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Hey,
I'm looking at buying a new AM2 Rig in a few days and I wanted to check some things first. I was a bit apprehensive about going AM2 at first until I read that Guru3D article (link). It seems that if you match all the components properly, setting up all the EPP and Linkboost stuff properly, you can get really damn good performance. So I was thinking of buying something like this:
CP-167-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-167-AM) 1
£199.95 £199.95
MB-142-AS Asus M2N32-SLi-DLX nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-142-AS) 1
£119.95 £119.95
GX-038-OK OcUK GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-OK) 1
£259.95 £259.95
HS-021-ZA Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 Aero Flower (Socket AM2/939/754) CPU Cooler (HS-021-ZA) 1
£29.95 £29.95
MY-110-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C3 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-110-CS) 1
£299.95 £299.95
Subtotal £909.75
VAT £159.21
Total £1,068.96
I'm going to keep my Hiper Type-R 580W PSU, my optical and hard drives and my case so that's all I need.
The main thing I'm not sure about is the Ram since I don't really know much about DDR2. Is PC-6400 the equivalent to PC-3200 DDR, i.e. will it always run at its rated speed? And is PC-8500 the same as PC4000, initially running at the same speed as PC- 6400 but giving you more headroom for overclocking? I'm planning on overclocking the X2 4000+ a good bit so I'm not sure if I should go for the faster RAM or the slower stuff with tighter timings.
Anyone got any thoughts on the system or AM2 in general? I'm still not sure if I should just go for a Socket 939 setup, but the Guru3D article did a lot to convince me to go AM2. I don't really want to wait for Conroe since I'm going to America on the 28th of July until the end of August and then my summer holidays will be over and I'll be back to school. After that I have a really hectic year where I do my leaving cert, etc, etc... So I'd ideally like to have a really powerful system to play around with over the summer.
So basically can anyone offer any advice on whether I should go for this rig or not? It looks very nice to me, apart from the rather scary fact that I'm paying more for RAM than a top-end video card
Thanks in advance
I'm looking at buying a new AM2 Rig in a few days and I wanted to check some things first. I was a bit apprehensive about going AM2 at first until I read that Guru3D article (link). It seems that if you match all the components properly, setting up all the EPP and Linkboost stuff properly, you can get really damn good performance. So I was thinking of buying something like this:
CP-167-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-167-AM) 1
£199.95 £199.95
MB-142-AS Asus M2N32-SLi-DLX nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-142-AS) 1
£119.95 £119.95
GX-038-OK OcUK GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-OK) 1
£259.95 £259.95
HS-021-ZA Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 Aero Flower (Socket AM2/939/754) CPU Cooler (HS-021-ZA) 1
£29.95 £29.95
MY-110-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C3 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-110-CS) 1
£299.95 £299.95
Subtotal £909.75
VAT £159.21
Total £1,068.96
I'm going to keep my Hiper Type-R 580W PSU, my optical and hard drives and my case so that's all I need.
The main thing I'm not sure about is the Ram since I don't really know much about DDR2. Is PC-6400 the equivalent to PC-3200 DDR, i.e. will it always run at its rated speed? And is PC-8500 the same as PC4000, initially running at the same speed as PC- 6400 but giving you more headroom for overclocking? I'm planning on overclocking the X2 4000+ a good bit so I'm not sure if I should go for the faster RAM or the slower stuff with tighter timings.
Anyone got any thoughts on the system or AM2 in general? I'm still not sure if I should just go for a Socket 939 setup, but the Guru3D article did a lot to convince me to go AM2. I don't really want to wait for Conroe since I'm going to America on the 28th of July until the end of August and then my summer holidays will be over and I'll be back to school. After that I have a really hectic year where I do my leaving cert, etc, etc... So I'd ideally like to have a really powerful system to play around with over the summer.
So basically can anyone offer any advice on whether I should go for this rig or not? It looks very nice to me, apart from the rather scary fact that I'm paying more for RAM than a top-end video card
Thanks in advance