GCollier

I've got one of those massive 30" dell monitors coming next week and need to upgrade the rest of my system to go with it.

HOME: Dell 3007WFP 30-inch Widescreen Digital Flat Panel LCD Monitor

So a few questions for some of the PC build experts on here...

Currently I've got an old P4 3GHz, 1GB DDR400 RAM and an ATi 1900XT graphics card - the graphics card is probably the only thing worth keeping as it's still relatively new and has dual DVI output so will drive the dell monitor (though I'm not banking on massive fps when playing Oblivion at 2560x1600...)

CPU - I was thinking Core 2 Duo E6600 as this seems to provide the best bang per buck?

Motherboard - Really not sure on this one. I want something that will take my ATi 1900XT card now, but offers a decent upgrade path for going either SLI or Crossfire in the future, and I don't know which way to go. I probably need two PCI-E x16 slots?? Ideally would also like a quiet board with no fans. I'm not really into overclocking unless it would be a doddle to do.

Memory - With DDR2 RAM is the expensive high frequency stuff worth the extra outlow, or should I just stick with DDR2 667MHz RAM?

Hard disk - considering either a single 150GB Raptor or a couple of cheaper disks in RAID-0. Anyone have any views on what would offer the best performance? I have a NAS device for all my pictures and music and stuff so don't require an enormous amount of storage on the PC itself.

Thanks a lot for any advice.

Gary.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Motherboard.... this one aint cheap but its a xfire board, its the Intel 975xbx, do a search for it, it comes rated very highly

Tony

Shark Man

If your not going to overclock then 667Mhz ram will be ok as the Ram speed capebility can be a hurdle if you do overclock (depending on how flexible the motherboard is) just make sure you have pairs of the same capacity for dual channel.

Currently squeezed my 667ram to 700Mhz on stock timing with a 350Mhz 1:1 bus, 1402Mhz FSB and 2.8Ghz on a e6400 processor (2.16Ghz) with no drama. And I wasn't going to overclock but I became curious

You can get 250gig drives with 16meg cache onboard for £45 (Western digital or Maxtor). Not sure how those compare cheaper drives on a Raid array.

As for gfx, I'm more of a Nvidia man, so can't help there much but if you want SLi or crossfire you'll need the two slots and board that supports that technology.

Davey P

iTrader: (1)

It might be worth finding out the highest resolution your graphics card can support. It will be a shame if you can't get the full viewing potential from the Dell monitor

Tim-Grove

I got my self an E6600 with geil 800mhz PC6400 DDR2 ram, a gigabyte DS4 board, a 8800GTS gfx and a 300gb sataII samsung hdd last weekend and its ace!!

Over clocked it to 3.2Ghz easily and its still running at fairly low temps


Got it all from overclockers for a few quid under £1k

GCollier

Cheers for the replies.

Decided on an E6600, Asus P5 deluxe motherboard, 2GB PC6400DDR2 RAM, 150GB raptor and an nVidia 8800GTX card - the ATi X1900XT would drive the dell monitor fine at 2560x1600, but would only give about 10fps outdoors on Oblivion

Tim-Grove

nice rig mate

Shark Man

Should do the job.

Just don't use AiBooster to overclock. It screwed mine up big style several times...I thought I blew something (couldn't even get into the bios setup) until as a final gasp I popped the battery and cleared the memory. For some reason my board hates any setting change with Aibooster with a vengence, even with an upto date BIOS (fine if done the old fashioned way)