new hardware

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m1cr0

SCHLAAAAND
Apr 14, 2002
8,820
63
Germany
Well I'm about to buy a new comp in 2 weeks, most likely at the end of the month on wedneysday/thursday so I get my stuff at the weekend which I can use to build everything nicely up.
I'm still thinking about what to buy, I hope you can help me.
Long speech short sense this is what I am looking for:


CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 for 137€ or Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 for 240€
(both Boxed as I have an Artic Cooling Cooler and I want to see the differences) prefering the quadcore

GPU: Well I think I should get the ATi 4850 for ~130€ or the 4870 for 200€
by the time, i would prefer the 4850 atm due to its lower price.

RAM: DDR2-800 4gb for 70€
I dont care if i can only use 3.x gb of it cos I will use vista sooner or later anyway

Mobo: ok here it goes, I have no clue which one to buy, tbh I only need one to run everything, I dont really care about OC so it should be a cheap (maybe about 100€) on which can run everything.

HDD:WD Caviar 640GB for 68€

PSU: I've heard the Dark Power Pro from be quiet! are quite nice, but they are also expensive, maybe there is any other cheaper one? Should be 500W I think and less than 80€


what I got: Soundcard Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer, mouse, keyboard, 19" tft, Case, CPU cooler and 2 case coolers. Anything else I need? All in all I set myself a limit to max 750€ for quite agood gaming PC which should be enough for 1280x960 for the next 2years
 
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CPU:
DualCores are still fine, if you only use ur PC for gaming and abit surfing.
Quadcores have benefits if you wanna Encode/decode, running VMs, etc

HDD:
Dont buy the Samsung F1 series. Especially not the 500GB or 1TB versions.
One week ago i seeked for new HDDs myself and noticed that many people experienced heavy problems with it.
Damaged sectors, Cache-Bugs and sudden HDD disconnecting are often.
I would advice you to buy a WD Caviar WD6400AAKS. Imo it's the best harddisk atm (when you forget about SSDs :P)
HDTune Bench: http://forums.utassault.net/showthread.php?p=1479625#post1479625


Mobo:
What do you need/want exactly ?
Raid, eSata, Firewire, WLAN, How many Lan-connectors, etc etc?

Overall the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 is still one of the best for C2Ds. And it's pretty cheap. You can get it often for less than 90 Euros.
 
hmm I could get the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 for 80€, sounds quite nice and it supports all what I need, except I would like to have WLAN, just to be sure etc, I dont need raid or eSata or Firewire, just some USB ports and it should support ddr2 and quad 45nm.

About the HDD, I will go for the Caviar, edited above
 
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I've noticed occasionally one of my samsung F1s seems to have disconnected, I have 2 in RAID1 though, so I just notice the array checking after a reboot - So I think Bart is right about them :\

Mobo: just get a decent ASUS X38-based mobo IMO, and I would recommend you overclock lightly, just cos you'll get free performance for very little effort. Haven't kept up to speed with the latest releases, but for a cheap mobo I doubt you'll be looking at the newest chipsets anyway

Rest looks ok tbh
 
Had 2 Gigabyte mobos so far. Both were okish I guess but I would avoid buying another one. They had less features than say Asus for about the same money at the time. But that was some years ago and maybe they are better now.