I'm thinking about picking this up within the next few weeks. What do you think?

CPU - Intel ATX E6850 CORE 2 DUO 3GHz/4MB CACHE/1333FSB/LGA775

Mobo - Gigabyte P35-DS4 FSB1333, 2xPCIEx16, SATA2, RAID, GbLAN, 1394a, DualBI

RAM - 4GB - Haven't found something I like though..it's all like 800mhz for 4GB :(

HDD - Seagate SATAII NCQ 500GB 7200RPM 16mb Cache (3 or 4 of these)

Video - Asus EN8800GTS 320MB DDR3 PCIEx16 HDTV 2xDVI-I HDCP

Case - Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case with side window Black(No PSU)

Power - Powersupply Antec Neo Highly Efficient 2.2 550W

OS - Vista Home Premium 64 bit

yer looks ok

total cost?

im still using amd parts for all the boxes i build, just coz they are low end machines, and amd is so freakin cheap

quadcores out yet? coz thats gonna drop duo prices even more .. . .

It's like $2800'ish. The HDDs pushed it up as they're $185 each.

other end of the scale, web surfing box with 22" monitor (and everything else) for 800 bux

Asus M2N8-VMX $65
Athlon64 AM2 3200 $60
1G-667 Corsair $55
Seagate SATA 160G $65
Pioneer IDE 18x 112D Beige/ $38
Cooler Master Elite RC-330 $79
22” V7 R22W02-AA 5ms DVI Wide Screen $328
Logitech R20 2.1 $31
Gigabyte Desktop GK-KM5000 $20
-----------------------------------------

have you considered faster hdd's
I just upgraded work pc, went from 7200rpm sata to 15k rpm sas and now instead of hearing an infuriating grinding sound when I do something I hear a quick 'click' instead

bliss

faster hdds are great, but I'm more about capacity atm than quick access time.

Really should get best use out of the CPU's FSB and get faster RAM.

I could only find 2GB of that RAM and it was like $600!!

Jim which ones ? Were they expensive ?

Are you talking about the Western Digital Raptors? They're 10k and for 150GB you're paying twice as much as a 500GB 7200rpm drive....I guess you could chuck one in and use that as your OS drive.

I dunno what brand they are skitza, they came with some dell desktops I ordered and optioned up - yes, expensive they added about $400 or so to the cost over two disks

but bloody hell they are nice

I'll try and remember to slot one out in the morning and see if it has the brand on it


tim tibbets: nope, as far as I know WD don't make any sas drives. and yeah these sas are 160gb that we're using in raid1 for o/s drive, for large storage we just use sata disks

Aren't you just better off putting two regular large-capacity drives in RAID-0 instead of getting a raptor?

Just looked at a benchmark, and it looks like the RAID-0 owns the raptors at transfer speed, at the expense of seek time and a small increase in failure rate. Plus you save money and get more hard-drive space.

f*** off the ANTEC PSU and get something reliable...
Tagan would be a good choice

Couldn't get a better case tho if you tried :)

who's that question to parabol?

who's that question to parabol?

To anyone talking about Raptors. As in if anyone has more insight on whether Raptors are worth it (or RAID-0 instead) I'd like to know.

Hermi - Umart doesn't have Tagan power supplies :( Has Antec, Thermaltake, Seasonic or Coolmaster (and a few others)..any of those good?

Also, I was planning on putting the HDDs in RAID 0, well 2 of the 3.

EDIT - Actually I just looked up this one..looks pretty sweet.

Corsair HX-620 ATX Power Supply 120mm fan Dual PCI-E Graphics Card Connector 8 SATA Connectors

last edited by Tim Tibbetts at 12:16:15 22/Jul/07

considered using an ASUS mobo? if you're building a setup like that its not worth using a cheap mobo. Asus ftw.

I have had more issues with Asus mobos than any others I've owned :) So I'm avoiding them like the plague as they burnt me too many times.

I wouldn't get the Asus video card. They have in the past had issues with fans. As in within 2 weeks the fan is noisey from dry bearings.

I just a XFX 8800GTS 320 XXX edition. Very nice and overclocks better than the Asus. I can get a GPU rating of 640 and Memory speeds of 1000.

Out of that list of PSU's Coolermaster would probably be the way to go. Not really up to date with Corsair's PSUs, check out some reviews.

Personally I would drop the gigashyte mainboard and grab a Asus P5K-E/Wifi or Deluxe instead. I work with both brands daily and Asus seem to have far less little niggly problems. They have better Overclocking options as well as far as I have seen.

If you plan on running your OS drives in RAID 0 you may want to consider some smaller drives because the chances of failure are doubled with a stripe and a terabyte of striped storage is a damn lot. I wouldn't be storing anything I care about deeply on there. I kinda have that problem now with 2 x 320g in RAID0.

Perhaps 2 x 160g HDDs in RAID0 for the OS and 2 x 500g for storage?


Out of the RAM Umart stocks, Corsair or Geil would be my pick from the exposure I have had to the brands.
I have heard good things about Patriot however I have never played with any first hand. Maybe check out a bunch of reviews.

I own an Albatron 8800GTS 640 and have been pleased with it so far, they are generally cheaper than Asus too so I could recommend one of those :)

last edited by rubba-chikin at 15:10:37 22/Jul/07

whatcha think

i think you should suck my cock... now bitch.


i haven't upgraded my pc for about 2 years now... i should really upgrade heh... whats a low end fast machine for non gaming worth these days?

Low end ASUS boards are s*** - true story. If you want a decent board, you really need to spend cash on em. I see it all to often. I spend a serious wad of cash on a mobo (old system) an guess what, It's still running 4 odd years later (P4G8X Deluxe) an nicely playing 99% of the games I enjoy today - could have something to do with the 7800GS AGP card in it tho

Out of that list of PSU's Coolermaster would probably be the way to go.

I would've thought Seasonic's M12 series would be better, they've been getting lots of good reviews.

I have a question.. I'm going to be doing a big upgrade soon as well (Intel Q6600, 4Gb DDR800, 8800GTS) and don't know which PSU to get.

My two choices are Thermaltake 750W modular PSU for $219 and the Enermax Liberty620W PSU for $239. Other ones are either too much for what I want or too little-powered.

Thermaltake
http://computeralliance.com.au/productimages/6870.jpg

Enermax
http://computeralliance.com.au/productimages/6166.jpg

A) Will these power ratings be enough the components I plan to get (certainly should be enough).
B) Would the more expensive lower rated PSU be the better choice maybe coz of higher quality build?

I'm planning on gettting a cheap UPS as well which will keep the power smooth.

Don't go with either of those.

Thanks guys. I think I'll go with the Albatron 8800GTS, I'm actually running an Albatron 7800 atm and it's given me no issues. Still not sure about the mobo though :(

I'd rather have one of these :D

Also, I have a tagen PSU and while it does indeed kain the titties off everything, I find the plug in system they use gets in the way if you have limited space in front of the PSU. As my hard drives sit right in front of the PSU a simple old PSU would have fit much better or perhaps if they came wtih 90 degree plugs instead of sticking straight out. Just something to consider if you have anything sitting in front of your PSU. This applies to anything that uses that plug in system, not just tagen.

I have an albatron 8800GTS and I've overclocked the s*** out of it, got rivatuner & kept the fan at 100% duty cycle and it stays a nice & toasty 60 celcius, unlike the stock nvidia drivers taking care of the fan where my card hits 70 celcius and above even on stock speeds.

B) Would the more expensive lower rated PSU be the better choice maybe coz of higher quality build?

Not if it's insufficient to power all your s***. If the wattage is too low you'll still get instability issues just as you may with a cheaper PSU that delivers "dirty" power.

edit: oh and here's my latest 3dmark06 test score.

last edited by whoop at 17:58:16 22/Jul/07

I cant remember which one it is out of the enermax and toughpower but one of them has really asstastic cables. Instead of having all sata or all molex they have a mixture of both and floppy power etc on every rail. s***s me off bigtime trying to neatly route the cables when its jumbled like that.

Definately buy an Antec Nine Hundred Tower case. I bought one today from CA's and it kicks some serious ass. I also bought an 8800GTS and an Athlon 6000+ Dual Core to get a few more frames in WoW.

8-)

Antec 900 is the only case I have seen that can cool 8800's in SLI and leave em cool to the touch - which is why I recommend them to anyone looking for a new case for a 8800 card/combo
I recently bought an Albatron 8800 GTX and so far, love it

flatmates have just bout the Viewsonic 32" screens an farkkkkk..... soo soo sweet!

If that case is like mine with the PSU at the bottom (looks like it) make sure it has nice long wires to go to the 2nd power connector on the motherboard. As you can see from mine PSU's that don't have bottom mounting in mind pretty much have to run straight up without any way of neatly routing the cables around the case. I guess if the mobo has that power connector at the bottom then it's all good, I'm not sure if there's a standard position for it.

Another vote for Antec 900.

The case has two fans that take air in from the front (through HDD bays) and out the exhaust fans in the rear/top, so make sure you couple it with an after-market CPU fan that is compatible with this air-flow.

A good example would be a Zalman 9700 which blows air in the same direction (front of case to rear). Awesome and efficient wind-tunnel. A bad example is any cpu fan that blows air vertically down onto the motherboard or sideways randomly.

A friend of mine has the Antec 900 + Zalman 9700 combo, massively overclocked CPU and both the CPU fan and the hard-drives are cool to the touch. Not much noise coming from the fans at low speed settings either, which is more than fast enough for good airflow.

last edited by parabol at 21:33:05 22/Jul/07

All you Antec PSU haters can eat dix

lol @ ghetto rear slot exhaust fan whoop

An interesting use of the extra passive/watercooling heatpipe fan indeed!

It's quite effective. The video card stupidly blows hot air out of slots in the bottom of it, that fan takes that hot air & blows it straight out the back of the case. It actually does reduce the temperature of the video card too. :D

You put your hand behind that slot and you can feel the hot air coming out.

p.s. it's not held on with bluetack, just sealed with it. It's glued there with nice strong glue.

I'm the king of ghetto pc cooling, you should have seen my p3

\/\/\/\/ Don't you mean mostly play insurgency? :p Also crysis when it comes out

last edited by whoop at 22:19:54 22/Jul/07

^ as if you need all the GPU power when you mostly play cs :)

All you Antec PSU haters can eat dix

must refrain... from ..... commenting

I'd rather have one of these :D

I'm getting a Q6600 :D

i haven't upgraded my pc for about 2 years now... i should really upgrade heh... whats a low end fast machine for non gaming worth these days?

u can get change from 400 bux matey if you dont need a monitor or anything else

call me, ill sort you out

I'm getting a Q6600 :D

Originally I thought the Q6600 was the CPU to go for after the price cuts, but the E6850 might actually be a better choice at roughly the same price (for most people who aren't doing scientific simulation or massive multimedia stuff).

Why? Many programs have just moved onto multiple threads, and by multiple I actually mean "two". So unless you're really running a very parallelised program, you won't gain too much from 4 cores over 2, yet. You'd probably be better off with an E6850 which is 25% faster per core, until either true quad-core is released by intel (Q6600 is just 2xDualcore with some bottlenecks and high power dissipation) or until some more 3+ core programs come out.

It's similar to the single vs dual-core debate back when not many multi-threaded programs were out and there were some very fast and cheap single cores out that would probably benefit most programs (and games) more.

Here's what I mean:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=872&model2=871&chart=434

last edited by parabol at 09:01:44 23/Jul/07

Hmm, I remember when I was getting my gamming rig made I was talked out of the Antec Nine Hundred and went with the Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570. I'm quite happy with the Gigabyte.

you need vista for quad dont ya?

I'm running vista on my quad core

If you want a gaming machine then you're really not going to get too much out of having a quad core...that was my main reason. I'll buy a new CPU in another 18 months when quad core gaming is up and running, but for the moment it's wasted.

(Q6600 is just 2xDualcore with some bottlenecks and high power dissipation)

True, bare in mind though that most of this initial flood of Q6600's all have b3 stepping on them. Next few weeks Australia should start seeing the g0 q6600's selling as new shipments come in. g0 is much better as it uses less power, generates less heat... therefore makes it better for overclocking if you wanted to do that. I'm still in two minds about which way to go atm, I'm leaning towards the g0 q6600 as I'm not planning on upgrading for 3-4 yrs but at this stage I'm looking at the new shuttles which aren't out yet anyway.

I'm running vista on my quad core

that didnt really answer my question

Antec 900 is the only case I have seen that can cool 8800's in SLI and leave em cool to the touch

I have a Silverstone TJ09, s***s all over the cheaply made Antec 900's, but also costs twice as much =]

Well thats my reasoning for getting a quad core. Sometimes I have a lot of programs open (big ones like PS and Flash and stuff). I fully agree that atm a faster-per-core duo is better but I don't get to upgrade very often so I'm trying to extend the life of my new setup by going for the quad core and 4gb ram. As well even though I'm only getting a 8800GTS 640mb, I can still later down the track simply get another one for SLI then the quad core and 4gb ram will not need upgrading.

wow I just had a look at those benchmarks... quite impressive compared to Q6600 (disregarding the fact that its 0.6ghz faster

hmmm im becoming more convinced to go for the E6850....

All you Antec PSU haters can eat dix

must refrain... from ..... commenting

I would too, but this is the IT business, not IT Friends eh.

Antec is a great product. Please buy one when considering your next upgrade Mr Customer


\end sarcasm

f*** you and your sarcasm buddy!#!#$

you too Hermi :P

As well even though I'm only getting a 8800GTS 640mb, I can still later down the track simply get another one for SLI then the quad core and 4gb ram will not need upgrading.

don't you need a GTX for sli?

edit: the 6850 is 1333FSB, no 6850 for me :(

last edited by whoop at 21:29:39 23/Jul/07

All you Antec PSU haters can eat dix

I was almost about to agree with you, except my 430W Antec PSU has just started squealing recently.

Very f***ing annoying and I want to bash the s*** out of it.

don't you need a GTX for sli?

Nope, the GTS are sli as well. Next upgrade I do will be buying an sli mobo so I can chuck another one of the 8800's in. But that will be ages away.

To anyone talking about Raptors. As in if anyone has more insight on whether Raptors are worth it (or RAID-0 instead) I'd like to know.

IIRC, Raptors are similar to SCSI disks in that they are made to higher build standards and have lower failure rates than typical consumer hard disk drives, which is why they are often used in low end, cost orientated server machines.

Having said that, I'm using a 36GB raptor (smallest/cheapest 10rpm drive they were selling if I recall correctly) and I've been quite impressed with it's general quickness for loading programs, indexing files, searching etc. About the only complaint I have is that it makes a bit more noise than the two 7200 rpm disks in my system.

From my personal experiences, I'd recommend using a single raptor for your boot drive and a raid0 of 7200rpm sata disks for the volume you are keeping your games on, to get quicker disk performance without too big of a price hit.

Well I actually ordered it

+Intel ATX E6850 CORE 2 DUO 3GHz/4MB CACHE/1333FSB/LGA775
+Zalman CNPS9700NT CPU Cooler, 2-Ball bearing, Multi Socket, Ultra Quiet 110mm +PWM Fan with green LED
+Asus P5K-E WIFI S775 QuadCore P35 FSB1333 2xPCIEx16 RAID 1394a GbLAN ATX
+DDR2 2048MB(2x1G)PC8500 1066Mhz Blue Heatspreader G.Skill
+Western Digital 74G SATA Raptor 10000 rpm HDD(16Mb Cache)
+Western Digital 500G SATAII 7200 rpm HDD(16Mb Cache) x2
+Albatron GeForce 8800GTS 320MB PCI Express Video
+Asus 1814BLB 18xDVD+-RW IDE, LightScribe, BLACK
+Sony 1.44 Floppy Drive(Black)
+Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case with side window Black(No PSU)
+Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium32bit(OEM)purchase with Hardware Only
+Corsair HX-620 ATX Power Supply 120mm fan Dual PCI-E Graphics Card Connector 8v SATA Connectors

Approx $2700

Thanks for your help guys, I changed quite a few things around. Got an Asus mobo, aftermarket CPU cooler, different power supply and changed my HDD config.

last edited by Tim Tibbetts at 06:28:09 24/Jul/07

Looks way better than what you had originally :)

On the note of Raptor v Raid0, if you are doing it on the cheap (and have a decent onboard RAID controller) you are better off getting say 2 x 160gig 7200rpm drives than a single Raptor as regular HDD's are so farken cheap atm.

I've just been playing around with a RAID0 for my OS and it out benches any single Raptor listed. Just for examples sake I have 2 x 320gig Seagate 7200 rpm drives on intel ICH8 RAID0 and according to Sisoft Sandra it benches at 127 mb/s.
There is no 150gig Raptor bench recorded though, so if someone who owns one running as a single drive can bench it and report back with the mb/s rating I would be very interested to see the comparison.

If you have money to burn obviously RAID0 2 Raptors but that usually works out to be pretty darn expensive for anything with decent capacity.

So if the FSB for the 6850's is 1333Mhz, getting DDR2 1066 would slow the CPU down wouldn't? Even tho I know heaps about PCs this is one area which I'm not too sure about..

I'm planning to get this ASUS P5K motherboard (so I can get DDR3):
ASUS S775 P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP Core 2 Motherboard
http://computeralliance.com.au/productimages/8088.jpg


Hmmm I just realised that 2Gb DDR3 is 700 bucks :S

Maybe going for the Q6600 or the E6700 (both 1066Mhz fsb) and some 1Ghz memory is the more wallet saving option.

I would like to have my primary drive (OS drive) on a raptor just so I have one drive in my PC that isn't running on RAID in case something fails. It's only a 74GB drive but it's enough for me to chuck on some important documents I wouldnt' want to lose...although I would prefer to keep it simple and 1 RAID array is enough :)

As far as the RAM situation goes, it's not worth spending the money on a DDR3 solution for the performance you get...the performance difference is sooooo negligible, and the price difference is astronomical.

Anyway it's ordered now can't change - so don't make we want to :D

This thread is such a wealth of information. Yours tips on particular brands could have taken me a week to research.
Me and a friend are looking to get new PCs come December and lately I've been reading up a lot trying to work out which brands/models are the better value.
This is what I'm looking at so far.

Intel CORE2 Q6600 2.4Ghz 1066FSB
Patriot PC2-8500 2x1G EL EPP
MSI P6N Diamond
Albatron GeForce 8800GTX
SeaSonic PSR650+ 650W S12+ Power Supply
Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case
Logitech G7 Cordless Laser Mouse
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Vista Home Premium 64bit

Anyway I've got a question... Must you use the 650 and 680 Nvidia chipsets to enable SLI?

Also, another vote here against the Antec power supplies. My first one popped just before the warranty died, it was a 400w neo power.
Though the mesh wrapped cables are very nice.

last edited by Lynx at 15:56:22 24/Jul/07

It is it is...I'm so excited about getting my new PC - better be ready by Saturday :D

I'm thinking about setting up my old machine with Ubuntu and Linux MCE - has anyone tried that?

Ubuntu was a breeze to install, though I couldn't see enough benefits over windows to make me switch. I did like the way it showed thumbnails of movie files from half way through the clip, instead of the black at the start as windows does.
Uninstalling it was a pain in the ass. I just couldn't figure out a way to uninstall it from the boot disc or OS. So I booted windows and formated the partition.
This caused a new problem as the master boot file now pointed to a non existent ubuntu install.
I had to use the winxp disc to recompile the master boot file, seems it is quite a common mistake people are making.

though I couldn't see enough benefits over windows to make me switch

Well if you have to stop and ask yourself that, chances are you're better off just sticking to Windows as it's serving its purpose.

I want to use my old PC as my media centre, and I don't have Vista or XP MCE on my old machine...Ubuntu + Linux MCE is FREE! So if it works, I would prefer to use that. Also - funness!

Intel CORE2 Q6600 2.4Ghz 1066FSB
Patriot PC2-8500 2x1G EL EPP
MSI P6N Diamond
Albatron GeForce 8800GTX
SeaSonic PSR650+ 650W S12+ Power Supply
Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case
Logitech G7 Cordless Laser Mouse
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Vista Home Premium 64bit

Only things I will criticise is the CPU and mainboard. Not a big fan of MSI having worked with their stuff before at my previous place of employment. I also am not a fan of the latest Nvidia chipsets floating around on 775 boards.

If you are needing SLI support it might be worth waiting for the upcoming X38 Intel chipset which is supposed to be supporting SLI minus the aids that is Nvidia chipsets.

I personally still think Asus have the best mainboards atm. Although I will say MSI's P35 mainboard has the raddest looking heatpiping I have ever seen.

CPU is going to be dependent on how frequently you upgrade. I think we have already had the DC v QC discussion in the thread. I would advise you to check out some reviews/benchmarks on the higher end duals as right now the 6600 Quads aren't offering better performance.

last edited by rubba-chikin at 17:56:44 24/Jul/07

Instead of making another thread...I might as well post in here.

I too am looking to buy another PC within the next few weeks...mainly a gaming rig. I know nothing about computer parts...so i've come up with something that to me seems to go well.

Though please suggest something else if something i've chosen is crap or doesn't work...within reasonable price.

MSI K9N-DIAMOND M/board - nForce 590 SLI, HT2000, Dual DDR2-533/667/800, 2x PCI-X16, SATAII RAID
AMD AMD Athlon™ 64 6000+AM2 Processor Retail Dual Core AM2
Powersupply Antec ATX TruePower 650W TRio
Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case with side window Black(No PSU)
Western Digital 74G SATA Raptor 10000 rpm HDD(16Mb Cache)
Western Digital 400G SATA 7200 rpm HDD (16MB Cache)
DDR2 2Gig(2x1G) PC6400 800Mhz Dual Channel Geil
Samsung 18xDVD -/+R/RW Dual Layer OEM Black SATA
Asus GeForce 8800 Ultra 768M HTDP 2 DVI TVout
Samsung 22 226BW Wide TFT Monitor - Black 2ms Digital / Analog Interface
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G7 Cordless Laser Mouse

Everything there should work fine with the mobo i've chosen yea?

Mate, if you actually read the thread you should be able to get a pretty good indication as to what's good and what's not - most questions have been asked and answered......

MSI K9N-DIAMOND M/board - nForce 590 SLI, HT2000, Dual DDR2-533/667/800, 2x PCI-X16, SATAII RAID
AMD AMD Athlon™ 64 6000+AM2 Processor Retail Dual Core AM2
Powersupply Antec ATX TruePower 650W TRio
Antec Nine Hundred Tower Gaming Case with side window Black(No PSU)
Western Digital 74G SATA Raptor 10000 rpm HDD(16Mb Cache)
Western Digital 400G SATA 7200 rpm HDD (16MB Cache)
DDR2 2Gig(2x1G) PC6400 800Mhz Dual Channel Geil
Samsung 18xDVD -/+R/RW Dual Layer OEM Black SATA
Asus GeForce 8800 Ultra 768M HTDP 2 DVI TVout
Samsung 22 226BW Wide TFT Monitor - Black 2ms Digital / Analog Interface
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G7 Cordless Laser Mouse

Start again. This time choose better products.

You can keep the Antec PSU, you get 1 point for that.

Well he has spec'ed an AMD system and the thread is essentially all Intel.

If you want my view, its very quick and easy

AMD = Poo (for performance anyway)

As previously mentioned they are so incredibly cheap at the moment and make perfect budget machines but other than that the core2 stuff just poops all over it.

I have been an AMD man ever since I got my first PC, made the switch with the last PC and have been ever so glad I did. It does help working in the industry I guess ;)

Only things I will criticise is the CPU and mainboard. Not a big fan of MSI having worked with their stuff before at my previous place of employment. I also am not a fan of the latest Nvidia chipsets floating around on 775 boards.

If you are needing SLI support it might be worth waiting for the upcoming X38 Intel chipset which is supposed to be supporting SLI minus the aids that is Nvidia chipsets.

I personally still think Asus have the best mainboards atm. Although I will say MSI's P35 mainboard has the raddest looking heatpiping I have ever seen.

CPU is going to be dependent on how frequently you upgrade. I think we have already had the DC v QC discussion in the thread. I would advise you to check out some reviews/benchmarks on the higher end duals as right now the 6600 Quads aren't offering better performance.

Yes atm the Motherboard CPU and Monitor are marked in red (in my little excel spreadsheet), meaning I'm yet to decide. But I have until Dec anyway.

I picked the Diamond for now, just for it's inbuilt X-Fi Audio. I'm not happy about losing >2.1 surround sound with Vista (what the feck were they thinking?). Also every where I look people are praising the Diamond for overclocking and general speed. Hardware raid is the only con I've heard of it so far. Some say it's unstable and MSI are working on a fix, but I'm too chicken s*** to attempt raid anyway.

I'm afraid I copy pasted in the list above so you didn't see the alternate option for the CPU with is the "Intel ATX E6850 CORE 2 DUO 3GHz" which is $2 cheaper than the Q6600.

I'm leaning towards the quad atm as I do a lot of photoshop work and Crysis claims to run better on Quad cores than dual. We can only wait and see.

should wait a bit on that cpu http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/24/intel_price_cuts/

thumbnails of movie files from half way through the clip, instead of the black at the start as windows does.

vista shows images well. its clever, sometimes its records ads before the tv show, but the thumb always has the right image.

I just couldn't figure out a way to uninstall it from the boot disc or OS.

fdisk /mbr ?

I want to use my old PC as my media centre, and I don't have Vista or XP MCE on my old machine...Ubuntu + Linux MCE is FREE! So if it works, I would prefer to use that. Also - funness!

windows based mce alternative

Well I got it...and all is running smoothly - it's a bit loud atm, but I think I can fiddle with some settings on the fans to get it quieter. Just installing some more games now, and copying files but all good so far.

If you bought that Nine Hundred case all you have to do is turn the fan speeds down and it's heaps quieter. When I started mine up one of the fans was on high and it was f***ing loud as. Anyway, that case kicks some serious ass.

If you bought that Nine Hundred case all you have to do is turn the fan speeds down and it's heaps quieter

Yep, each fan has a switch. Some can be hard to reach/find (e.g: hard-drive bay fans).

Low speed for all fans should be more than enough.

Thanks guys, I will go a hunting. It's a very nice case though - my CPU is around 17 degrees when idling :D

All sorted now - turned all the fans to low. The main noise was coming from the CPU fan - the auto fan speed thingo wasn't on, so it was just going flat out. So quiet now :D Thanks for all the suggestions in the thread, they've been very useful.

The End.

Beware of CPU fan speed controllers and q-fan. If you have q-fan or similar enabled and you also have a manual fan speed controller like my zalman thing came with and it's set to slow speed, that + q-fan can actually cause the CPU fan to stop turning all together. If you're using q-fan make sure you set the manual speed controller to its fastest setting, or just leave it off if possible.

*Above doesn't (usually) apply to OEM fans, only after market ones with manual speed controllers.

I don't have a control, and if I did it would have been on max because it was f***ing loud before :)

AMD = Poo (for performance anyway)

If not poo for professional backup support - man Amd must hate us for doing the full 3yr warranty. I still recon Amd should drop their warrenty from 3yrs to 1yr, if not give the customer a free upgrade like Intel does eh.

Meanwhile, bloody Intel still hasn't forked for all those lapdances by Osama's personal harem. Haven't the bloody US caught them yet? At least Amd gave us nice pens and Amd-branded artic thermal jackets.. just the thing you need here in Qld :/

bitch bitch bitch whine whine whine

last edited by koopz at 20:22:07 28/Jul/07

hiya Spooky - we still luv ya man =)

haha, hi koopz!