I bought a new computer a couple of years ago and came here too late. I ended up getting a motherboard that was not what I wanted. It's time to get a new PC and I want to have you folks take a look at what I'm looking at: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (2.66GHz - 1333FSB - 12MB Cache) GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Core 2 Quad P45 DDR2-1366 A&GbE ATX DES Motherboard Upgraded Fan/ Heatsink Artic Silver 5 Polysynthetic Silver - 3.5g Tube Cooler Master Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UWC 380W Mid Tower Case (Black/Silver) 4GB - PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) (Dual Channel Kit) Western Digital 160GB 7200 RPM SATA2 Hard Drive Topower Epower ZUMAX ZU-650W X3 650W 20 24pin ATX V2.0 Power Supply GeForce 9800GT 512MB PCI Express Video Card I'll be adding another HD and a Blu-ray drive. Anyway, specifically regarding the CPU/mobo. Is that a good combination? I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do want games to look fantastic when I play them.
I am doing almost the exact same configuration now. Gig ep45-ud3p Intel Q9550 Msi N9800 Gt Videocard Noctua Nh c129 Heat sink Artic silver Everything went well, but I would suggest perhaps a fresh hard drive to save you some angst. Otherwise see my "Please Helo" thread very close to this one and save it for reference. I am moving forward with the mods, but having some audio driver compatability issues with XP. I think if I had to do it all over again, i would run Vista and get a GTX card. Oh....do not forget your ram with your setup, I am running corsair dominator 2x2 GB for 4Gb total ddr2 @ 1066MHZ. I got the fan models. I got the board and video card from newegg, and the processor, ram, and heatsink from tiger direct as they seemed to have the best prices. All was instock and I had everything from newegg next day, tiger in 2 days, all with no express shipping. I researched this for about a week before I set up the combo. You will also need a 500wt power supply at the minimum according to the MOBO instructions. I jkust made it. Heres some sites for research: http://forums.*********.com/f69/ga-ep45-ud3p-not-going-post-bios-setup-28691/ http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...te-ga-ep45-ud3p-p45-motherboard-review-6.html http://forums.************/showthread.php?t=341039 http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/gigabye_ep45-ud3p_review/ http://hothardware.com/Articles/Gigabyte-GAEP45UD3P-Ultra-Durable-3-Motherboard/?page=3 http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=205132&page=10 http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=205132 JJ
if u want games to look 'fantastic' when u play em, ur gonna need a better VGA. Something like a 9800GTX+ at least. go for GTX 260 if u can afford it. Everything else looks good. maybe a larger HDD. 160 is too small nowadays.
That motherboard is awesome for Q9XXX chips, Ive seen some monster OC's on it with those chips. And the P45 is a great chipset. (I would go for Q9550) But why would you be going for 800Mhz RAM? It supports up to 1333Mhz default. I would at grab some 1066Mhz RAM... I would also grab a 9800GTX+/HD4850 or GTX260/HD4870 with that set up. 9800GT is a okay card, but if you want your games to look 'fantastic' dont hold back on the GPU.
buy a larger than 160gb hdd 160gb hdd is slower too buy wd6400aaks or the newer and slightly faster wd6401aals do not buys seagate - they are not reliable
Haha I love when people come in and tell people that an entire brand is "not reliable".... Well buddy I've been running two Seagate hard drives in my PC for over 4 years without one issue and they perform great. Seen more Western Digitals go out (especially at work (IT)) by far compared to Seagates, which are a very high quality brand of HD. Don't we have enough brand loyalty in CPU/GPU market?
Haha I love when people come and present "statistics" for the entire brand from their 4yrs old two hdd drives it's more than funny Seagate before was fine, now reliability situation IS BAD. after they acquired Maxtor reliability went down and it CONTINUES to do so. Those drives ARE NOT reliable. Read for example this: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/374/1050374/seagate-barracudas-7200-11-failing they are quoting 30-40 percent failure rates. there are more articles like this. now it's not only this. go to newegg for example(I don't know where you can find more reviews form buyers then newegg)and compare how much people give 1/5 rating for WD and for Seagate. You will see Seagate gets much more 1/5rating with failed drives. Now that's not all. look at the REASONS for 1/5 rating. for WD you will see mainly DOA. dead on arrival. that means hdd is not working from the beginning so no risk of loosing data. now look at seagate side: you will see doas and A LOT of failures after a week, two weeks or a month. that means people LOST their data. Times change, seagate reliability went down a lot while wd's improved. only external wd mybook drives seem to be unreliable for some people, but their internal drives are the best now in reliability and speed. and external wd passport drives also seem to be good.
haha that was a debate to you? Someone coming in here quoting the Inquirer really needs to reconsider his sources.
The only reason I was selecting that RAM was because that's what the builder has. That mobo supports DDR3, but that stuff is pretty expensive! Maybe I'll order it with no RAM and just buy it from somewhere else. That HD is just going to have my OS on it. I have another HD that I'm pulling from my current PC that I'll use for apps. I'll be getting a third external HD for storage. My current video card is a 7900 GS KO, which has been a really solid card. I figured the 9800 GT would be quite an upgrade. Maybe I shouldn't say I want games to look fantastic...how about really good? lol
samsungs are great hd's and cd/dvd drives..oh and monitors 2 if you are looking for a great cpu cooler therm 120 extreme is great. 1066mhz ram helps when overclocking quad cores. so far i have found you need to run 1066mhz ram lower than its stock speed (u do this by setting 2a or 2d on a gigaboard or link syncing on a evga 780i board) which means the ram runs at 900mhz. this will sometimes enable you to use auto ram timings and not overvolt the ram and therefore more stability. you can often pass tests for cpu @ 3.4ghz plus but find you get screen lock-ups which i believe is 90 percent due to ram timings. if u can afford it a good 22inch 24inch monitor with a 260 is pretty amazing graphics.
I just took a look at some comparisons. The 9800gtx seems to be just *slightly* better than the gt. If I felt like spending the bucks, it looks like the 9800gx2 is a superb card, but I don't want to spend that much on a card. It's almost double what the 9800gtx costs.
well since i'v been using pcs i'v been using seagate/maxtor and they have been great i'v still got a 80GB ide thats 8 years old stlil going stong i think it just depends on luck if your harddrive goes or not.
dont bother with 9800gx2.. 260 refurbished ones are great...use less power 2..heres one.. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896M...R3-55nm-GPU-576MHz-216-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV
I guess no matter how you look at it, upgrading from my current rig (e6300 non-OC, nvidia 7900 GS OC, 2 gig of RAM) to the system above will be quite an improvement! I'll look into getting a 9800gtx card instead, and I'll also get the 1066 MHz RAM from somewhere else. I can install the card, the RAM and the hard drives myself. I already have an XP disk at home. I think I'll put that on there, but then I'm limiting myself. I really don't feel like paying an arm and a leg for Vista, though.
You can even buy a new one cheaper than that... (216 cores) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...ry 2 & Mirror's Edge & 2GB Flash Pen - Retail
Look at my rig... I'm using XP SP3 and I'm a happy camper. XP only utilizes 3.25gb of my ram, but that probably feels more than 4gb under Vista (which is more ram hungry). More cores, more ram, better mobo, the rig will feel more snappy for sure. I'd definitely go with a bigger HDD, at least 500gb if I was you. The price difference between 160gb and 500gb will be what... £15 over here, can't be a lot more where you are...