Which core components are the best/fastest/ most stable?

[chris watton]

I have been thinking of upgrading the core componants of my PC, as the Prescott CPU likes to overheat, amking it a nightmare for games, and the motherboard isn't really up to the job (the original Asus board I bought died, and I had to buy a cheapo one from PC World, not been the same since!)
Since the new mobo, I have crashes in HL2, constantly, and Rome, and I've had enough! It is a shame, as the pc I have should be quite stable, I have 2x74GB Raptors in RAID0 for the main drive, 2x120GB Maxtor drives for data, an ATI X800 Pro GPU, 1 GB of Corsair RAM etc, but even this isn't enough for some games!
I may order the following parts to update my PC so it lasts another 2 years (parts in my PC I bought in 2003, so have lasted well), what do you think, is it too OTT for playing stuff like Medievil 2 and other upcomng games?
I have really lost track as to which core componants are the best/fastest/ most stable, but have heard good things about the new AMD chips. Feel free to put me right before I spend......


This is what I have provisionally ordered;

CP-128-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4600BVBOX) (CP-128-AM)
£314.95 £314.95
MB-001-SP Sapphire PURE Innovation Gruper Radeon Xpress 200P (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-001-SP)
£114.95 £114.95
MY-110-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C3 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-110-CS)
£294.95 £294.95
GX-039-GW Gainward BLISS GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-039-GW)
£349.95 £349.95
SC-042-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music + HS600 £29.99 Gaming Headset Bundle - Retail (SC-042-CL)
£72.75 £72.75
Subtotal £1,147.55
VAT £200.83
Total £1,348.38

Cheers

Chris

Forgot to put a title!!!!!!

Edited by chris watton on Tuesday 6th June 19:21

[mattley]

Well seeing as you're obviously going top end, I have to ask.


Only one graphics card????

Wot no SLI????

[chris watton]

mattley said:

Well seeing as you're obviously going top end, I have to ask.


Only one graphics card????

Wot no SLI????

I read some reviews, and they said that the GPU that I chose was as fast, if not faster than any SLI set up, as it is essentially 2 cards in one anyway, and buying 2 high end GPUs does seem a tad excessive – too hard to justify just so that I can play Medieval 2 at full pelt! Lol

What would you suggest, 2x cheaper cards in SLI config?

[bigdods]

CPU shouldnt overheat, my Intel P4 LGA775 3.0Ghz runs at 42 Deg c - when its clocked to 3.3Ghz and run at 100% load. Just chucked away the crappy intel cooler and stuck an Arctic cooling one on instead <£30.

With the standard Intel cooler on it was ticking over at >60 deg and hit up to 80 when pushed hard.

[chris watton]

bigdods said:

CPU shouldnt overheat, my Intel P4 LGA775 3.0Ghz runs at 42 Deg c - when its clocked to 3.3Ghz and run at 100% load. Just chucked away the crappy intel cooler and stuck an Arctic cooling one on instead <£30.

With the standard Intel cooler on it was ticking over at >60 deg and hit up to 80 when pushed hard.

I know, it never did with he Asus board, mines a Prescott 3.2, and not even overclocked, but just playing HL Episode 2, it just crashed again (PC reboots itself), all fans are fine,PSU more than enough, the GPU fan is fine, and it's all in a huge and very expensive Lian Li aluminium case, with plenty of airflow. trouble is, can't get the Asus board anymore, and componants for AGP based boards are becoming harder to come by, so I thought I'd bite the bullet and upgrade the mobo, CPU and AGP, so I can at least be a little more 'future proofed', and use the stuff I will replace for my works PC (just CAD stuff).
I am not sure about the twin GPUs, as I have had to replace my RAID0 drives twice, and these are meant to be the best - when one dies, it's a nightmare, I would imagine it would be the same for the GPU's, and Sods law will dictate one of the cards will die when they phase out production of it, so no replacement!
As I said, am now a little behind it what's best at the mo, so would like to know if what I chose is OK, or an expensive mistake! lol

Chris

[ErnestM]

Might not be the CPU. If your power supply is not up to the job, your system will reboot. High end cards and multiple drives along with a high end cpu put HUGE demands on a power supply.

Just for giggles, why not try a slightly higher power PSU?

ErnestM

Edited by ErnestM on Tuesday 6th June 20:52

[chris watton]

ErnestM said:

Might not be the CPU. If your power supply is not up to the job, your system will reboot. High end cards and multiple drives along with a high end cpu put HUGE demands on a power supply.

Just for giggles, why not try a slightly higher power PSU?

ErnestM

Edited by ErnestM on Tuesday 6th June 20:52

I did, I spent almost £80 on a 550W PSU, as I was convinced that that was the cause - but it's still the same, no difference whatsoever - am sure it's the crappy mobo...

[ErnestM]

Oh well. It was worth a shot. Great minds and all that...


ErnestM

[annodomini2]

bigdods said:

CPU shouldnt overheat, my Intel P4 LGA775 3.0Ghz runs at 42 Deg c - when its clocked to 3.3Ghz and run at 100% load. Just chucked away the crappy intel cooler and stuck an Arctic cooling one on instead <£30.

With the standard Intel cooler on it was ticking over at >60 deg and hit up to 80 when pushed hard.

Depends on the case/fan and any other components in the system that can generate heat and any other cooling systems that are in place.

[neil_cardiff]

I've just brought a Pentium D 805 2.6Ghz chip, with a decent Asus 775 mobo (the P5WD2) and some DDR2 PC5300 memory - however I got a decent Antec case, and an Artic Cooler fan for the CPU.

This meant that I was able to overclock the 2.6 to 3.6 easily, and it's currently running quietly and happily.

Best thing about all this?

The CPU was £90 - Dual Core too
The mobo £90

Obviously the other bits were normal pricing but I was well chuffed with a 1Ghz stable overclock

Edited to add: The cpu runs at 50 degrees - the info recommends that it runs at 65 degrees so I'm happy with that

Edited by neil_cardiff on Wednesday 7th June 09:43

[pdV6]

Chris, what cooling (if any) is on the m/b chipset?
Maybe a cheap heatsink & fan for the northbridge might sort you out temporarily...

[chris watton]

pdV6 said:

Chris, what cooling (if any) is on the m/b chipset?
Maybe a cheap heatsink & fan for the northbridge might sort you out temporarily...

It’s a fan, on a cheap ‘n’ nasty PC World mobo (Abit Guru, or something like that), I will change the fan in the meantime, to see if that helps - good tip! I did have a very nice and very stable Asus mobo before this (one of my Raptors took it out when it died in spectacular fashion last year!), I think that was a PCP 800-E Deluxe, or similar – it ‘was’ very stable.
I figured that if I use these internals for my works PC, at work (this has an AMD XP 2500, clocked easily to 3200XP speed, and has always been stable, but starting to show its age a bit) , and replaced them with the new stuff for my home PC, which I use for both work and play (still a company expense, as I still do loads of work at home) The case is/was quite expensive, almost £200, but it’s huge, quiet and has plenty of quiet fans, so blowing all the heat out of the case has never been a prob.
What I don’t want to do is make the same mistake I did when I bought the parts for my current PC back in 2003, like spending almost £600 on the latest 3.2 CPU, I want cutting edge, but not the most expensive parts (like an FX 58 or Pentium Extreme). I do need an excellent graphics set up (for playing games and CAD rendering work), as I haven’t had an NVidia card for a while, I thought I’d give them a go – I need loads of memory for and CPU power for rendering work, but that also pays off for high end gaming too, which is nice! It is the GPU that I am not sure about, and don’t know what is the best set up, not having a PCI express set-up before, which is why I need advice from someone who knows a little more than me before spending my money.

Oh yes, one thing I have learned, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on the best of the best quality components, they can still go bang prematurely – although the warranties are better!

[neil_cardiff]

chris watton said:

pdV6 said:

Chris, what cooling (if any) is on the m/b chipset?
Maybe a cheap heatsink & fan for the northbridge might sort you out temporarily...

It’s a fan, on a cheap ‘n’ nasty PC World mobo (Abit Guru, or something like that), I will change the fan in the meantime, to see if that helps - good tip! I did have a very nice and very stable Asus mobo before this (one of my Raptors took it out when it died in spectacular fashion last year!), I think that was a PCP 800-E Deluxe, or similar – it ‘was’ very stable.
I figured that if I use these internals for my works PC, at work (this has an AMD XP 2500, clocked easily to 3200XP speed, and has always been stable, but starting to show its age a bit) , and replaced them with the new stuff for my home PC, which I use for both work and play (still a company expense, as I still do loads of work at home) The case is/was quite expensive, almost £200, but it’s huge, quiet and has plenty of quiet fans, so blowing all the heat out of the case has never been a prob.
What I don’t want to do is make the same mistake I did when I bought the parts for my current PC back in 2003, like spending almost £600 on the latest 3.2 CPU, I want cutting edge, but not the most expensive parts (like an FX 58 or Pentium Extreme). I do need an excellent graphics set up (for playing games and CAD rendering work), as I haven’t had an NVidia card for a while, I thought I’d give them a go – I need loads of memory for and CPU power for rendering work, but that also pays off for high end gaming too, which is nice! It is the GPU that I am not sure about, and don’t know what is the best set up, not having a PCI express set-up before, which is why I need advice from someone who knows a little more than me before spending my money.

Oh yes, one thing I have learned, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on the best of the best quality components, they can still go bang prematurely – although the warranties are better!

I have a P4C800-deluxe if you want another one? (I've six actually but thats another story...)

[pjskel]

Chris, why are you looking at a Sapphire mobo, which is Radeon Crossfire based, instead of an nVidia board?
Personally, given the list there, I'd swap most of it to:

Asus M2N32 and AMD X2 4200 M2 CPU - same money as what you've listed
Stick with the Gainward - back on top form after many years of plodding along
Patriot/OCZ RAM - DDR2 800 (PC2-6400), which the new M2 mobo and CPU can utilise. Again, same sort of money as the DDR400/433 (PC-3200/3500) or just a bit more.

[maddog-uk]

pjskel said:

Chris, why are you looking at a Sapphire mobo, which is Radeon Crossfire based, instead of an nVidia board?
Personally, given the list there, I'd swap most of it to:

Asus M2N32 and AMD X2 4200 M2 CPU - same money as what you've listed
Stick with the Gainward - back on top form after many years of plodding along
Patriot/OCZ RAM - DDR2 800 (PC2-6400), which the new M2 mobo and CPU can utilise. Again, same sort of money as the DDR400/433 (PC-3200/3500) or just a bit more.

I am with you!!

There is a socket change in AMD thats come out, I would buy into that. Asus is a top brand. Decent power supply is a must along with decent disks and in fact a decent cooler will help, especially if you like games. Finally the case is important too!

Chris if you email me offline I will gladly tinker with some components and specs and email them back. This is how I earn a living!

cheers

Simon

[Plotloss]

Thought about clocking a P4 D805?

And I would perhaps swap the Corsair for Patriot DDR2 to match the processor and provide decent stability.

And as has been mentioned look at SLI

[Zod]

You don't need to look at SLI with that card, as it has SLI on board already - it's two cards stuck together that go in one slot. I'd say it' a very good buy.

I would suggest an X2 4400 in place of the 4600, unless the price difference is very small. Spend the money saved on something else.

[Holst]

That all looks pretty good to me spec wize.

I might not want to spend all that money on the CPU, the difference over the 4400 will be very minimal.

But im a cheapscate overclocker so I never spend allot on a CPU (unless AMD send me a free one )

[neil_cardiff]

Plotloss said:

Thought about clocking a P4 D805?

And I would perhaps swap the Corsair for Patriot DDR2 to match the processor and provide decent stability.

And as has been mentioned look at SLI

I've done it (as above) 2.6Ghz to 3.6Ghz on air cooled Artic Cooling fan - easy peasy

£90 too

Edited by neil_cardiff on Thursday 8th June 09:08

[Plotloss]

Is it properly stable Neil?

I have my finger on the button ready to tool up so to speak...