Advice on buying a motherboard bundle

[theneoking]

Hi guys, im quivering about which motherboard bundle to buy, i dont know much about CPU's so a little advice on which one to choose would be great,
Im Building my own barebone system, i have a budget of about £500, i would use my computer mainly for gaming use and be able to multi task witout it stalling, heres the links to the two i was looking at,

https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage?MBB-DC945A

https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage?MBB-E63512

Which one is best for gaming or most powerfull your advice is greatly appreciated!

Plus im looking at buying these other components

https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-79GS5
https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-CAG5

Advice on these would also be helpfull:razz:

[Sid]

Is your budget £500 for the barebones ie. Motherboard, CPU and RAM, or for the barebones and a graphics card and case?

Something like:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 @ £130
DFI Infinity 975X @ £100
2 x 1GB Corsair Value Select PC4200 @ £160
x1950 pro GFX card @ £130

£520 and you'll have a nice gaming system.

And welcome to PauseGaming, by the way :)

[theneoking]

Thankyou for welcome,

Yes my budget would be to include motherboard, CPU, Graphics Card and Case,

the items you have posted seem to be what im after, but which processer is the best to get these days, and does the clock speed affect the running speed of games and other tasks?

[Sid]

the items you have posted seem to be what im after, but which processer is the best to get these days, and does the clock speed affect the running speed of games and other tasks?

Intel Core 2 Duo processors are the best at the moment, you should aim to get one of those over anything else, even if it's a cheap one.

The clock speed does affect the running speed, but shouldn't be used to judge which processor to buy, instead as more of a comparison to other processors of the same arhitecture. For example, a Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.80GHz) will outperform a 3GHz Pentium 4 by a long way.

The systems you linked to have far too little RAM. 512MB isn't enough. End of. You should really be getting 2GB. 1GB would probably be okay, but I wouldn't do it. You could probably knock some money off by getting cheaper RAM that I specified. Just go for the cheapest 2GB of PC4200 you can find.

Similarly with the motherboard, you should be able to get a £70 motherboard that supports Core 2 Duos and PCI-E.

I'll try to find some components for you later.

Edit:

Ok you could get the following for £493 including shipping.

MSI 965P NEO
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-4200
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro

Find a cheap case and it'd be worth going that little bit over £500. Do you already have a power supply, by the way?

[theneoking]

I could go over my budget but would have to wait for next months pay,
I'll need to get a new PSU but im not sure how powerfull it needs to be,

I suppose my max budget would be £600, id be willing to pay more if its worth the extra money,

Thanks for helping me out here btw!

[Sid]

Hrmmm, kinda unfortunate you don't have a PSU you could use already. A suitable one will set you back about £60, at least.

I'd wait until next pay.

[YegaDoyai]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-126-IN

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-120-AB

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-018-SA

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-054-SO

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-064-CO

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-112-CS

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-052-AN

£500 all in

Before Sid says, this only includes 1GB of memory, i agree fully with his opinion that 512MB is too little and my suggestion is 1GB per core. However this MOBO has 4DDR2 slots therefore you could upgrade later to get a full 2GB. If you can wait, then wait and get 2gb in one go, you WILL notice the difference, especially with task switching.

With regards to the CPU, it depends what you want the E6300 _can_ be clocked hard enough that it can outperform the top of the range Extreme edition processor, however to do that you need £400 memory and a £200 motherboard, but you should remember that the E6300 does overclock well so I would not suggest going for any other version. The X1950 Pro is hands down the best graphics card you can buy. All versions perform the same only the cooling changes, so in general I'd suggest getting this basic model if you are unconcerned with noise issues. Or spend a bit more (£20) and get one of the 'silent' versions.


Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£129.24)
Abit IP-95 Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£39.94)
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
(£50.51)
Sony AW-G170AB2 18x DVD±RW x12 Ram Dual Layer DVD-Writer - (Black) OEM
(£19.96)
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£117.49)
Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x512MB)
(£93.99)
Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU
(£50.51)

[theneoking]

Ok i think ill have to wait for next pay day lol:(

U know when people talk about overclocking how do they do this?
Is overclockers uk a reliable company to buy from?

thnks angain 4 help:mrgreen:

[YegaDoyai]

yes, i think there are about 5-6 folk on this forum alone that have used it with very few problems. Niall (el presidente) had some issues getting some stuff returned but it did get resolved.

If you come to a lan (and with a beasting machine like you intend on getting why not?) then we can go over overclocking. I'm pretty sure everyone (or at least quite a few) would be interested in how it works and I'd be interested in seeing how the various Core 2 Duo platforms perform, we have several new builds that are very similar to your spec and it would be interesting to do a comparison.

[theneoking]

Hmmm okie doke, I'll hopefully buy the stuff youved advised next month, ill look into them more myself,

Is the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256mb best to buy or is a 512 mb card better:confused:

[YegaDoyai]

what res do you play your games at? If it is 1280 * 1024 (the standard res for a 19" TFT) then 256MB will be just as good as 512MB in most cases. if you play at higher res or play Q4/Prey/Some other Doom3 engine clone then you might want to spend the £30 extra.

In most cases it will see to a 2-3% performance increse. Only at high res or stupidly big texture usage will really make the extra noticable. The majority of cards in peoples computers today is 128MB (for gamers using the Steam survey atleast) so they are not going to start making games that require more than 256 for a while yet as throwing that much stuff around on the PCIe or AGP bus is just too slow.