[Mitesh]

Basically I have a E6600 in my PC and when I upgraded from a P4 to a C2D ofc the E6600 I replaced the stock cooler with a a Zalman all copper one.
I am now building a new PC for my little bro and I ordered a E7200 for the build along with regretablly the NZXT hush which is a rubbish case for the money (restrains self from ranting on further XD).
Anyway as we know the E6600 was made using 65nm fabrication whilst the new wolfdale chips like this one use a 45nm fabrication. The E7200 came with a very small (in height) heatsink and a aluminium base, evidently this new 45nm fabricatin will not produce much heat - whilst the E6600's stock cooler which is dis-used is about double in height and weight and has a much better base - copper. However it may just be me but the E6600's base seems to be slightly larger - by like a mm?

However my question is can I use the E6600's stock cooler on the E7200 without any probs? - might switch fans around if the newer one is quiter - is that possible?

Ahh I sound like such a newb lol - I just want to make sure the E6600's cooler won't damage it due to the weight... they are both LGA 775 and so both can use any LGA 775 cooler surley?
I didnt purchase an after market cooler because this was a low budget build (bought the whole lot forabout £480.. not including mouse and speakers).
So would switching the fans around make any difference? Wonder if they have different RPM's?
Might be overclocking it thats why I am asking - the E6600's cooler would evidently be much better for that task.
I will be using Arctic Silver 5 btw.


Here is a full spec of the new build:

- NZXT Hush Black Silent Case - No PSU
- 450W Corsair VX Series PSU, ATX, PS/2, UK Version, 80 PLUS® certified
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz (1066MHz) Socket 775 3MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
- Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L, iP31 Express
- 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 PC2-6400 (800Mhz) 4-4-4-12 (Hopefully the mobo will auto recognise this so I dont intially have to tamper with settings)
- 160 GB Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 Deskstar 7K160, SATA II, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ (Apparently a very fast drive becasue there is only 1 platter - if anyone can testify...)

- Samsung TS-H653B/DEBH 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 DVD-RAM SATA Black OEM (If you google this then you get drives that look half decent with some white writing on them - like this http://www.sibertek..../8884_buyuk.jpg - only I received the TS-H3653B without anything at the front - as in no white writing - instead it looks EXACTLY like the lower black ODD in this pic: http://upload.wikime...tical_drive.jpg.
I am worried that this may, somehow, be wrong as such - as the drive looks ancient although the specs on it seem to match up and ofc it is SATA... - Any clues on this?

- 120mm Sharkoon Sys. Fan Midrange 31dB(A) 57.4 cfm (For rear extraction)
- 120mm Akasa AK174CB-4BLB 120mm Blue LED Fan (For intake)
Replaced the NZXT case fans as they pump no air (well very little shall we say - I tested them outside the case on a working PC as when you read further you will see I have not built this PC yet)

- Logitech MX 400 Laser Mouse, 1000dpi, PS2/USB 1.1/2.0, 5 Buttons, Black/Grey
- Logitech X-210 - 2.1 25W RMS Speakers (Nice little speakers these - I myself use the Z5500's and these X210's are good for the money )


I have yet to assemble this PC - as you can tell a core component is missing - the GPU.

I have made the choice of this: http://www.overclock.......MB GDDR3 TV Out/Dual%20DVI/HDMI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail - notice the fact it has a 256 bit GDDR3 Memory Interface

however I was intially looking at this: http://www.overclock.......s) - Retail

and just now my eye caught this: http://www.overclock.......s) - Retail

As you can see the last 2 have a 128 bit GDDR3 creating a bottleneck? (Btw the screen is a ridiculous 15inch pile of crap - it is LCD though lol - however think into the future whereby it may be replcaed by a larger screen such as a 17-22inch). Also I am restricted to about £65 MAX (not including P&P).
So any ideas on which GPU to buy? I dont mind Nvidia or ATI.
Hmm I am also wondering - what sort of games would this machine be able to run seeing as it has a 15 inch LCD? I have never used a 15 incher myself so I wouldnt know what current GPU's can run which games at 15 inch screens native resolution of 1024x768.

Also something I have been wondering about for a long time now - When I want to print something such as a picture off the net, then I copy and paste it into word and then change the page size to say A5 or whatever and then print - however I then have to re-size it and re-print because either the picture is too small or too big - this wastes paper and ink obviously.. is there not a better method to get real life measurments and use them to print a picture according to those measurements exactly?

Thanks in advance for all the help and support

Edited by Mitesh, 18 September 2008 - 05:00 PM.

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The heatsinks should be standard, it certainly shouldn't cause any damage to the CPU so you can try it out, the HSFs from the bigger older CPUs are better quality larger ones so you are right to consider using it. I would give it a go it should work fine and will most likely cool better.

If the specs on the optical are right that is what you will get, optical drives haven't changed much in years they more or less look the same as they did 10 years ago.

Kinda worried that the PSU isnt powerful enough, and I agree with you on the case I would go with the Antec Sonata 3 if it was up to me as its good, cheap and comes with a more powerful PSU or an Antec 300 which are allot cheaper and if you stick a couple LEDs in and give it a custom paint job it would look really good if you are into flashy cases.

On the GPU I would go for an 8800GT if you can't afford the jump to a 4850, you might just be able to get one for £65 if you shop around but Ocuk has one for £75 which isn't a big diff and its a great card. But with a 15" LCD you aren't going to really need anything close to as powerful as any of those cards, 1024 is a ridiculously low res and it won't matter how good the graphics card it won't look that great. If only we could still get those great big CRTs cheap, the last gen of CRT was fantastic but they have pretty much all been snapped up now but you get good LCD monitors really cheap now.

Can't say anything about the drive, I haven't used anything smaller than a 200gb for years as they are usually a waste of money as the price per gb goes down in price until it hits the HDD sweet spot which is sitting somewhere between 500 and 750GB.

Not sure about the picture thing, as a general rule if the image will fit on A4 I just print it straight from the browser. If you want to do more in the way of resizing and file changes Paint.net is a good app that ive useed but like I said I don't do allot of that kind of thing also MS publisher has more options for that kind of thing that word does if you want to use an office app.

[warriorscot]

The heatsinks should be standard, it certainly shouldn't cause any damage to the CPU so you can try it out, the HSFs from the bigger older CPUs are better quality larger ones so you are right to consider using it. I would give it a go it should work fine and will most likely cool better.

If the specs on the optical are right that is what you will get, optical drives haven't changed much in years they more or less look the same as they did 10 years ago.

Kinda worried that the PSU isnt powerful enough, and I agree with you on the case I would go with the Antec Sonata 3 if it was up to me as its good, cheap and comes with a more powerful PSU or an Antec 300 which are allot cheaper and if you stick a couple LEDs in and give it a custom paint job it would look really good if you are into flashy cases.

On the GPU I would go for an 8800GT if you can't afford the jump to a 4850, you might just be able to get one for £65 if you shop around but Ocuk has one for £75 which isn't a big diff and its a great card. But with a 15" LCD you aren't going to really need anything close to as powerful as any of those cards, 1024 is a ridiculously low res and it won't matter how good the graphics card it won't look that great. If only we could still get those great big CRTs cheap, the last gen of CRT was fantastic but they have pretty much all been snapped up now but you get good LCD monitors really cheap now.

Can't say anything about the drive, I haven't used anything smaller than a 200gb for years as they are usually a waste of money as the price per gb goes down in price until it hits the HDD sweet spot which is sitting somewhere between 500 and 750GB.

Not sure about the picture thing, as a general rule if the image will fit on A4 I just print it straight from the browser. If you want to do more in the way of resizing and file changes Paint.net is a good app that ive useed but like I said I don't do allot of that kind of thing also MS publisher has more options for that kind of thing that word does if you want to use an office app.

[Mitesh]

Heh? 8800GT - OVERKILL or what lol - I specifically said max of £65... BUDGET buold - so new screen is out of the question - its mainly for my little bro's school work word etc and some gaming like Sid Meires Pirates etc... as for the PSU well check this review out: http://hothardware.c...-Supply/?page=3
Note the midrange system and it comprimises of a E6600 and a X1950GT - so surley it would be able to power the above specs? Even under load?
Ermmm.. Optical drives have changed DRASTICALLY in appearance - so why I received a drive that looks like its from the 90's is beyond me... hence those links which shows what it is meant to 'look like'.
I was rather hoping you could recommend a GPU in my price bracket and comment on the GPU's I have looked at...
And yes I am still banging my head in frustration over my HDD choice (should have gone for one with 16MB cache) and the case is just not worth the money but oh well, its probably not that bad - as long as its not moved around too much XD.

Also I had looked at the 8800GT you speak fo the ASUS 8800GT 512MB http://www.overclock...rodid=GX-142-AS - for £77.

Now if we go back to the : http://www.overclock.......s) - Retail

That one is £54 - thats a £23 difference so it is not a small difference as you say it is. Talking of higher spec cards.. more PSU requiments - a 450W wont cope with higher specc'd cards so its best to stick to lower specc'd ones. However: ''On modern computers the +12V rail is the most important to pay attention to and the CMPSU-450VX has a dedicated solid single +12V rail of 33A (41A on 550W). Being rated at 33A it means that this power supply will easily handle any single high end graphics card on the market today from both ATI and NVIDIA.''
So it will be able to handle a 8800GT.
Ok I made up my mind - I will get the £54 card because I also have to buy 2 80mm filters for the CCTV PC for the shop - and + P&P = £68.11... so thats that.

[warriorscot]

The PSU should be fine, I only mention it because it is a smaller margin than I would typically allow on one of my own systems power wise I generally allow for a reasonable amount of overhead on the power requirements with a 450W PSU you will be cutting it mighty fine even the system in the article is borderline and while the x1950s were power hungry the newer cards are more so. It does have all the pre-requisites for running the system with a modern gfx card that isn't the issue its the overall wattage that is just a little tight as its not 100% efficient the upper 80s is all you get on very high quality PSUs so you will only get around 360W MAX out of that PSU in real terms and i would be careful when putting the system together not to overload one rail over the others.

Also you asked about the screen so I answered I just gave you the facts I didn't tell you to buy a new monitor just that its something you should consider especially as a future upgrade. With a budget of £65 you weren't going to be getting a new monitor, although you could maybe still get an old CRT in the budget if you know someone getting rid of one as even when they stopped making them they were still miles better in terms of image quality than LCDs. Just because they don't sell them anymore doesn't mean you can't buy one.

The 8800GT is the best value for money which is the reason I mentioned it, its allot better for what to me doesn't seem like allot of money and its better to get as good as you can when you can to avoid spending more later on. £24 isn't that much in the long run its less than the price of a game and I don't know about you but I can spend that on a cheap night out. I only mentioned it as an option I didn't tell you to buy it I just said its a good pick if you are in the market for a GPU as they are steal at the moment given the recent drops in the prices. On the one you picked there was nothing wrong with it at all so I didn't feel the need to say anything about it as its a good choice. And in terms of it being overkill when you are using a 15" screen pretty much everything is overkill.

If you want to save cash you can make air filters dead easy, really thin foam or muslin will do the job just fine and you can just screw allot of fans right on top without any hassle or make a small wire fan guard if the suction is so high it pulls at the material. If you make it yourself its cheaper and the filters are disposable.

On the drive the face plate and tray from a 90s drive will fit in a brand new one today, yes the drives are very different but the format is identical to what it was when they made the first 5.25 drives and you can still buy old style ones as they are slightly cheaper and if its going in a system that is never seeing the light of day like a server aesthetics don't mean much.

If the drive is SATA and burns at the right speed what they probably have is a cheapo batch that samsung fitted some old surplus face plates to or they have fitted a cheaper face plate they had extra of. If it doesn't match the spec of the drive that you ordered in terms of burn speed and read/write times then send it back it was probably a mistake on the part of the order picker and you got a slightly different model. Those are the two most likely options you could always send it back and ask for one with the advertised front but if the actual guts are the same I wouldn't go to the hassle unless you paid more than the going rate for the drive.

I also would shop around a bit, overclockers is a fantastic website and I use them almost exclusively myself but if you are only ordering one or two things its sometimes cheaper to go elsewhere as they charge allot for shipping and they charge based on demand not RRP so sometimes that can be considerably more expensive even than some shops. Ebuyer and Scan don't have the selections but they are sometimes cheaper, and if you are going to buy some filters then they are usually better for the smaller items than OCUK also check out amazon they don't have much of a selection of computer hardware but they have some stuff and the shipping is free.

This post seemed allot shorter when I was writing it lol.

Edited by warriorscot, 19 September 2008 - 09:05 AM.

[Mitesh]

Sound advice here .. thanks! Yes I use Ebuyer and Scan 0 in fact the CPU case and speakers were bought form Ebuyer! The rest from Scan - far cheaper then OCUK. I use OCUK when I cant find the parts on Ebuyer or Scan or other websites I use. Ok so hopefully scan should take that PSU back - I have removed the thin plastic cover that protected the packaging and have opened the box to look at the PSU - it didnt have any tape etc protecting the box after the plastic cover was taken off you can simply open the box - and I have looked at the PSU - I havent plugged it in etc so I dont know if Scan can take it back - if they can then yes you are right I was tired when I placed the order and just got the 450w - daft really I can get this for £8 more - http://scan.co.uk/Pr...roductId=664337

That would surley be plenty enough? I myself have a ST-60F Silverstone 600W strider, and I'm running a E6600 and a 8800GTS ACS3 640MB which is power hungry, so surley 550W should give plenty of headroom on this system should I now choose to buy the 8800GT - I love what you said '£24 isn't that much in the long run its less than the price of a game' - too true you are dam right.

As for the screen I still dont get what you mean - the £65 is towards the GPU ... anyway considering I may just get the 8800GT - tbh I guess didnt want his system beating mine XD, although saying that this is a budget build. - lol I paid £100 for my PSU when I got it and my EVGA cost £300!!! So yeah + a CRT is massively stupidly space eating and it is hard to come buy a decent flat CRT nowadays tbh... and far more power consuming.

The ODD seems fine its the right spec.

So will the 550W Corsair VX be good in the long run? Enough headroom? LOL I thought my silverstone has dual 12v rails - why I thought that (just now not normally) I dont understand lol - but its 12V rail has 55amps!!
Hmm - coolermaster PSU... hows this one? http://scan.co.uk/Pr...roductId=462689
Or shall I stick to the 'higher quality companies' ie Corsair etc?

As for the filters .. the thing is we dont have any of that foam stuff etc lying around so we would have to buy that stuff - so better off getting filters.

Also somehting taht has baffled me - what uses the 12V rail? I have always thought it was ONLY these things: CPU, MOBO, GPU and thats it.... ofc the molex connectors have 12v and 5v so ... hmmm? How do you 'distribute' across rails? And how do you tell what rails you are attaching devices to?

Please can you explain this whole rail business lol - I dont understand it

And your reply was quite long - Im guessing you can touch type.

Thanks btw for your help - I am very grateful

[Mitesh]

Hello? Where is ... anyone?

[Mitesh]

Hello? Anyone? I have waited for a very very long time for a reply.. will somebody please reply? Since I have received the 3850 and today placed the order for a 650W TX Corsair so I should have the PC built by Sunday. However my questions still remain un-answered - I have been very patient.