New rig

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Hey, im buying a new pc off overclockers and I just wanted to know if you guys have any suggestions for changes. I would probably only want it for mild overclocking (taking the chip up to 2.4ghz) because im quite scared of breaking it.


GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3
£99.95
Abit AN8 SLi Fatal1ty nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard )
£114.95
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail
£135.95
Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU
£65.50
OcUK GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) & Call of Duty 2 Bundle - Retail
£179.95
Sony DDU1613 DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM
£12.50
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 80GB 6L080P0 ATA-133 8MB Cache - OEM
£31.95

Subtotal £640.75
VAT £112.14
Total £752.89
 
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I'd go for a lower priced mobo, the Fatality TBH ( and I have one ) isn't good value for money although it'll do what you want, chances are something like a Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) should do you well and give you money for elsewhere, X1800XT graphics maybe.
 
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Thanks for the reply - trouble is that if I get an ATI i'm going to eventualy want to have dual cards and that means i need a more expensive crossfire motherboard (which I gather is the same price as the fatal1ty?)
 
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Nope Crossfire is cheaper than the Fatality :) 69.96+vat (Asus Crossfire)

If you are thinking of going dual card though sadly the X1800 isn't a good choice to to poor availability ( being a discontinued line ) - however TBH it would be better to squeeze a single X1900XT into your budget than go 7800GT and add a second later as a single 1900 walks all over a pair of GT's.
 
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I stand corrected on the crossfire. Shame about the x1800, how long before thats discontinued? The x1900 is a bit out of my budget :(
 
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XL is reputed to be close to a 7800GT - not sure of the exact performance comparision but pretty much the same I believe.

As for the X1800XT - Stock is running out fast, they've already stopped production, however I'd expect the Master cards to last longer than the slaves so if you get a Slave now and wait you'll have a chance of getting the Master still. HOWEVER don't take my word for it :).
 
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woodsup said:
So i'm thinking go for a cheap sli board then?

If you decide to go this route, (and there's no reason why not), consider the DFI Infinity as an option if your budget is limited.
 
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Well thats cut £50 off the price anyway, the only other query I had was if the 450W powersupply would be enough for 2 X 7800GTs?
 
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Out of curiosity, in the future when I want to get another 7800GT for SLI, will it have to be the exact same OcUK GeForce 7800GT Model? Or could it just be a similar make e.g. Ledtek with the same clock and memory speeds?
 
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Similar is NOT guaranteed to work. It may work and I know there's at least 1 poster around here who has had mismatched in SLI but it's not guaranteed.
 
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woodsup said:
Okay. In that case, do you think the OCUK model will be availible for a while? (i'm hoping somewhere around a year)

Impossible to say, but in all honestly I'd expect no rather than yes. in 12 months time we'll have 7900's out and I believe the replacement for them too ( as it's likely we'll see a new wave of DX10 compatable cards around August I believe ) so it's quite possible 7800's will either be the budget card or not made any more.
 
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Either of these two for mobo suggestions?

Gigabyte K8N SLi nForce4 SLi (£64.57 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (£82.19 Including VAT at 17.5%)
 
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I installed one on a friends comp the other day. Easy to work with, although I had to turn the raid options off in the bios to get the single sata drive recognised by windows installer.

It has a passive headsink on the chipset which is good for reducing noise. Potentially not so good for overclocking, but on the system your setting up you will achieve very playable frame rates on call of duty 2, battlefield 2 etc.
 
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