The Ultimate Dream Computer

I'll take pics as I go and post them when there’s something worth showing.
Will start the breaking down of the p3 tomorrow.
I've already got an idea in my head, will start to draw it out to see if it’s feasible or not.

 

With Halloween on the horizon, I found this one which is quite amuzing.
http://www3.uark.edu/bkst/pumpkin/

 

sam,

Won't be buying that either!!!

 

I love the pumpkin one it's very cool indeed

 

2 things

1. the next piece of kit on the shoping list is a sound card so i can run it thru my 5.1 amp with opticle connection or spidf, because it only has those and stereo inputs, insted of up mixing stereo to pro logic2 has anyone got any reconmendations

2. i will be building a new rig after xmas, going to go for a conroe if funds alow, pentium d if not then conroe later, and what i was wondering was which chipsets should i go for a p965 or 975x? i want it to have ide so that kinda puts ich8r out of the picture for now, but if you can think of any pros and cons of each let me know.

thanks for any help before hand phil

 

My Audigy SE (it's good and cheap, 7.1 24-bit EAX for PCI and only cost me £17)
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 and E6300 for Conroe...

 

thats got ich8 and ide, i thought intels new sb was going to kill off ide?

that sound card has 4 analog outs and i need it to have digi out as my amp only has 2 channel analog imputs but both types of digital in. that is my problem i have found loads with good features but not the output i need

 

Ah right, sorry I missed that bit.
I think the HDA Digital Mystique has an optical connector, or there's this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829156001

 

that nice that sam and ticks all the right boxxes but i cant seem to find one for sale in our "fair" isle

the only one iv been able to find that fits the bill is a Terratec 5.1 Soundcard but they are £20 and at that price cant be that good and iv never heard of them.

 

You're in the UK! LOL and I went to all that trouble
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/HDA_Sound_Cards.html
top one. That's what i looked at before, then started looking for a US one!

 

To help you decide what mobo to go for see this, although there are more up to dates ones, I can't find them again at the moment, and since the bios updates for 965 chipset boards they are performing better than those listed here.
It gives a good idea of what boards and cpus are capable of.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=bdb74b29adc590fa477815ad79cbe686&t=1075792&page=1&pp=20
As an E6600 is still only £210, I wouldn't go for the cheaper models, as the max saving is going to be £85 and for that you only get half the cache.
For the soundcard look here, the postage is better, as Overclockers are starting to take the P**s with their postage costs.
Dabs £20.52 total inc £3.24 postage
OCs £24.91 total inc £6.17 postage.
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...avigationKey=11140,50450,4294960463&InMerch=1

 

Lol catch up BigDK! We abandoned the audigy SE a while back!

 

Well I'll leave you to it as you seem to be jumping around with the cards.
At least it looks as though hes getting descent card instead of the basic model se card, which is almost a pointless upgrade anyway.

 

And that's based on your knowledge of having owned one? Mine is very good, for the price it's incredible. Sorry to switch cards a lot but I didn't know he was a UK consumer, or forgot. Now I know I gave him one single link as to what I think is the best deal for him.

 

They are a great card for the price, I would always recommend them over an onboard.
I've fitted plenty to other peoples systems, and will carry on doing so.

I was merely fishing, and again I got a bite!

 

Lol make your mind up! You'd always recommend them but they're a pointless upgrade?

 

Haha do i dare bring up what happened to me when i got one!

 

When you got what?

 

sam i looked at those not long after my last post and out of the two it was the second one that caught my eye most because DTS is soooo much better than dolby digital its untrue. but i thought i would ask here to see what others thought, 2 heads better than 1 and all that s**t.

bigdk your right the conroes realy use the extra cache and it will be a 6600 that i go for but i think i will get a d805(iv seen reports of 4.1 stable with water and 3.6 on air) first so that i can get a good board and the ram that isnt the cheapest then upgrade the cpu later. after looking at those stats it looks like the asus p5w could be a contender and that gigabit board does quite well also and the msi platinum i was looking at was nowhere(as it had the irch7 and 975x) and the abit ab9 my other thought is only on once so that shows what i know.

but when i look around it makes my head hurt because for £200 i could get a x2 4400 athlon a sli 939 board and spend the rest of the money on another 7600gt to sli and and another gig of ram. bugger i think i should stop thinking about the next step and worry about this one for now

 

The second card is indeed better, but of course more expensive. Although the expression goes "don't visit afterdawn and expect not to spend any money" I wasn't sure whether DTS was needed.
The D805 needs an expensive board in order to push those big OCs, and even at 3.6Ghz, they perform well for the price, but a slight OC on a Core 2 Duo would kick it's backside, don't forget the E6300 is only about £45 more than the D805, and that can overclock to 2.9Ghz on a good board.
The A8N series with X2s are still good buys, although there obviously isn' that much upgrade potential (although by the time you uneed it you'd need a new board anyway), hence why I chose them. When I ordered my system, AM2 was out, and core 2 duos were to be out shortly, but I still went 939 enabling me to get a killer system for £1250. Now you can get the same for £1100, and since mine was prebuilt, to build it yourself is even less, about £1050.