[foxoff]

Hello,

I have decided on the following for my PC build. It comes in a little under my budget and I have some room to spend (about another $100), but I wonder if it is going to be able to be upgraded in future to a better graphics card (something like the Geforce 8800GTX or future equivalent) without too much trouble:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU
GA 965PDS3 Motherboard with Intel 965 Chipset
PCI E x16 & Gigabit Lan
3.5" FDD Panasonic
2 x 1G DDR II Pc5200 667 Mhz Kingston
2 x 320G HDD Seagate SATA II with 7200rpm
Thermaltake Matrix Case with 430W Power
512Mb Geforce 7950GT PCI Express with DVI Port
22" CMV LCD Monitor
18 Speed LG DVD-/+ RW Dual Layer
Built in Gigabit Lan, HD Audio, USB 2.0

I know everything evolves quickly and that eventually we all must build again but I am really interested in getting this sucker to last a few years and keep pace. My concerns are the upgradeability of the power supply in the existing case and as mentioned, the graphics card (these concerns are pretty much one in the same).

For upgrades there are three 5.25in drive bays and two more hard disks. Inside there will be three spare PCI slots, and a 1x PCI-E slot.

I am ready to hit the "order" buttons as I write, so if you have any helpful comments I would really appreciate them!



Fox

Edited by foxoff, 12 February 2007 - 04:45 PM.

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I would spend the extra left-over money on getting the E6600 rather than the E6400 with the lower cache the 6400 might struggle when using a highend DX10 card such as the 8800GTX or whatever

i would get the E6600 and overclock it to almost 3.0Ghz because that would almost give you the performace of the extreame edition (not the Quad-core)
the 6400 might cause some bottlenecking so i would play it safe and get the 6600

troppo

[troppo]

I would spend the extra left-over money on getting the E6600 rather than the E6400 with the lower cache the 6400 might struggle when using a highend DX10 card such as the 8800GTX or whatever

i would get the E6600 and overclock it to almost 3.0Ghz because that would almost give you the performace of the extreame edition (not the Quad-core)
the 6400 might cause some bottlenecking so i would play it safe and get the 6600

troppo

[warriorscot]

The 6400 is fine even going from a Pent D or X2 the differences in FPS from using the faster 6600 were only a few fps you wont notice a huge difference unless you are doing alot of encoding tasks. The CPU is getting more important in games again but still its not even a tenth as important as the graphics card you'll rarely get anything as high as even 10FPS more from changing CPUs even a big leap in speed.

What you really want to spend more on is the PSU 600W is the minimum if you want to upgrade in future even now that system is a squeeze on a 430W PSU i wouldn't really want to try it on my 480.

I would maybe go with the x1950pro for the gfx card its slightly cheaper and slightly better(its cheaper here at least) and i prefer the performance characteristics of ATI cards they put more weight towards image quality than nvidia who care more about FPS at any cost.

[troppo]

Well maybe not in games but you cant disagree that you wouldnt notice the difference in the CPU's in other high loading situations like DVD encoding and other multi-threading situtations

the larger cache size has to be an advantage

[warriorscot]

Apart from games and ripping the occasional DVD and CD most people wont encounter much that requires a decent amount of CPU power and youre still tlaking a rather small difference most people wont do much encoding and so it doesnt matter if it takes 40 minutes opposed to 30. The GPU is much more important to a gaming system and i would spend $100 on more a better PSU because 430W is barely enough for the system as is let alone with upgrades or a 6600.

[RacrBilly]

I have a question who would EVER use anything close to 640 GB of HDD space. Or even 320 if you plan on using a RAID. A 22" LCD in my opinion is too big. I have a 19" and it is plenty big. Of course I don't run games where I need that kind of resolution. Do you really need the FDD. I mean they don't make computers any more with them still in. I haven't seen a program that came with floppies in a long time? Power Supplies come with dimensions so if you get a new PS with the Same Dimensions as your old one it will fit. But otherwise I think that computer will last a good 2-3 years. At least. The computers at my school come NO WHERE EVEN CLOSE to that and they are 4 years old and they do fine. Although they are not running Half-Life or Doom or anything like that.

[foxoff]

Hey thanks to all that contributed. Good advice. I am going with a PSU updgrade to 650W.

To RacrBilly:

22" LCD: it's bigger and better and within my budget so why not?

FDD: I recently needed a floppy drive to create a boot disk (it's a long story so pls don;t ask why I needed the FDD sepcifically). It's a just in case thing.

640 GB of HDD space: You would be surprised how much hard drive space you use if you are a games and media junkie. Better to have too much now thean require more in ayear or so!

Thanks again to all. This topic is closed.

Fox

[Spider-Man]

Usually DVD-ripping requires around a minimum of 4gb of space, so that's only 25 dvd's[at the most] per 100gb of space - and file sizes only look set to increase with the spread of HD movies. FDD's are great. Like it or not, FDD's have been the saviour in millions of situations. Some BIOS upgrades also require a FD to flash the BIOS.

Your system sounds great, and I can only envy you for having the money to build such a system:( haha

[warriorscot]

I have a dual monitor setup a 19" and widescreen 22" and the 22 is sooo much better its a better screen to start with you cant get a 19" as good for a decent price and the width is actually great for working and gaming on as well as watching movies and tv. The 19" once looked large now looks tiny and useless.

Also i would love 640Gb of drive space i have what must be twice that on DVD i would love to have some of it still on my drives as its a PITA to rake through my big book of DVDs for stuff.