memory type

[Ediseye]

Sorry guys, hit the hyphen key instead of the equals key. Phail to me.

[Ben-BSH]

I would recommend this Corsair power supply for your computer actually. It rates at 650W and is 80 PLUS certified, which means under all loads, even 100%, if performs at 80% or better, which saved heat from being dissipated from the power supply and also saves you money over one that rates lower than 80$ efficiency. Corsair is also very well known for their TX series, and have received many awards on it. The power supplies them make are phenomenal.

That is the EXACT PSU i have, highly recommended, Nice Edi!

[carl]

wow!!! that's a VERY nice power supply.  and it saved my fifty bucks.  the total so far is 1319.81 bucks.  i must say thanks for all the help you guys have given me.  i really want a pc that is under 1500 that can play medium to medium high end games.  with your help it will be a successful pc.  as far as RAM goes i take it corsair is a good brand.  epically with the heat sinks.  i would get the ones Ediseye suggested with the cooling fans but i am afraid they wont fit in the MOBO so i went with these ones. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145176

[Ediseye]

Yep, Corsair does make good RAM as well. Those would be fine for your board, especially with the heatsinks on those.

Personally though, since your motherboard will support high speeds than 800, I would move up to 1066. The cas letency is around the same, and you're getting a faster speed RAM. For RAM, I favor Mushkin over any other, though G.Skill along with Corsair are pretty good too. GIEL, Patriot, and OCZ also make some quality RAM, depending on the series.

Mushkin offers a 4GB set, 2x 2GB with their advanced heatsinks. Lower cas latency than the Corsair ones you posted, and its a faster speed. Five dollars less than the Corsair RAM too.

Also, can you post all the things you plan on getting? I've got myself a system built out for me so I can purchase the parts in March or so, and it's only around $1,000 with a 22" monitor.

[MrMxyzptlk]

Yeah, about Corsair RAM: I have 4GB (4x1024MB, purchased as 2 2x1024 kits) of their Dominator 1066MHz memory running with 5-5-5-15 timing for months now . . . BUT:

Two of the four stick WERE BAD OUT OF THE BOX, failing Memtest86 when I tested them with it (per Corsair's Tech Support RMA instructions.)

On the up side, tho: They replaced them immediately and I haven't had a problem since.

Moral: Since I've now gone BACK to burn-in testing my HDDs again (I started doing it again after almost two years of not feeling the need to worry about their quality, out-of-box any more, then getting a bad disk one time this year....) I now recommend to others and myself do full burn-in testing of all new memory I buy BEFORE I go ahead with teh next step in my system build.

I recommend that you do the same! (For your RAM & HDDs!)

[carl]

ok well since i want to save money on this i only wanted one hard drive.  but i wanted a fast hard drive.  i was looking at the standard 7200 RPM but i found this one at 10000 RPM. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260 - 10000RPM. but why does it look so weird?

as compared to the normal 7200RPM one- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320

the 10000RPM one has a weird mounting thing that i have no clue why its there, and the 7200RPM one has a bigger cache.  so should i go with the expensive one that's faster and looks weird and has a smaller cache or the normal one that looks normal has a bigger cache but is slower. 


oh and before i forget here Ediseye

Also, can you post all the things you plan on getting? I've got myself a system built out for me so I can purchase the parts in March or so, and it's only around $1,000 with a 22" monitor.

well here are all the links to the stuff. 

case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112040

hard drive normal- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320
super hard drive- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296
which one of thoes hard drives do you think would be better

graphics card- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125246
PSU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005
keyboard and mouse- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126047
RAM- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146789
MOBO- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131335
OS- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116473
all the speakers i need- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826263010
processor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115054 (comes with free waterbottle)
CD/Blu ray/HD DVD/DVD- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135185

all comes up to about 1500 bucks. 

[Ediseye]

Alright, everything is looking good, except A FEW things where you're getting pretty much scammed into buying higher priced parts.

First off, we'll start with the processor. The E8600, which has 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2 cache, and is based on the 45nm technology, runs around $269, which is what you have. It also runs at 3.33GHz. If you pick up the E8500, you're paying almost $100 bucks less, with all the SAME specs as the E8600, except it runs at 3.16GHz. So you're losing about 100MHz, which you will, for sure and guaranteed, NOT NOTICE as far as speed goes. Save yourself the money, buy the E8500. (I would even buy the E8400 myself, which is around $20 less than the E8500. Same stats, runs at 3.0GHz)

With the operating system, you don't need Windows Vista Ultimate. You'll do perfectly fine with Windows Vista Home Premium. So, here it is retail, which I believe includes 32-bit and 64-bit, and also includes the license to where you can install it on more than one motherboard use. Or, you could save over $100 dollars and buy the OEM copy, 64-bit would be the best as you have over the 4GB of RAM it can recognize (combined with you video card, you really have 5GB. Different RAM, but still counted as a total). The OEM only allows you to install it on ONE MOTHERBOARD COMPUTER. So once you have it installed with the P5Q board connected to the hard drive, Microsoft considers that that is it, and you are not allowed to install that copy of windows on any other computer, or even the same computer if you upgrade the motherboard in the future.

With the hard drive, you'll notice no performance gain in gaming with a 10,000 RPM drive. If you buy a 7,200RPM drive with a 32MB cache, you'll be getting just the same performance as the VelociRaptor. The VelociRaptop is a 2.5" drive, that is in a 3.5" enclosure. This allows the drive to experience less vibrations in its enclosure and also dissipate heat that it creates. But really, pick up the Western Digital Black drive with 32MB of cache. More space, less price, equal gaming performance.

[carl]

ok thanks very much.  you just saved my like 300 dollars!!! i went with the normal hard drive, the E8500 and the OEM copy. i don't plan on doing any other motherboard upgrades once this is built. 

the E8500 doesn't come with a free water bottle 

so total with updated prices is with UPS second day shipping is $1,333.55.  i better continue my saving. 

[Ediseye]

Yep, no problem. I always love to save money. Big time.

But yeah, keep saving. I know I am for anew computer. Plan to build myself a new rig around March or April of next year. We'll see, lawl.

[carl]

ok i have a question.  i want a Ageia PhysX Graphics Accelerator.  now i heard a couple of things about this.  i have heard that it can just be a software downloaded to your GPU like drivers and its a hole other card.  so i figured i come here and ask the experts.  the the PhysX accelerator just add on software or is it a hole other card like an add on card.  or is it even worth getting.  thanks for the help. 

also does this is the new card i need to get because they ran out of the other one. 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130429
does anybody know if this comes with the PhysX accelerator or do i just need the software. 

also i was doing some research, and read about SLI.  i read it can be a very useful thing to have or do with dual graphics card.  should i upgrade the MOBO and get two graphics card and go SLI.  or since im not really planning on playing any really high end games.  i just plan on playing halo 1, halo 2, tiberium sun 3, eve online, CoD4, and maybe some SLI specific games from nivida and maybe a couple of games from AEGIA that make special use of the PhysX accelerator.  so is it worth it to go SLI and PhysX accelerator.  thanks for all the help. 

[BFM_saes]

You can get software/drivers which use modern nVidia cards to do Physics processing.
- This is worth getting.
(However, it is not worth choosing an nVidia card over an ATi card solely for this reason.)

There were (and possibly still are) separate physics cards.
- These are not worth getting.

[carl]

ok that's fine am getting a nivida either way because i prefer them over ATI.  now when a MOBO says it can support a maximum of eight gigs of ram does that mean it can take 8 gigs of RAM sticks or 6 gigs of RAM sticks and two gigs of RAM on a graphics card. thanks for the help. 

oh one more thing.  i was just wondering this, if i want to go RAID 0 in the future do i need a separate RAID 0 controller card or does it just happen by the MOBO. 

[Ediseye]

As saes said, do not buy a separate PhysX processor. These are old cards, as NVIDIA has taken over AGEIA for some time now. Though NVIDIA does still support these, it is much better to go with PhysX processing from a GPU. The NVIDIA drivers allow this to happen on cards with 256MB of VRAM and has to be a 8000 series or better. It pretty much allocates a certain amount of RAM from your video card and dedicates it to processing physics in PhysX supported games.

With SLI, there is both pluses and minuses to the technology. The plus is obviously better performance overall with two cards. The minuses are more heat generation, more money spent on two cards than one good card (usually, though not always) and power usage. Pretty much, look for a 1GB card if you can find one, but a 896MB one will certainly last you a while. Games are just now supporting 256MB as a minimum, so you should be good for a while. So in the final long run, I'd buy one good card instead of going SLI on two cards. If you did SLI, you would also need a different motherboard, as the P5Q SE/R does not have more than one PCI x16 slot. Also, you might want to look here, and wait till those cards get released before you buy a new card. The GTX 260 Cire 216 will probably drop in price, along with the GTX 280, though I'm not sure by how much.

When it says it support 8GB of RAM, that means 8GB of actual RAM, by itself. This does not include Video RAM or say the small amount of RAM some sound cards have on them. So you could put up to 8GB of physical ram in the DIMM slots, which are next to the processor. You could do this pretty much through 2GB x4 or, if the motherboard supports it (not sure). 4GB x2. The first option would be cheaper I believe though. FYI, the P5Q SE/R supports up to 16GB of RAM

To have RAID 0, if you wanted it in the future, the motherboard would already have it. with the Intel Matrix Storage technology inside of the Southbridge, RAID 0 should be able to be done already on the motherboard, through the BIOS. You wouldn't need a seperate PCI RAID controller.

[BFM_saes]

Re RAID: I've heard that you can't suddenly start to use RAID. You'll need to reformat if you want to use RAID later on.

Re RAM: As Ediseye said, the RAM limit listed by the MBO is for the RAM sticks plugged into the MBO. However, 32-bit operating systems are limited to 4GB total RAM. This does include the GPU RAM.