Poor Man's Dream Machine

I can't get a decent sponsor to create Fat Man (UDM),

so I am getting Little Boy (PMDM) now.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 $550

Gigabyte Intel 965P-DS3 $160

2x 1 GB DDR2/800 Corsair 2028-6400 C4 $370

Unbranded medium-tower casing $25

Raptor 74GB 10,000 rpm SATA $170

His ATI Radeon IceQ X1600 Pro 256MB 128 bit $120

Thermaltake (cooling & power supply) $60

APC BR 800i (surge protector & stabilliser) $130

The soundcard's already onboard,

while speakers are the old ones ($5),

mouse is Microsoft Wireless Optical ($40)

I still need a monitor...

Most probably it will be 19" or 17"...

so much for the UDM

and I wouldnt consider this a "poor" mans machine considering the price is like 1300 so far.

And no offense but may I make some suggestions

Get the Core 2 duo E6600 - $320

And I feel you are paying far too much for the ram of that speed. For that price I would suggest you get something that is at least DDR2 1000

Crucial Ballistix 1GB PC2-8000 1000MHz - $190 x 2 = $380

Now with the money saved on the Core 2 and the higher ram speed invest in a better cooling (not nessesarily water) and the E6600 should be able to clock near the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz($950ish bucks) speeds without much of a problem. Its got locked multipliers thus the reason you need the faster FSB (aka ram)

So in conclusion you saved like 200+ bucks and get the performance of a machine that would be at least 800bucks more expensive, not bad if you ask me.

But thats just me, im upgrading my machine in the near future and that is what I will do, but I am investing more heavily in graphics card then you are but everything else will be pretty similar.

The motherboard only supports DDR2/800.

Maximum PC says 2 X Corsair 1 GB DDR2/800 run at 1066Mhz.

If that's true, I don't have to buy RAM next time I upgrade.

Can you verify this?

What graphic card are you planning to get?

Now that you mention it, I think I am getting E6600 ($350).

UDM will just have to wait till 2 years later.

Monitor: 19" ViewSonic VX-922 $300

Keyboard: Microsoft Ergonomics 4000 ($60)

The motherboard only supports DDR2/800.

Maximum PC says 2 X Corsair 1 GB DDR2/800 run at 1066Mhz.

If that's true, I don't have to buy RAM next time I upgrade.

Can you verify this?

What graphic card are you planning to get?

Now that you mention it, I think I am getting E6600 ($350).

UDM will just have to wait till 2 years later.

Monitor: 19" ViewSonic VX-922 $300

Keyboard: Microsoft Ergonomics 4000 ($60)

In your first post you said 2x 1 GB DDR2/800 Corsair 2028-6400 C4 $370

DDR2-6400 = 800Mhz so my guess is maximum PC had a typo possibly?

unless its DDR2-8000 which is 1GHz

or DDR2-8500 which is 1066Mhz

And what graphics card am I getting. Well the reason I am waiting for christmas to come around is because the Core 2 Quattro comes out as well as the next generation video cards (all DX 10 compliant, aka vista) which means 2 things, first for the same money you are spending now you should get 50%+ performance boost and if you dont want the best of the best, all the current gen cards should get huge price drops.

If I were to get a card right now I would get 1 x GeForce 7950GX2 ~ 500-600 bucks. And in the future once the games start catching up to it I could pop in another and get quad SLI (not to mention another should be like under 300 bucks by then).

Or mabye more appropriate for your current machine would be the 7950GT which is the same card as the GX2 (clocked a faster and a single card obviously) so like top of the line current gen it just came out mabye last month and you can get it for like ~$280.

but it dont seem you are a gamer so no point in spending 300 bucks on a video card.

GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3

Socket LGA775, Intel

from that link.

"....This memory has been verified to operate at 800MHz at the low latencies of 4-4-4-12. The Twin2X2048-6400C4...."

and like i mentioned anything rated 8000 or 8500 is the fastest you can possibly buy, if you really want corsair

XMS2 8500

Part Number Speed Size Latency Package Heat Spreader

TWIN2X2048-8500C5*

Club Overclocker hasn't been able to overclock their RAM.

So, why are you getting a VGA that's not going to be DX10 complaint?

cuz its the only thing available, and itll still run vista fine with everything turned on just supposedly DX10 should give like 30+% performance boast to games but right now it really is just rumors.

So much talking finaly got me to start buying my next machine

current things bought:

Intel Core 2 X6800 (I know i said i was gonna get the E6600, but I got a killer deal I couldnt pass up)

Mother board: ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe

Ram: Corsair DDR2-6400

Thats all for now I shall buy the only thing missing, aka the video card in november when the G80 comes out. Price $449-499

So much talking finaly got me to start buying my next machine

current things bought:

Intel Core 2 X6800 (I know i said i was gonna get the E6600, but I got a killer deal I couldnt pass up)

Mother board: ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe

Ram: Corsair DDR2-6400

Thats all for now I shall buy the only thing missing, aka the video card in november when the G80 comes out. Price $449-499

How much does your Core 2 Extreme cost?

RAM specs, please!

What's the latency?

Are you getting 1 GB or 2 X 1 GB?

Dx10 is not backwards compatible, so you won't be able to play games like Half-Life2.

Is this statement correct?

I just found out that the store I intend on buying from is trying to rip me off

on the corsair thing, it should actually cost $290, instead of $370

Purchases so far:

19" UltraSharp Dell 1907FP

Response time: 8ms

Contrast Ratio 600:1

I did not buy ViewSonic, because:

-it doesn't come with adjustable height stand

-widescreen ratio (16:9) is a pain in the ass when running certain games or DVD or videos.

4:3 screen is totally problem free

-Dell just had a promotion, I bought it for $280

Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 - 2GB kit (2x1GB)

Timing: 5-5-5-12 (good although not the absolute best either, you can get the TWIN2X2048-6400C4 which is 4-4-4-12 instead but 50 bucks more)

price: $230 on newegg

Reason i got 800mhz ddr instead of say the next level up is since the X6800 is multiplier unlocked i dont need to go to crazy FSB speeds, even if i did get the E6600 the 800mhz would let me overclock it to 3.6ghz (9multiplier x 400mhz fsb = 3.6ghz) and supposedly the ram shoudl hit 900mhz no problem so you could go 9x450=4.05ghz which unless you got very very high end watercooling it should be your celing anyways, no point spending more if you will never hit it. Of course im talking about 1:1 ratios, you can get faster and have like 5:4 or wahtever.

Anyways my X6800 I bough a Thermaltake Typhon and overclocked it to 3.6ghz stable. 10multiplier x 360mhz FSB operating at 1:1. I could hit 4ghz but was no longer stable (could do superPi though!) and was getting really hot so i didnt want to increase the voltage anymore, mabye if i ever upgrade to water cooling ill push it a bit more.

And your DX question, DX is not backwards compatible but vista will have both DX10 and DX9.L which is longhorn version of DX9. So all games should work appropiratly.

And where do you live man, seems like all the prices you post are a bit high for the US. and I would have gotten the screen you got, good stuff (Y) not to mention at smaller sizes 19-21" i think you get more real estate then the widescreens, but once u get a 24-30" you need widescreen.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700

Gigabyte Intel 965P-DS4

2x 1 GB DDR2/800 Corsair 1024-6400 C4

Unbranded medium-tower casing

Seagate Barracuda 160GB 7,200 rpm SATA II

XFX nVidia 7600 GS 256MB 128bit DDR3

Pioneer DVR 111 (reads & burns CD/DVDs)

Tagan 500 watt dual-engine power supply

All this for $1400

Pics coming soon!

Yes, it's costs a bit more, since I don't live in the US.

nice (Y) let me know how your overclocking goes on the 965 board, I woulda suggested the 975 which is a better overclocker, but yours should be more then sufficient. Hopefully you can get around the 3.6 i got

I can't overclock! ARRRGHH!

Gigabyte board comes with Easy Tune (Gigabyte's overclocking program).

Every time I attempt to tinker the voltage, Easy Tune crashes.

I go to the BIOS, but the multiplier ranges only from 6X to 10X.

Since E6700 has a default multiplier of 10X, it seems like I can only downclock.

I did a 3DMark 05 benchmarking and got 6285.

Is that good or bad?

------------------------------------

Do you have a Dell screen too?

It seems that Dell LCD cannot have its settings changed when it's on DVI mode.

This is a big problem as the contrast is at the maximum level (100) when you're on DVI mode.

Adobe Photoshop detects the maddening contrast and keeps crashing with error messages every time I started it.

No problems whatsoever with analog mode though.

I can't overclock! ARRRGHH!

Gigabyte board comes with Easy Tune (Gigabyte's overclocking program).

Every time I attempt to tinker the voltage, Easy Tune crashes.

I go to the BIOS, but the multiplier ranges only from 6X to 10X.

Since E6700 has a default multiplier of 10X, it seems like I can only downclock.

I did a 3DMark 05 benchmarking and got 6285.

Is that good or bad?

------------------------------------

Do you have a Dell screen too?

It seems that Dell LCD cannot have its settings changed when it's on DVI mode.

This is a big problem as the contrast is at the maximum level (100) when you're on DVI mode.

Adobe Photoshop detects the maddening contrast and keeps crashing with error messages every time I started it.

No problems whatsoever with analog mode though.

That contrast level is awfully low :| and currently i do not have the Dell monitor although im getting the 30" once it cracks $999 which will be soon.

and overclocking, on everything except the EE you cannot change the multiplier (except downwards) to overclock you increase the FSB (aka RAM frequency) upwards which changes the clock of the proccesor. All of this is done from the bios of course. You got excelent ram to overclock so in theory you should be able to do up to 400FSB (800mhz dddr) x 10 multiplier = 4GHz processor speed, so your only limited by the thermal capabilities of your proc and your MB stability. Anyways if you want me to quickly explain how to OC (or at least the process i used) lemme know and ill post something here.

Also i didnt run 3DMark since thats dependant on GPU and currently im waiting for the R600 (next year) but i did score in the 14second range in SuperPi to 1million digits, thats pure CPU

http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/super_pi_mod-1.5.zip

let me know what you get. I belive stock is somewhere in the 18+ range.

My new system I ordered on Monday:

DVD player: NEC 18X12x DVD -/+rw Dual Layer ND7170 Black

Floppy: Floppy Drive 1.44 Black

HDs: 1x Western Digital Raptor SATA 36GB 10.000 RPM

3x Western Digital 320Gb Sata II 8Mb (x3) (in RAID 5)

Memory: 2x Corsair DDR2 1024MB 800MHz XMS-2 6400 + Heatspreader

My new system I ordered on Monday:

DVD player: NEC 18X12x DVD -/+rw Dual Layer ND7170 Black

Floppy: Floppy Drive 1.44 Black

HDs: 1x Western Digital Raptor SATA 36GB 10.000 RPM

3x Western Digital 320Gb Sata II 8Mb (x3) (in RAID 5)

Memory: 2x Corsair DDR2 1024MB 800MHz XMS-2 6400 + Heatspreader � (x2)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz 4MB Boxed

GPU: Asus NVidia EN7950GT/2DHT/512MB

Motherboard: P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP

Case: Gigabyte Triton GZ-XX1CA-SNBlack

Power supply: Hiper PS530 PSU 530W SLI/Sata, black

CPU Fan: Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu Socket775

nice

everyones getting awsome machines round this place it seems. Gonna try to overclock any?

Memory: 2x Corsair DDR2 1024MB 800MHz XMS-2 6400 + Heatspreader � (x2)

What is the latency?

5-5-5-12

Anyways if you want me to quickly explain how to OC (or at least the process i used) lemme know and ill post something here.

Yes, post OC tutorials please.

This is my current BIOS settings.

Super Pi Results.