Help with my build please

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walshmaine

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#1 walshmaine
Member since 2005 • 25 Posts

Hey all

I'm building a new machine shortly but have ran into some conflicting information, perhaps some experience or advice from the locals here may help me out. Heres what I orginally intended to build.

CPU:Intel Q9450

MOBO: XFX MG-ISH9 780i

RAM: Corsair 4096-6400C5DHX (4GB pair)

GPU: XFX 8800GTS Alfa dog ed.

Being that I live in New Zealand, the Evga exchange program does not exist here so I'm not interested in any of their products, I really wanted to stay with XFX cause I've had good experiences in the pass. Most of these products are very cheap in NZ too, so please don't tell me to get something else because its cheaper :)

The problem I have is I've been talking to the local PC shops and the guys are telling me that;

A: the XFX 780i mobo DON'T support the new intel Q9450 cpu's, even though it clearly states it on the web (same with the 680i mobos). Some sort of conflict happens, funny, I thought seeing the Q9450 hasen't been released here yet.

B: Corsair is "crap" because it has a high fault rate, even thought they have a 5 year warranty. I also was told G-Skill RAM was the way to go, mainly (I believed) because it was the main RAM they stocked in the store I was in, but I've heard that G-Skill aint all that. I was also told the Corsair RAM doesn't overclock well.

C: SLI is crap on 780i & 680i mobos, apparntly is down scales the GPUs. This I'm not too worried about as I'm still on the fence about SLI, but it would have been nice as a future option.

D: One guy told me I'd need to run at least a 800W PUS for both these builds. This seemed a little exessive to me?

So, with all this in mind I decided to build/price up another machine, heres the alternative:

CPU; Q6600 Go verison.

MOBO: Asus P5E X38/ICH9R

RAM: still sitting with Corsair 4096 4GB

GPU: XFX 8800GTS alfa dog

So really I've only changed the MOBO & CPU. A little more information on what I intend to use the computer for:

Gaming @1600 x 1050, I would overclock the CPUs (on air) to about 3Ghz - 3.2GHz, SLI only as a future up-grade, either that or buy a new GPU.

So any thoughts on this, are there any truths to these claims or am I getting the "sales" pitch by desperate sales people?

Thanks in advance :)

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General_X

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#2 General_X
Member since 2003 • 9137 Posts
A. The motherboards can support the Q9450's, but they may need a BIOS update to work. B. Corsair is a good brand of RAM and you should be happy with them, G-Skill is also a good brand, but it is better for budget/non-OCing builds. 4GB is a little excessive though (and 32 bit operating systems can't recognize all of it). C. I don't know about those boards in particular, but I have heard some boards split the bandwidth of the two PCI-E slots to 8x each instead of the normal 16x per single slot. D. 750W+ is recommend for only SLI builds, so 800W would be good to have if you want the option to SLI in the future (although I don't recommend it). 500W-550W is enough for you build. You just have to make sure there are enough amps on the 12v rail. I recommend the Corsair VX550W
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Spartan8907

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#3 Spartan8907
Member since 2006 • 3731 Posts

A. As far as I know, the 780i supports Penryn CPUs out of the box.

B. Corsair and G.Skill are fine. Theres also Crucial Ballistix that is very good.

C. SLI is not crap on those boards. At least for the MSI 780i, in SLI, one GPU will be running at x16 and the other will be running at x8 bandwidth. You probably wouldnt see that much of a difference between that and both running at x16.

D. For the single GPU rig, you only need 500w - 550w. For SLI, more around 700w - 750w.

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walshmaine

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#4 walshmaine
Member since 2005 • 25 Posts

Thanks guys, kinda thought I was been slightly miss-lead.

Great input :)

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Penguin_dragon

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#5 Penguin_dragon
Member since 2005 • 1516 Posts

Go kick the guy who said "corsair is crap" right in the nutz.

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X360PS3AMD05

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#6 X360PS3AMD05
Member since 2005 • 36320 Posts
Quality 6-700W is fine, Corsair is fine, the board is fine, even if it does run PCI-E @ 8x i doubt it will make that much of a difference.