Planning for new gaming PC - advice needed

Wouter

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Big B

Asus P5B-series boards are good. I'm hearing a lot of buzz on MSI's P6N board as well. Gigabyte's P965 boards have been getting a lot of attention. Abit hasn't gotten as much attention with their AB9 series, mostly in relation to overclocking.
MSI's P965 boards are also mediocre overclockers, but the aformentiond P6N seems to be pretty sweet. That or the Gigabyte P965-DQS or P965-DS3 would be your best bets if you're looking at overclocking. Follow that with the Asus P5B and then Abit.

Now, that's the mid-range setup, most using the Intel P965 chipset. These motherboards run in the $100-200US range in most places. Above that, you need to look at the Intel 975X or nForce 680i. These typically run anywhere from $200-400. Most 680i boards just use the nVidia reference design with the company that "made" it slapping their logo on it. Asus, Abit, and I think Gigabyte, have custom boards that tend to run on the upper end of that. Unfortunately, if Asus Striker Extreme is any indication, the custom designed boards overclock less than the cheaper reference design ones. XFX, BFG, MSI, eVGA and ECS all use the reference design, so if you look at these brands, realize they're the exact same motherboard. The only thing setting them apart is the manufacturer logo.

On the 975X, you have Intel's own BadAxe 975X board, Asus P5W-DH, MSI 975X Platinum, and Abit's AW9D series. I'm sure a few others are around, but those are the ones that I can remember floating around. The 975X and 680i are pretty much neck and neck, but if you want the most overclocking headroom, the 680i is it. On the flip-side, it's not uncommon to see a 975X-based board under the $200 mark.

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Willz

A guy have an Asus P5B and his E6600 is overclocked to 4Ghz 3DMark stable in it, allthough he needed Ninja scythe cooler and a big NB Cooler to be able to reach this.

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Wouter

Ehm, guys... I said NO overclocking will be done for the components.

I just want components that perform well but that don't break the bank. I wouldn't mind paying a little (about 10% of 'normal' price) more for factory-overlocked components though, like XFX and other HW makers do.

Also important for my motherboard is that it should have a chipset that gives decent audio quality (although not 'superb' or I would have picked a dedicated sound card).

Here is a list of all the motherboards the store can offer:

Any recommendation?

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Willz

The fact that motherboard was a good overclocker with some decent cooling and stable with a C2D @ 4ghz shows its a good mobo

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Wouter

Ah, okay. I didn't get your line of reasoning before...

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Big B

If you're not running SLI or Crossfire, any P965 board will be fine on that list. I picked up the MSI P965 Neo-F to upgrade my second box with, and it's a nice little board. It's a very basic board, so don't expect much in the way of extras.

If you want SLI, you'll have to go with the MSI P6N-SLI Platinum or Asus P5N32-E SLI. If you want Crossfire, you'll have to go with one of the 975X boards listed.

I don't see any necessarily bad board, but some may be lighter on features than others.

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Wouter

Thanks.

No, I don't really care for the extra features. It's not like I'm going to hook up 6 SATA drives or anything... Most important thing is a decent audio chipset (correct term?) on the board. I'll be going with either 2.1 or 5.1 speaker setup.

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Willz

It wouldent be a bad thing looking for good features though for future upgradability, plenty of SATA connections incase you happen to get lots of SATA drivers

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Big B

The Neo-F uses a Realtek audio chip, which can do 5.1. They're not an X-Fi, but they've sounded fine for my needs...but on-board audio isn't like it used to be, so it's fine for most people.

One thing to be aware of: the P965 is paired with Intel's ICH8 southbridge, which does not contain any native IDE support. The IDE support is typically provided with a JMicron controller, which works fine. However, make sure to install the JMicron RAID driver or your optical drive will be stuck in PIO mode...and that's painfully slo-o-o-o-w. Having said that, there's a lot more fuss over it than is worth you sweating over.

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Wouter

Soon it's my birthday, so I'm probably going to give this to myself as a b-day present B)

However, I still have a few questions about some components before I do:

- I've pretty much settled on the case: Gigabyte 3D Aurora GZ Black; it should have a lot of room inside and have good airflow - all reviews I read say it does. It also looks good, and I haven't found any cases that do. Alternatives could be the Coolermaster Ammo (but I find it too ugly) or Stacker (but I find it too big).

- For the PSU, I'm thinking on getting a Corsair 620W Powersupply, not only in order to be powerful enough for the current components, but also when I upgrade it. I am doubting about whether maybe I could take a 'lighter' PSU, but I am guessing 620 Watts will be enough to last me quite a while.

- For the motherboard, I'll go with the MSI P965 Neo-F , which looks like a good price/quality motherboard, and as per the suggestions on this forum

- For the processor, my mind is pretty much set on the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 ... I have been thinking about getting a E6420 instead, but I think I will only regret that later

- For the Graphics Card, I am doubting between the 8800GTS 640MB and the 8800GTS 320MB, either 'Gainward' or 'Point of View'. This is because from many reviews it looks like these two cards are very close performers.

And because most cards still only have 256MB of RAM, I feel that game developers will not really be using that extra RAM much. So I'm leaning more towards the 8800GTS 320MB. What do you think?

- Hard drive: Samsung Spinpoint 320GB 16mb 7200rpm , cheap, reliable, quiet. I'm currently dual-booting WinXP + OpenSUSE 10.2 with only 80GB , so 320 will be plenty of space for me.

- DVD Burner: Samsung DVD +/- RW SH-S182M , with maybe an extra NEC DVD +/- RW AD7173 drive.

- OS: Windows XP (I'm keeping Linux on the old box, and I'll put XP on the new one)

Total cost (with the components in bold): € 1087

Currently I'm on an upper budget of €1200 , so this is comfortly below that.

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Willz

I had the Gainward 640mb GTS and it was preety good.

Games allready use 512mb VRAM such as Oblivion with modded textures, DOOM 3, Quake 4, they all use over 256mb ram at highest settings, if you notice when gaming at really high res, in some benchmarks you see the 8800GTS 320 come to a crawl due to the limitations of the 320mb memory.

I got the PSU and EVGA 8800GTS in my sig coming in like an hour I hope

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Wouter

Thanks for the info. So I guess it would be good to spend the extra dough after all.

Really high-res like what resolutions? My LCD's maximum native resolution is 1280*1024 and maximum res. 1280*1024 too or maybe 1600*1200.

Also, I forgot about the RAM...
I can pick either:
- OCZ Gold DDR2 2GB ram (OCZ Gold DDR2 PC5400 2048MB KIT, w/two 1024MB PC5400 XTC, CL4-4-4-12)
- Corsair TWIN2X 5400 DDR2 2GB ram (PC5400 Kit w/two identical CM2X1024-5400C4 Dimm).
- TwinMOS DDR2 PC5300 2048MB Dual Pack KIT ,w/two matched DDR2 PC5300 1024MB CL5

- Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5 Kit w/two identical CM2X1024A-6400 Dimm's), this is more expensive but I'm not sure exactly what advantage that would give me over the other three?

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Willz

I would go for the Corsair.

Most people say the 320mb will be fine for 1280x1024 up to 1600x1200, but I only game at 1440x900, the 640mb memory is a piece of mind, and even at lower res some games can struggle with the lower memory.

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Wouter

You mean the Corsair RAM? (since I picked a corsair PSU as well)

Yeah, piece of mind is pretty important to me. Plus I can't rule out that I'll buy another LCD display in the future... a nice, huge Samsung or something...

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