Medium Budget C2D OC Setup

[Squirrel]

Well, I am planning to board on the C2D train soon. I have been looking at different components for a while.
For now I am settling on a 6400 Conroe (or 6300 depending on holiday deals, planning to push to 2.6Ghz) coupled with Zalman CNPS9500, EVGA 7900gto 512Mb, Antec Nine Hundred case, OCZ GameXStream PSU, 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 3230GB on Raid 0 (have yet to see any siginificant value/price in 10-15K RPM disks against standard sata raid drives) and the rest average.
The only parts where I am still un-decided is the mobo/ram combo. Given I am going lga775, there are not that many available options. Asus has a couple of decent candiates (p5B and p5N), but I have read a lot of horror stories with these boards being very picky with RAM and PSU. Intel and Gigabyte are also a candidate, but ithey're kind of washed down in features. I am not considering Biostar/ECS candidates so far, since they are usually entry level boards. Also, almost all candiates are considearbly overpriced at the moment. I am looking for a solid mobo with good stability, good overclocking features, and a rich set of options, and couple it with about average performance DDR2 RAM (since now RAM is also overpriced, and timings are not that important anymore with ddr2). Any experiences with any of the setup components I mentioned, or advice on the issue would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[sobo]

Ive heard the DS3 mobos from gigabyte were good (with the P965 chip), on the save side if youre overclocking FSB a lot (so a E6300 might be the better option, the Gigabyte should handle the higher FSB np)
usually none of the core2duos should limit the overclock below 3 Ghz cpu clock
but eg. with the 6300 you need 400 mhz fsb for 2,8Ghz so you need a good board like the gigabytes

 

[MeetYourMaker]

Last four systems I built were with asus boards, P5B del and P5W del and had no issues with any of them, I preferred the P5B as I got better OC results. Asus seem to be sorting a lot of the memory compatabiity problems through BIOS updates as for the PSU usually its down to people trying to use cheap or underpowered psu's and thats where the problem comes from or PSU's that were designed for lower end systems before the power hungry cpu and gfx cards were designed

Ive generaly just bought the cheapest DDR2 PC6400 I can fnd at the time which allows you upto 400FSB before breaking 1:1, makes things easier. If you go for an Asus board (or any board with passive cooling) id also suggest you look at the arctic cooling 7 as an alternative heatsink, its half the price of the zalman and performs pretty similar. Plus the fins on the lower end of the heatsink are angled down so itll actually blow onto/through the heatpipe heatsink on the MB, some of the large coolers ive used dont direct enough air onto this part so the chipset runs pretty hot unless you add the additional fan.

And Id go for E6400, easiest to OC, no problem getting 3GHz+ on stock volts although youre obviously paying more to make your life easier

 

[Nephilim]

the asus P5B is a good board, alternatively the Gigabyte DS3 does the job very good as well (I've had Gigabyte boards for years now, no trouble). Asus provide long-time BIOS support tho and perform very well in benchmarks, so personally I'd probably go for that right now.
As for the RAM, just take whatever you can find, the german company MDT is pretty good in price/performance-value. Or the "Value Series" from Kingston or Corsair or whatever... But dont go for no-name.
Obviously if you can afford the E6400 over the 6300, then you should get it

 

[QiutiQ]

MyM tricked me !
My room is like too cold now!
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