobos out there these days only come with one IDE port. Having a hard drive and DVD burner on the same IDE cable usually comes with a performance hit and you can use the hard drive if the DVD burner is ever burning anything.

So now you have four options:
A) Get a PCI IDE Add on card for $15. Most PCI-IDE add-on cards have two IDE ports so you can add up to 4 more IDE drives if you want
B) Get a new SATA DVD burner for $30. Note having an SATA burner would make airflow inside your case a bit easier.
C) Get a new SATA hard drive for around $65 to $80 depending on how much storage you want. A new SATA drive will be faster than your IDE drive. Or should be at least.
D) Go with the MSI P6N SLI-Fi 650i motherboard. It has two IDE ports. The 650i chipset runs hotter than the P35 chipset but performance is the same. However it's also more finicky with RAM choices. I may have to double check that.

So which one do you want? If you want a P35 chipset mobo, then A to C are your only options. But if you're willing to deal with the extra heat, then go with the MSI P6N SLI-FI.
 
Ehh I got bored, SO here are two build lists:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU - $189
MSI P6N SLI-FI nForce 650i Motherboard - $107
A-Data ADQVE1A16K 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $65
EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E Video Card - $370
COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP ATX Case- $60
---
Total: $791 Plus tax and shipping

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU - $189
Abit IP35-E Intel P35 Motherboard - $89
A-Data ADQVE1A16K 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM - $65
EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E Video Card - $370
COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP ATX Case- $60
----
Total: $773 Plus tax and shipping

Key difference: The motherboards. The 650i runs hotter than the P35. Like I said earlier, if you don't mind extra bit of heat and if you go with a good case like the one I linked to, then the 650i board is a good choice since it lets you use your IDE hard drive. I think the P35 mobo OC higher than the 650i, though.
 
Danny's builds look good. I'd ditch the IDE HDD and put it in an external enclosure instead of keeping it in the system.

enginurd said:
If you want to game at native res on that westy, you'll need at least a single GTX, which is around $500.
Click to expand...

tate said:
I hope thats not true $500 for a video card is too much for me. I have a friend with a 8800 GTS 320mb and he plays in 1680x1050 just fine.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, the GTX recommendation was for gaming at native resolution.

1680x1050 = 1764000 pixels to push
1920x1080 = 2073600 pixels to push

Thats a difference of 309600 pixels, or 18% more pixels to push. It also all depends on your tolerance of quality for gameplay... some people can play an FPS game at 30fps, while others need 130fps. The 8800GTS 320MB is the minimum card recommended for DX10 gaming at 1680x1050 .
 
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