Joel
05-22-07, 01:15 AM
This is geared at those who don't mind doing a little, what I'd call safe, overclocking
So we've been building quite a few PCs lately, and I thought I'd just throw out one of my favorite combinations as of lately:
Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (rev 1.3)
Board is $100 at the Egg, has the Intel 965P chipset which in my experience is extremely stable, effecient and a wonderful overclocking platform. We've built too many systems to count with this particular motherboard and even have three or four floating around in systems of our own. It has all the features you'd expect:
- 7.1 channel [pretty good quality] audio
- gigabyte lan
- supports quad cores if you wanted to go that route in the future
- solid cap capacitors
- smart fan controls (for quiet PCs)
- PCI-E
Basically everything you'd want right now. One great thing, which I will get to a bit later, is it's an absolutely wonderful overclocker with many, many settings for a board this price.
Processor
Core 2 Duo E6300 (or E6320, although I personally have no experience, but I assume it overclocks as well as the E6300)
Wonderfully stable, awesome overclocker with tons of headroom, runs extremely cool, very fast, dual core. I think they go for like $160-$180 depending right now.
Memory
Wintec AmpX PC2 6400 2x1GB Kit
You've probably never hard of this company, but I've used their memory SO many times, in both rock-stable builds and gaming / performance rigs, I give them an A+. A stick has never gone bad on me and has run above and beyond stock speeds and what you'd expect. Quite a bit of headroom for as well. The AmpX series comes stock with decent heatsinks and this particular package runs for about $80 from NewEgg.
As for the rest of the system, whatever really. For the sake of this thread I'll throw in a few components I've liked lately for their mixture of performance and price.
Video
ATi X1950GT
For the price I think it's an absolutely wonderful performer; will play pretty much game you'd like and usually well. Can be had for about $120.
Hard Drive
WD 160GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB
Really any 7200RPM 8MB hard drive will do, although my favorite brands are WD, Samsung and Hitachi. This particular model is about $65.
Case
Whatever
As long as it's built decently and has good air flow (an equal number of intake and exhaust fans), it should do fine. We'll say $50.
PSU
Whatever
This is a budget system. Get a good PSU though, like from Antec. I've also had good luck with Thermaltake PSUs as a budget PSU. We'll budget $50.
Optical Drive
I really don't have advice here
Although I've had good luck with Liteon. Get a DVD Burner, they're so cheap these days. $32.
So you throw all of this together, mmk? Alright then. One of the reasons I love this combination (namely Mobo, CPU & RAM) is because everytime I've put together one for personal or close friends use (about 6), I've put it together and cranked the FSB from 533 to 800. What's that do? Takes your CPU clock from 1.86GHz to roughly 2.8GHz. Yeah.
Wonderful part is this is on stock cooling - Most of the systems I've surveryed ran about 40C idle and 52-55 C under load depending on the case. This is also on stock voltage. Running at 800MHz the RAM is able to keep decent timings, also improving performance. Throw that together with a decent HD and Video card, man you're set.
Budget:
Mobo - $100
CPU - $170
RAM - $80
Video - $120
HD - $75
Case - $50
PSU - $50
CD - $32
S&H - We'll say $35
Total - $712, give or take. You could drop the video card for something a little slower, although I wouldn't recommend it. The system above, with a 2.8GHz Core 2, 2GB RAM, X1950GT... Pretty sweet system if I do say so myself. Even if you weren't looking to upgrade your entire rig and just maybe the mobo, CPU and memory (perhaps consequently the video due to PCIE), I strongly recommend the above combination.
KTHXBYE
PS - Acer's 19" widescreen LCD for $160 at NewEgg is WONDERFUL and a nice addition too.
So we've been building quite a few PCs lately, and I thought I'd just throw out one of my favorite combinations as of lately:
Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (rev 1.3)
Board is $100 at the Egg, has the Intel 965P chipset which in my experience is extremely stable, effecient and a wonderful overclocking platform. We've built too many systems to count with this particular motherboard and even have three or four floating around in systems of our own. It has all the features you'd expect:
- 7.1 channel [pretty good quality] audio
- gigabyte lan
- supports quad cores if you wanted to go that route in the future
- solid cap capacitors
- smart fan controls (for quiet PCs)
- PCI-E
Basically everything you'd want right now. One great thing, which I will get to a bit later, is it's an absolutely wonderful overclocker with many, many settings for a board this price.
Processor
Core 2 Duo E6300 (or E6320, although I personally have no experience, but I assume it overclocks as well as the E6300)
Wonderfully stable, awesome overclocker with tons of headroom, runs extremely cool, very fast, dual core. I think they go for like $160-$180 depending right now.
Memory
Wintec AmpX PC2 6400 2x1GB Kit
You've probably never hard of this company, but I've used their memory SO many times, in both rock-stable builds and gaming / performance rigs, I give them an A+. A stick has never gone bad on me and has run above and beyond stock speeds and what you'd expect. Quite a bit of headroom for as well. The AmpX series comes stock with decent heatsinks and this particular package runs for about $80 from NewEgg.
As for the rest of the system, whatever really. For the sake of this thread I'll throw in a few components I've liked lately for their mixture of performance and price.
Video
ATi X1950GT
For the price I think it's an absolutely wonderful performer; will play pretty much game you'd like and usually well. Can be had for about $120.
Hard Drive
WD 160GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB
Really any 7200RPM 8MB hard drive will do, although my favorite brands are WD, Samsung and Hitachi. This particular model is about $65.
Case
Whatever
As long as it's built decently and has good air flow (an equal number of intake and exhaust fans), it should do fine. We'll say $50.
PSU
Whatever
This is a budget system. Get a good PSU though, like from Antec. I've also had good luck with Thermaltake PSUs as a budget PSU. We'll budget $50.
Optical Drive
I really don't have advice here
Although I've had good luck with Liteon. Get a DVD Burner, they're so cheap these days. $32.
So you throw all of this together, mmk? Alright then. One of the reasons I love this combination (namely Mobo, CPU & RAM) is because everytime I've put together one for personal or close friends use (about 6), I've put it together and cranked the FSB from 533 to 800. What's that do? Takes your CPU clock from 1.86GHz to roughly 2.8GHz. Yeah.
Wonderful part is this is on stock cooling - Most of the systems I've surveryed ran about 40C idle and 52-55 C under load depending on the case. This is also on stock voltage. Running at 800MHz the RAM is able to keep decent timings, also improving performance. Throw that together with a decent HD and Video card, man you're set.
Budget:
Mobo - $100
CPU - $170
RAM - $80
Video - $120
HD - $75
Case - $50
PSU - $50
CD - $32
S&H - We'll say $35
Total - $712, give or take. You could drop the video card for something a little slower, although I wouldn't recommend it. The system above, with a 2.8GHz Core 2, 2GB RAM, X1950GT... Pretty sweet system if I do say so myself. Even if you weren't looking to upgrade your entire rig and just maybe the mobo, CPU and memory (perhaps consequently the video due to PCIE), I strongly recommend the above combination.
KTHXBYE
PS - Acer's 19" widescreen LCD for $160 at NewEgg is WONDERFUL and a nice addition too.