Value system

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speedlever
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Value system

Post by speedlever » Wed Jun 20, 2007 7:15 am

Having just built a couple of C2D systems, I was planning to keep an old Dell PII/400Mhz running (albeit sluggishly) XP/pro in 384 Mb ram for a 3rd computer for the kids (ages 8-10)... I'm thinking the old PII just ain't worth keeping... in comparison.

I just rebuilt an old P4/Northwood system with a flaky mobo and put an ASRock 4coredual-VSTA mobo, e4300 (oc to 2.4 GHz), 2 Gigs DDR2-667 ram and used the existing Fortron PSU, existing AGP/6600GT, existing CD burner and existing 60 Gb HD. I just had to add one optical DVD drive so I could load Vista Home Premium. That system works very well and I did it for around $285 plus about $50 for the Vista Home Premium family discount.

But now I have only one spare CD burner and nothing else.

If I were to build another box... with value in mind (not the cheapest... but the best value/performance with cost being a major player), would an AMD X2 or another C2D be the value performer?

I'm comfy with something like a Fortron 450w PSU.. cheap enough and works well in the old rebuild above for ~$50.
Easy to find inexpensive DDR2-800 ram now for under $100.
Another cheap DVD burner for $30 or so.
I'd probably stay with the stock HSF... although not silent on the e4300, it's much quieter than the stock HSF on the old P4 it replaced.
On board sound should be sufficient.

So I would need to shop for the following:
CPU?
Case?
Mobo?
Video card (pcie)?
HD?

Any suggestions?

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:37 am

Next month AMD will cut prices. Then already cheap AMD X2's come even cheaper. I think best value for dual cores is now AMD X2 series: Although intel will make price cuts too.

There are several 65W versions of AMD X2's that go well under 100 USD's and after price cuts, which should be around 15% to 20% in that price segments from July 9th I think AMD X2's will be hard to beat compearing value and performance.

But that's just me.

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:23 pm

I'm certainly open to AMD. Might be worth the wait... will probably take me that long to put a value component list together anyway. Right now the AM2 3800+ seems to go for about $65... which is about $50 less than the e4300.

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:05 am

right now, brisbane 3600 is 1.9ghz vs 3800 which is 2.0. nothing to note there performance wise, but heat has gone down and it is also cheap on newegg. Amd boards are action packed for 69 dollars or less. I recommend patriot memory, any of them are fine. 2x 512gigs is cheap, 2x 1gigs of ddr2 is also really cheap right now.

video card I would recommend a 8500 or 8600. There is a new 2400XT out right now that also sounds nice. I would skip the 8400 if you ever would game in the slightest. Kids like to game :) I think right now that the best card is a 8600 card. the 2600xt cards from ati have ont come out yet. they will be good performance for low wattage cards from what it sounds like.

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Thu Jun 21, 2007 12:49 pm

Looking at AMD mobos, I have no clue what's desirable between the different NB chipsets:
ATI
VIA
SIS
AMD
3x Nvidia (nforce 500, nforce 4,geforce 700)

At least with Intel mobos, I'm comfy with the p965 chipset and the C2D cpu. Although I just built a C2D with a VIA 880PT Ultra NB and I have no complaints.

Guess my comfort zone is just too narrow right now... glad I'm not deciding today.

Regarding video cards, this 8600GT tempts me for my system and move my 7600GT Silentpipe II to the kids value build. And on sale right now for $128/AR... hmmmm.

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:06 pm

If I were to build another box... with value in mind (not the cheapest... but the best value/performance with cost being a major player), would an AMD X2 or another C2D be the value performer?
for maximum performance per $, you should look at the new Pentium E2140/ E2160 (these are really Core 2 Duo chips). like all Core 2 Duo they OC like crazy with no effort at all (link).

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Thu Jun 21, 2007 7:23 pm

That's interesting jaganath.

I need a little education here... what differentiates the e21x0 from the e4x00? L2 cache? They're both Allendale, right? And yet NewEgg differentiates them as Dual Core and C2D respectively. I'm not sure of the difference.
e2160

e4300

I'm seeing about $25 diff between the e2160 and the e4300. The price difference is not a swing factor.

Separately, I've been impressed with the cool and quiet running of the Samsung HD321KJ SATA drive. Might have to pick up another one of those and move my 300 Gig Seagate 7200.7 PATA drive over to the value system.

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:05 pm

ehh.... 2 meg cache vs 1 is kinda huge. 2 vs 4 meg the difference is very small. e4300 is the lowest chip you should bother considering.

i wouldnt bother with intel at all though if i was considering value. I like the ati/amd chipsets. motherboard doesnt really matter. amd is really flexible as to which you get. you can get anything really. just pick out the features and the connections you want on the back panel. foxcon, msi, abit, asus, sapphire, asrock. All work fine. AMD doesnt go faster or slower based upon the motherboard or chipset. Intel does because it doesnt have the more mature technology of amd (ht lanes, on die memory controller). While intel might be faster right now, it fluctuates greatly from board to board.

965 is a solid chip though and the e4300 is the most reasonable processor to buy. (can go faster than a 6600!)

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:18 am

I have both an e4300 and an e6600. I've had trouble getting the e6600 past 350 FSB on my P5B-E rev 1.01g mobo.

My experience thus far is that the e4300 on the ASRock 4coredual-VSTA mobo oc'd easily by 50% and the temps barely moved. IIRC, a 33% oc on the P5B-E and the temps wanted to climb a bit more. But it's been a while since I fiddled with oc'ing the P5B-E.

I run the Noctua HSF with ULNA and tri-cool case fan on low on the e6600 whereas the e4300 uses the stock HSF and case fan running at stock settings with the oc. CPU temps on the e4300 seem to run 2* cooler than the e6600. The core temps are nearly identical in both systems. That's with the e6600 stock at 2.4 GHz and the e4300 oc to 2.4 GHz. Now the e6600 box is much quieter than the e4300.

But hey, that's another thread.

Anyway, interesting observation that the mobo/chipset makes no diff with AMD. That ASRock mobo was my first step outside Asus territory. And I'm pleased with it.

Ah well... the value project is still in the thinking stage.

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