And yet another ????

General Computing Hardware & Networking
1

ok you lot I need pointers!

Am after a AMD Phenom II x6, don’t know which one yet but am after recommendations to go with it

  1. motherboard full atx would be nice not into gaming a such any gpu would be boinced.

2 Memory how much? what make?

  1. will be running XP till i can get win7

  2. Power supply?

  3. PC Case? will be main machine and tucked under desk but would like it to run cool and quiet.

any pointers to where to buy as well

ta

2

Since I went through this not that long ago…

I got an 1055T (125W) as it was the cheapest one going at the time. Default 2.8 GHz easy overclock to 3.5 GHz at below stock volts. If you increase volts I went as far as 4 GHz to test it but didn’t find the ultimate limit. Definitely bin the cooler it comes with unless you like whines under load and get something nicer! I went with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus which does a great job. Only thing to watch out for is it is quite a tall cooler so you might not get the lid back on smaller cases as I found out! Also looks like they changed the fan clip now which had me stumped for a while on the one I got!

Mobo was one revision of Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H. Nice board other than the bios version on the one I got being too old to support the X6 so wouldn’t boot. I still have the older CPU I bought just to get it upgraded if anyone else runs into this problem. But I hope enough time has passed now that shipping boards are on newer firmware. ATI integrated gfx not going to set the gaming world on fire, but shockingly it will do boinc GPU tasks, however slowly.

Ram: I’d suggest 2x2GB for now even though XP32 will only see about 3GB of it. You’ll get all 4GB when you go Win7-64. Nowadays I’m not too picky on the speed rating or brand.

PSU: I got an OCZ 400W model. Seems really quiet and was cheap. Get a higher power model if you intend to put in a meaty gfx card in.

Case: it’s not the best looker but cooling wise I like this Zalman where my X6 currently sits in.

3

Another thumbs up for the Zalman Z7 case - I have exactly the same (you might see the pro and non pro version floating about - non pro doesn’t have a side fan but DOES have the attachments I believe. Dones’t bother me much, I don’t use it)

4

Mostly it comes down to budget, and what you intend to do with it :slight_smile: Have you considered the new SandyBridge chips which are getting awesome reviews ?

If you’re not gaming / overclocking much a decent 430W PSU should be fine… I second the 2x2Gb RAM even with XP :thumb:

You can get cheap and cheerful cases from about £30, all the way up to really nice cases for £120 (I wouldn’t pay more than that tbh :smiley: )

Motherboard - probably not much point spending too much here either if you’re not gaming… and if you’re not getting a seperate GPU for gaming you could use on-board graphics - unless you’re building for crunching :wink:

/edit: forgot to mention, the Hyper212 is fantastic, especially for the price <£20… and my Palit 460 has also been rock solid!

5

still going strong 24/7 100% load, you can’t really argue with that :lol: and the onboard GFX for the short time I used it wasn’t too shabby at all :slight_smile:

DT.