PC Upgrade

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris2k
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Chris2k

Hi there,
as I am upgrading my PC just wanted to have some hints from you guys.
At the moment I am thiking about an Intel Dual core E6400 (2.13) and an
Ati X1950XT video card.
The problem is that I do not understand anything of Motherboards so I do
not have any idea about what MB to look for.
I do not want to spend lots of money on it and do not need most of the
stuff on it. Already have an audigy card and a wifi card.
The feature I look for is Raid 0 and to have some Overclocking
possibilities.
What else can I say ? I will use my PC mainly for playing games (WOW or
other) and have just bought a Dell 22" wide screen.
 
Chris2k said:
Hi there,
as I am upgrading my PC just wanted to have some hints from you guys.
At the moment I am thiking about an Intel Dual core E6400 (2.13) and an
Ati X1950XT video card.
The problem is that I do not understand anything of Motherboards so I do
not have any idea about what MB to look for.
I do not want to spend lots of money on it and do not need most of the
stuff on it. Already have an audigy card and a wifi card.
The feature I look for is Raid 0 and to have some Overclocking
possibilities.
What else can I say ? I will use my PC mainly for playing games (WOW or
other) and have just bought a Dell 22" wide screen.
Click to expand...

PCPro magazine recommends this one at present:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/90559/foxconn-p9657aa8ekrs2h.html

I wouldn't skimp on your motherboard - its the base through which all data
is transferred, so don't buy a cheap one and make it a bottleneck for the
entire system!
 
Chris2k said:
GT ha scritto:

The problem is that I live in Italy and the convenient stores that I know
do not have any foxconn products :(
Click to expand...

I'm not saying it is necessarily a good board, just that PCPro have it on
their A list. Here it is on Ebay - see if they will ship to Italy? Ebay,
item number 180088535362. £100+shipping.
 
GT ha scritto:
I'm not saying it is necessarily a good board, just that PCPro have it on
their A list. Here it is on Ebay - see if they will ship to Italy? Ebay,
item number 180088535362. £100+shipping.
Click to expand...
Thanks for those infos ;)
 
PCPro magazine recommends this one at present:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/90559/foxconn-p9657aa8ekrs2h.html

I wouldn't skimp on your motherboard - its the base through which all data
is transferred, so don't buy a cheap one and make it a bottleneck for the
entire system!
Click to expand...

Not to nitpick or anything, but that board would be what
many call skimping. Foxconn tends to sell low-end stuff and
it is mirrored in the low price relative to most boards.

I'd also be hesitant to trust a review that basically only
says "it's cheap and we dont mind the layout", which ignores
a lot of gotchas like build quality, support, potential bios
bugs. It might be a fine board but there's always some
cost-cutting necessary to get a board down cheaper than
everybody else and such a quick review wont' find a lot of
these issues. For example I've seen two pictures of that
board where one looks to have some decent capacitors and
other has (hard to be sure from a distance but definitely
different...) OST, a known lesser quality. Could be a
random supply issue, or could be cherry-picked boards sent
to some reviewer that are different than what hits the
retail market in all areas.
 
kony ha scritto:
Not to nitpick or anything, but that board would be what
many call skimping. Foxconn tends to sell low-end stuff and
it is mirrored in the low price relative to most boards.

I'd also be hesitant to trust a review that basically only
says "it's cheap and we dont mind the layout", which ignores
a lot of gotchas like build quality, support, potential bios
bugs. It might be a fine board but there's always some
cost-cutting necessary to get a board down cheaper than
everybody else and such a quick review wont' find a lot of
these issues. For example I've seen two pictures of that
board where one looks to have some decent capacitors and
other has (hard to be sure from a distance but definitely
different...) OST, a known lesser quality. Could be a
random supply issue, or could be cherry-picked boards sent
to some reviewer that are different than what hits the
retail market in all areas.
Click to expand...

You have a point !
What would you buy as a mb for a duo E6400 (2.14) ?
For the vid. card am still thinking about what to get between x1950xt or
8800Gts-320MB.
If possible some major brand, so I can find it easily around ;)
 
Chris2k said:
GT ha scritto:
Thanks for those infos ;)
Click to expand...

Right now, P965 boards are like the previous generation of 865PE
boards. There are a ton of different models available.

Core 2 Duo motherboards come in two types. Ones with Intel chipsets
(975X, P965) are one type. The Intel chipsets generally provide proper
FSB1066 support, and can be overclocked like crazy.

The next tier down, have chipsets from VIA or other makers. At least
some of those, use FSB800 chipsets that the manufacturer is effectively
overclocking, just to get to FSB1066. When you buy one of those boards,
the FSB cannot be raised much above FSB1066. (There are even a few
boards with Intel 865G chipsets, which is FSB800, and they run them at
FSB1066. And in that case, the onboard graphics are disabled when running
at FSB1066. Another example might be the Intel 945 based chipsets, but
I don't know how far they will overclock. They tend to be cheaper,
but are an older generation.)

So a P965 board is what you want if you want to overclock, at a minimum.

Before buying any motherboard, *download the manual*. Some manufacturers
are clueless, and ship simply awful BIOS with their products. Check the
BIOS screens in the manual. Also, read any reviews where ever you can
find them. The sample size here is small, but I'm surprised the Foxconn
received this many posibive reviews. The board documentation I've reviewed
for Foxconn boards so far, leaves me unimpressed. (They have some pretty
weird BIOS options I've never heard of before.) I wouldn't buy one a
Foxconn (even though they are a huge manufacturer and make a lot of products
including electronic components). Brands I'd look at are MSI, Abit (when
they aren't putting bad caps on the board), Asus, Gigabyte (make popular
boards like S3 and DS3). For at least some of the brands, you'd want to
check how much trouble people have, getting a warranty response. Or
whether there is a contact for Tech Support issues, such as BIOS bug
reporting.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16813186108

There are 17 motherboards listed here, for P965:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280+107171850&Subcategory=280

The Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 is pretty cheap. And judging by the fact there are
471 reviews for the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, it would also be a good choice.
Judging by the review numbers, there are also some popular Asus boards,
but they are a few dollars more. There is a fairly wide spread on prices,
and the extra money spent doesn't necessarily help. Which is why the DS3
is probably as good a choice as any.

Paul
 
kony ha scritto:

You have a point !
What would you buy as a mb for a duo E6400 (2.14) ?
For the vid. card am still thinking about what to get between x1950xt or
8800Gts-320MB.
If possible some major brand, so I can find it easily around ;)
Click to expand...

I'm partial to Asus, but not enough to pass up a deal on a
Gigabyte, MSI or Abit if the cost difference is enough. You
really have to enumerate what you need and put a dollar
figure on features if it gets hard to decide since add-on
cards can be hit-or-miss these days with fewer legacy PCI
slots and one PATA drive controller channel.
 
kony ha scritto:
I'm partial to Asus, but not enough to pass up a deal on a
Gigabyte, MSI or Abit if the cost difference is enough. You
really have to enumerate what you need and put a dollar
figure on features if it gets hard to decide since add-on
cards can be hit-or-miss these days with fewer legacy PCI
slots and one PATA drive controller channel.
Click to expand...

What I need is Wi-fi, Audigy, Lan, and the possibility to overclock as I
have heard that the E6400 can go up a lot in speed.
As I said before I already have wi-fi and sound cards, so I could really
buy a "naked" MB.
 
kony ha scritto:

What I need is Wi-fi, Audigy, Lan, and the possibility to overclock as I
have heard that the E6400 can go up a lot in speed.
As I said before I already have wi-fi and sound cards, so I could really
buy a "naked" MB.
Click to expand...

I was thinking more along the lines of things like price
range, type of northbridge cooling, CPU heatsink clearance
(to board parts, or to case parts also depending on where
exacty the board situates the slot and whether you have a
heatsink in mind or even own the one you'd use already, the
number of legacy PCI and PCI express slots, # of video slots
(if you'd ever do SLI'd cards for gaming), # of hard drives
and their interface type, full ATX or mATX, and whether your
choice of video card will block one or more slots and if it
does, which slots those would be- since you already mention
one PCI card, and we don't know if Wifi is PCI or USB or
(could even be an access point or bridge so far as that
goes, on the wired network since you want (or at least they
all have anyway...) an ethernet adapter or two built in.

There are just too many issues for someone else to consider
for you. IMO you should pick a few brand names you trust,
go to their respective websites and peruse their offerings,
write down the prospective model numbers then see if any of
your favorite vendors sell them. If you're not anxious to
build you can then keep an eye out for price changes on
these boards.

As for the overclocking I don't know, would probably check
out some of the posts at
http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=61
as there are a lot of fellow users of some of the more
popular boards which can be a valuable asset when it comes
to finding bugs or optimal settings and such... for some of
the more popular boards there may even be someone there who
can tell you what memory and what timings are the best value
for a given board, which takes a lot of the adventure out of
overclocking, but on the other hand there's still the factor
of getting a newer CPU and maybe board revision than they
had so you may end up with an ever better o'c.

Overclocking is a lottery though, I can't feel comfortable
telling someone to buy parts X, Y or Z to get a good result
as there's always the bad specimen of board or CPU or
whatever that someone has to end up with.
 
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