Comp. Sold, Making New One.

[FieryGoose]

I didn't realize that my computer was going to sell so soon, just sold it yesterday. So I guess I'm going to need to buy parts this week.
The one thing i'm having trouble deciding on is the mobo.
I'll be running an E6700, and i'm not sure whether or not to get a board focused on Nvidia products or Ati products. I'll probably be using ddr2-800 memory, which seems to be the most common. I also wont need somthing for overclocking, I just want highend quality, My budget is about 1600, so I was thinking a mobo for no more than 250. Thanks.

Also if anyone wants to add on/change what I should get that would be awesome.
What I had previous to build:
700w seasonic m12, 74gb raptor, 320gb seagate, combo optical drive+floppy. Monitor+keyboard/mouse.
$1600 to spend on:
Case:Lian Li v1200 blk-$229
Cpu: E6700 LGA775-$512
Ram:Muskin Extreme Preformace-$315 after rebate Or Corsair XMS2 Dominator-$244 (a little confused about what voltage to get, i guess some mobos have compatability problems.)
GPU: Depends on Mobo... Probably a X1950xt for now, dx-10 card for later.
Mobo:Help, Looking at these but don't know which one to get:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131025
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813188010
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813188009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121059
I Can't really decide between the 2 Evga's which one to get since the more expensive one says that ddr2-1200 is the standard when i'm going to be using ddr2-800, will my preformace be affected if I use the more expensive board. Also if I use an nvidia 680i board will ati card preformaces be decreased?
Soundcard:X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series-$146 or a Budget Card; Either the budget x-fi gamer card or the audigy 4 se...
And my Last question is being that i'm not planning to overclock should i get higher frequency memory or not, because i don't want to pay alot for good timing ddr2-800 memory if higher frequency ddr2-1000 is going to give me noticably better preformace. Thanks a Ton guys.
:cheers:

 

[Stigmata]

I'm not absolutely sure about this, but I've heard that with the E6600 (much cheaper than the 6700) and an Asus P5B motherboard, you can get an overclock of about 30% (though I've heard figures anywhere from 15% to 100%) with just the stock heatsink and fan. I'd look into that if I were you.

For your GPU, any motherboard for a Core 2 Duo is going to be running PCI-e, probably exclusively, so you'll be fine with an x1950xt. the x1900xt might be a better purchase - slightly slower for a comparatively larger price drop - especially if you're thinking of going DX10 soon.

I think I have the same Mushkin RAM that you're looking at. Mine came with black heatsinks, DDR2-800, timings are 5-4-5-12 I think... Really, really good RAM.

Nvidia boards with ATI GPUs: The Nvidia brand just means that the motherboard itself uses Nvidia chips. I have an Nvidia-chipped motherboard with a x1900xt, and there were no problems whatsoever.

As for everything else, I may look into it if I have time. Hope this helped

 

[63]

I've also heard good things about E6600 (well, really any C2D) and a P5B. My friend showed me his E4300 @ 2.8 Ghz (stock 1.8)

 

[TCfromBN]

Get a P5B Deluxe. Great for overclocking and seems to be just fine with a wide range of DIMM voltages. Ive got my e6300 at 3.01 GHz with plenty of headroom.

 

[FieryGoose]

I'm not really looking to overclock I'm mostly just looking for stability and quality over all. Thats the main reason why i'm getting the e6700 and not the e6600 and overclocking it for cheeper. But I see what you all are saying.
So what board do you think is the most stable out of the ones I chose, or just from your experience? I'm trying to get a pretty new chipset on the mobo since usually newer=more revised;but then agian i really don't know. Right now i'm really looking into the dominator ram for its price and stability due to good cooling. I also don't really have the experience to manually change the timings and voltage of the ram in the bios, Maybe it's not very inconveniant, I don't know. Thanks so far. Please continue with the comments.

 

[FieryGoose]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Hey I really appreciate all your guys' help and everything, I won't be able to make any more changes due to the fact that I just purchased everything last night.:cheers:
But hey, tell me if you think I made ok choices. Keep in mind I have no Intentions of Overclocking(at the most I may mildly overclock a year down the road), Just wanted to spend about 1750 on a new computer.
After I'm done Building these will be the Specs:
CPU: Intel E6700 w/stock heatsink
GPU: ATI X1950xt (holding me off 'till more "bang for buck" dx10 cards come out).
RAM: Corsiar XMS2 Dominator ddr2-800
HDD: 1 74gb raptor, 1 320gb seagate
PSU: 700w M12 Seasonic
Case: Lian Li V1200 BLK
Soundcard: X-fi Gamer Professional
Mobo: Evga 680i (AR version)
LCD: 22" 1680x1050 res. (gateway)
Speakers: 2.1 Harman Kardon (i know i need new speakers)
Optical: Samsung DVDRW/CDRW w/lightscribe combo drive.
and the "priceless" component the infamous floppy drive...
So did I do okay?

 

[Stigmata]

I still would have gone with an x1900 instead of an x1950 (the price difference isn't worth the performance gain), and the e6600/P5B instead of the e6700/680i - the 6600/P5B combo is basically hundreds of free MHz.

But it's a great system regardless

 

[3ssence]

Those are some top quality choices there, that should do you very well.

 

[FieryGoose]

So I got everything together, turned on first try, the only thing is, that once I installed all the mobo drivers and monitors i checked my cpu temps and just at idle the temp seems to go up a little fast like to 40C, So I just intalled what I could in a short ammount of time so I wouldn't cause the cpu to overheat. Is this normal when people first use their processors. I'm just using the Stock heatsink and stock thermal pad. It was also kind of hard to put the heatsink on compared to my socket 939 but I think I put it on correctly...
Basically my question is, Is 40C at idle normal for the first hour of running, it's an e6700, w/stock hs and paste...
I'm just a little nervous I don't want to screw anything up. Thanks.

 

[Stigmata]

It might be a little high... But most figures I've seen are for the 6600, which is a few hundred MHz below your CPU's speed. It also takes up to 48 hours for the thermal paste to fully "bake" into the CPU die, so the first day or so might yield slightly higher temperatures.

40C is fine though. Mine runs around 40 as well, and I have yet to see a CPU-related crash in 6 months.

 

[FieryGoose]

Well i just tried moving my Cpu fan speed from 30% to 80% and It lowed the temp from 41C to about 35C, so raising the Cpu fan speed should be safe I'm guessing.

 

[3ssence]

Yeah, raising the fan speed is perfectly safe, just raise it to a level that doesn't become too offensive to your ears ! Thermal material does require a decent few heat cycles to set, so thermal performance may improve a little over time. If the heatsink comes with a pad attached then it may have been worth removing that and using some decent thermal paste instead. Otherwise, just keep an eye on the temperatures during heavy use and there's not particular reason why anything should go wrong.

 

[Griz]

The only change i'd have made is to have gone with the E6600 instead - in fact i did, and i'm running mine at 3.6Ghz (an overclock of 50%!!) and it's completely stable and running at ~34C idle, ~50C under load.