Finally upgrading to Quad :D

Its been a long time coming but now ive finally put enough money together to do a big upgrade. This is what ive chosen, please tell me what you think or what you would change. I gont wanna spend anymore then £580 tbh. So anyway without further rambling:


Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 - £169.78
EVGA NF680i SLI - £154.22
4GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 - £130.75
Scythe Infinity Quiet CPU Cooler Quiet - £28.54
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound for CPU and Chipset Coolers - £4.45
600W Silverstone Strider ST60F Quiet Quad SLi PCI-E - £81.55

hopefully my current Maxtor SATA harddrive should be fine and of course im gonna keep my GTS. Maybe go SLI later in the year depending on how much better the 9 series is (and how much more expensive..)

Gonna make my order in 3 days or so from scan.co.uk. Hopefully should be a beast...

 

im getting mine from Scan, are you getting 4gb 2x2gb or is that a typo?


http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(17021)OCZ-4GB-Kit-2x2048-Vista-Upgrade-DDR2-PC25400.aspx

that mems supposed to be pretty good aswell , its just a bummer that Scan dont do it for that price.

 

its not a 4gb set, its 2 sets of 2 gigs. I was gonna get the 4gb pack but its a little bit over my budget, also they have none in stock. Scan is really cheap generally atm though, much more so then ocuk...

 

i gave you a link to the 4gig pack and its cheaper than the 2gig you are going to order.

 

Yeah but its 5400 ram, not 6400. I'd rather pay the £10 more or so and get the better deal. You gotta remember if i order from multiple places I will lose money on P&P, making it not as valuable as it would be if it order it all from 1 place

 

I bought my 4gig kit from NCIX for $295CAD. How much is that in Euros?
This RAM seems to work very well. At least my system hasn't crashed. I believe that the system is running much more smoothly with the Quad!
My CPU is at 28.5C and my MB is at 36C. I think those are great temps for the Q6600 running at 3ghz! I love technology! :banana:

BTW: I'm using the stock HS/F instead of my Scythe Ninja; because, it wouldn't fit well (on my new MB), so, I was able to reinstall my "windtunnel" in my Silverstone TJ06 case. I love this case! :bigsmile:

 

Quad? DOH..why u need that?..ok ok personal likes and dislikes

 

So do you have everything up and running now Soul?

and have you just paid £10 more for 4 sticks of 1gig mem? instead of 2 sticks of 2gig?

Bigtime give it a few weeks and everyone will be on quad cos they are cheap enough to buy now.

 

1. I would suggest, if you (generally speaking) can get a good deal on 2gig RAM modules, buy them instead of the 1gig. It will give you room for future expandability.
2. IMO, anyone who has to ask "why Quadcore?", doesn't understand computing very well.
Just out of curiousity, is anyone within shouting distance still using technology that's older than, say - Pentium D? :O

 

scan ftw.... you better leave me some instock im planning to get one in a couple of weeks time, along with some new hardware

did you go for the £77 ram?
cos Dominator is selling just for £88 which im glad they reduced from about 160 :S lol

Anyone recommend a good cooler for this Q6600?
i dont think, stock would be very good?

thanks

Chris

 

Hey sorry. To keep you updated i changed my order to the << Some may think excessive but i dont plan on blowing 650 quid on this kinda setup again for atleast 2-3 years. Decided to go with corsair dominator ram and an enermax liberty instead. For the extra £40 or so just seemed worth it in the long run. Hopefully this should last me (like my current setup). I will have it all constructed on Monday when it arrives. Also i looked at the 2 gig modules. They just seem a little to pricey @ 6400 (800mhz) on other sites. I figure what ive got is enough. No need to go super crazy with money I shouldnt really be blowing completely on my comp (as tempting as it is, as with my current law job im earning more then enough). 4 gigs of dominator ram, a solid mobo/cpu and a good psu (hiper 1 although has served me well, needs to be gone to my backup comp which im giving to my bro) is all i wanted. So thats what i got

Hopefully it will rock , and btw im not gonna oc till the extra performance is needed. Tbh i think it standalone will give me all the tools i need to run vista/gaming confortably for a long time. I may sli my GTS in the future, if its really needed. Or go to a 9800 if they fall heavily by this time next year. Otherwise im totally pleased that i just saved my money and didnt blow it on silly upgrades......, but rather a whole new config.

 

Grrrrr im jealous its gonna be a couple of weeks yet for me, keep us posted please mate, i wanna know what your temps are like on stock cooling at stock speeds cos i dont plan on OC'ing until im desperate to do so.

 

I will tell you in 3 days when it all arrives boing. I dont think temps will be too much of a prob with the air cooling on the cpu (scythe infinity) and the case cooling is decent (NZXT blackline) with a bit of AS5 applied too. I will keep you posted though, and may post some numbers as unusual as it is for me to do so...

 

I personnaly think that quad is not really needed atm but that could change for sure but right now I can play every games that I can throw on my system at 1920x1200, max IQ everything on. Is is on a e6600 @ 3.6 and I never had any single lag issue so I may be wondering why you said that?

Let say about the encoding thing. I think it is better to do it on a second rig and leave it alone. So it should be safe. And the slower the better! See if I've started encoding in my second rig (6000+ M2N32 WS Pro), and after I go to the first one gaming and if it is too fast I have to get up, leave the game and start another encoding task. Not good very very disturbing; say a PIII would have been a lot better choice for that task.


Btw I'm still using my socket 478 P4 so it is just a little bit older than Pentium D you said. It is a 3.2EE, it is still running great for development task like Visual Studio or Delphi. Very very stable on a P4C800-E DX. If it was not for Hi-Res newer gaming I really think I would never have upgraded yet since it is plenty fast for other tasks and it is the most trouble free rig I ever had even with the old Asus vDroop syndrome (I was geting around 3.7Ghz on air at the time, don't remberer exactly the FSB i was using). But as a workstation it's only real probkem is the lack of PCI-X or PCIe for disks array. Only 2 fast sata port and 2 on the PCI.

And by now I swear more by disk performance than quadcore for workstation. That's why I'm having at least 2 different raid array setup in each of my rigs and 9 SCSI and 4 Raptor in my FX-60 database server alone. What good is 4 thread if you're doing all the job on the same disk or even the same array. You'll need at least four independent spindle set to maximize the performance if not disk bottleneck will slow you down for sure in many I/O intensive task.

So for me I'll wait before buying a quadcore I just don't need it right now and I don't see the Intel design very attractive anyways by slapping 2 dual on ech other and communicating via FSB. I'll wait for the AMD and its true monolitic quad on a die architecture to see how it compares.

 

The thing is mate you make some good points, but the pricepoint is right. This stuff always makes me laugh because when i got my 4200+ X2 when it first came out everyone said it was a waste of money. You dont need 2 cores, etc etc. Well i didnt have to change the processor since it came out and its been fine to this day. Niow its the same story. Sinc ethe pricepoint is good put in a little bit extra and get more longevity in your rig, rather then going cheaper and then upgrading AGAIN in a years time.

I dont plan on spending money on my comp again for quiter a long time, so surely its better to get the best out of what i can afford.

 

Here f8cking here!!!!! im sick of idiots telling me i dont need 4GB of ram or quad core. it will be a long time till i upgrade again and like you said Soul the price is right because i was originally going to upgrade to the E6600 for the same price, but now im getting 2 extra (1 dual core) cores for free.

 

^^ exactly why i did it. Was gonna spend 170 on an E6600 a few months ago untill i heard about the july price drop. Aslo gave me the time to afford a quality mobo and ram, that hopefully i can stick with for a long time.

 

LOL man. just LOL and rofl next to it. I dont need to understand computing. i have a computer which already kick ass. And hey i said "dislikes and likes, no comment" so why u bother to flame? My friend as this is a hardware forum ofocurse we are here to discuss eveyrthing related with computers. i dont judge that decision. why i asked WHY? maybe people will reply it with good points so i will buy a Quad CPU too right? i just used abit humor. lol man, u judge me with pentium D? this is something low my friend. childish..do i judge u about : u dont have a BMW 1 1.16 which i have 1? DO I?

doh!

ofcourse sooenr or later iam gonna get a QUAD..i just dont feel NEED about it.iam not that deep about it...thanx. Well, Soul and rest, ahve fun with ur QUAD cores and let us know about ur experiences.

 

Thx will do. Not much longer now (2 more days). I must admit i also dont NEED quadcore, but since i have the money for it now, i figure get summin better, and no upgrading for atleast 2 years (with cpu/ram/mobo/psu).

I don understand what your saying though bigtime. Wouldnt change my mind though lol..