sanity check for new e6700 build

[boscomonkey]

Folks, I need your advice on the spec of my Core 2 Duo build. Its main use will be for programming and gaming. This is my first new build in six years and though I've been following the SPCR forums, I don't feel super confident about my choices. Is this list reasonably sane?

• cpu: e6700
• mobo: Asus P5W DH Deluxe/WiFi
• memory: 4GB (uncertain about specifics)
• video: Foxconn GeForce 8800GTS OC 640MB
• hd: 2x SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP2004C 200GB 7200 RPM SATA
• psu: Seasonic S12-430
• hsf: Scythe Ninja + Nexus 120mm
• case fans: Nexus 120mm (front & rear)
• case: Antec p150

I'll be running Win XP with a near-future upgrade to Vista.

I want the option to overclock as the current programming project bloats and compile/build time gets longer and longer. That's why I'm uncertain about the memory - don't know whether to get DDR2/800 or DR2/1000 (1033?). I was originally going to get the X6800 but a review on NewEgg says that with 5 minute's tweaking of the multiplier, I can get an e6700 to perform like the 6800.

The video card is purely a luxury for gaming. I'm not wedded to the FoxConn. If you can recommend a quieter 8800GTS (320 or 640MB), that'll be great.

Thanks in advance.

-- Bosco

[boscomonkey]

• [...]
• case fans: Nexus 120mm (front & rear)

I just remembered that the front fan on the p150 is around 90mm. So I'll have a Nexus 120mm in the back and a Nexus 92mm in the front.

[bonestonne]

if possible, i'd suggest running more than one front fan, but only because you have 3 main heat producers. RAM, CPU and gfx. since they aren't on the same height, you'll need to cool the lower areas just as much as the higher areas of the case.

4 gigs of RAM could easily cause a problem. I should hope you're running a 64bit OS. Make that a priority if you're getting vista in the future, but wait for hotfixes to come out, vista is very buggy. i used it for a day, and then i just emulated it in linux. if you aren't using 64bit, you'll only have full access to 3gb of RAM, and the last gig might just be drawing power from the system.

go for DD2/1033, its closer to your CPU speed, will help with system speed overall.

in general, an 8800 wont be quiet. however, you can help by creating a duct for the fan so it draws air from the front of the case, not from below it, as it will cool it down more, meaning the fan might not ramp up too much, however, its a hot card, its fan might be something you'll have to deal with unless you want to water cool it. and yes, there is a water cooling block just for the 8800. as for brand, i'd say look into eVGA cards, those are very high quality, unless the money is just not there for it.

if your going to overclock, make sure you have the most recent BIOS for your motherboard, and harness the power of Speedfan to make sure you're keeping cool. basically, two 3ghz cores wont be cool. and i know its just 2.9, but you're close enough.

gaming is the more important use to look at with any build, you may have to sacrifice some silence for cooling when under full load.

[Max Slowik]

E6700s aren't renown for their overclockability. E6400s, on the other hand. . .Hell, even the E6600 has a better price:performance (although it's not a great overclocker, either).

Also, I've bought several DH Deluxes, and they were all sold as new in the box but were clearly repackaged used boards. Also, since you're looking to overclock, you'll be a little better off with something from the Gigabyte DS3 or DQ6 lines (or any 965 motherboard, really).

And the money you save can buy you an 8800GTX which will benefit you more than the overclock. It's not any louder, if that's a concern.

The stock cooler on all 8800s is as or less silent than the PSU you've chosen.

Last, I'd stick with 2GB of RAM for now, by the time you need the upgrade, 4GB prices will be a little better, and you might have DDR3 as a real option (as well as P35 motherboards).

[johno]

Doesn't the P150 come with a Neo HE power supply? Just wondering if there was really a need for the Seasonic supply.

[boscomonkey]

Doesn't the P150 come with a Neo HE power supply? Just wondering if there was really a need for the Seasonic supply.

Either the Solo or the P-150 comes with a PSU (forgot which). I've used Seasonic in the past and am totally sold on them. So I'm getting the case that doesn't come with PSU.

[ColdFlame]

I am not sure that 430W PSU will be sufficient and even if it will be, it will be loud as it will be running at high load. Get something like a Seasonic 600W PSU and it will be quieter.

Regarding memory, if you want 4GB then you need a 64-bit OS and realistically it means Vista. Vista is a fine OS but the priorities of driver makers aren't quite there yet and especially for 64-bit. You could I suppose get 4 GB now and use 2-3 GB in XP or get 2 GB now and buy another 2 GB later.

[RBBOT]

Last, I'd stick with 2GB of RAM for now, by the time you need the upgrade, 4GB prices will be a little better, and you might have DDR3 as a real option (as well as P35 motherboards).

Note that DDR3 is only an option if you buy a motherboard with DDR3 slots. You can't by a DDR2 P35 motherboard now and then switch the memory later. There is one combo board from gigabyte that has both types of slot on it but has fewer of them.

Regarding usable memory a 32 bit windows system can utilize more than 2Gb of RAM but it is true that a 64 bit OS will make much better use of it. By default the lower 2Gb is used for programs, and the upper 2Gb is used for the kernel and the disk cache. So its not true that it is not used at all - having a large disk cache will help performance, especially when it isn't taking memory away from programs.

You can also add the switch to your options in the boot.ini file "/3G". This will change it to allow the first 3Gb to be used by programs. However, not all programs can do so - only those which were compiled with 3G support enabled. Very few applications document whether they support this or not.

[qviri]

[*]hd: 2x SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP2004C 200GB 7200 RPM SATA

Why not one newer, larger drive?

[angelkiller]

E6700s aren't renown for their overclockability. E6400s, on the other hand. . .Hell, even the E6600 has a better price:performance (although it's not a great overclocker, either).

I would strongly advise you (the OP) NOT to get a E6700. Right now the performance difference between the E6600 and E6700 is negligible. In everyday uses, you will not notice the difference. Only benchmarks will show the slight edge the E6700 has at stock speeds. The E6600 is a much better deal especially when it comes to OC'ing. If you get the E6600, and raise the FSB by just 30MHz, your E6600 will preform equal to a E6700. But for $100 less!! And even using the stock cooler, at most the temperature difference at load will be 5C. Nowhere near dangerous. Now let's say you invest half of that $100 savings into a good heatsink. (Like a Ninja) Now you are able to OC your E6600 to 3GHz and beyond!! Your CPU is still kept (realitivly) cool, and you still have saved $50!! And at 3GHz, the E6600 will defiantly be noticeably faster than the E6700.

Hope this helps.

[bonestonne]

well, for gaming, it could possibly come in handy, however, the E6600 is plenty fast.. any dual core is better than a single core by far. you may want to just save the money. where someone like me more than needs a large L2 cache, thats well out of the realm of gamers.

even with heavy gaming, an L2 cache wont give you all that much, but significance could be minimal. you may want to save your money, most C2D buyers have an E6600 anyway...it seems to be a standard, as its somewhat easily overclocked.

[stevenkelby]

E6700s aren't renown for their overclockability. E6400s, on the other hand. . .Hell, even the E6600 has a better price:performance (although it's not a great overclocker, either).

I would strongly advise you (the OP) NOT to get a E6700. Right now the performance difference between the E6600 and E6700 is negligible. In everyday uses, you will not notice the difference. Only benchmarks will show the slight edge the E6700 has at stock speeds. The E6600 is a much better deal especially when it comes to OC'ing. If you get the E6600, and raise the FSB by just 30MHz, your E6600 will preform equal to a E6700. But for $100 less!! And even using the stock cooler, at most the temperature difference at load will be 5C. Nowhere near dangerous. Now let's say you invest half of that $100 savings into a good heatsink. (Like a Ninja) Now you are able to OC your E6600 to 3GHz and beyond!! Your CPU is still kept (realitivly) cool, and you still have saved $50!! And at 3GHz, the E6600 will defiantly be noticeably faster than the E6700.

Hope this helps.

Too late for me! Can I achieve a similar improvement O/C'ing the 6700?

[angelkiller]

Too late for me! Can I achieve a similar improvement O/C'ing the 6700?

Yeah, you can still OC it, but IMO buying the E6700 to begin with isn't very cost effective. But since you already have it, no use crying over spilled milk! Get a good heatsink, and take that bad boy to 3GHz! (300x10)

[ck8-04]

I am not sure that 430W PSU will be sufficient and even if it will be, it will be loud as it will be running at high load. Get something like a Seasonic 600W PSU and it will be quieter.

The system in question needs nowhere near 600 watts even if overclocked. An overclocked Kentsfield system with SLIed 8800GTXs doesn't even use 500 watts under full load. Just get the Corsair 520HX which is manufactured by Seasonic and is the quietest PSU on SPCR's recommended list.

[lm]

Linux can use up to 64GB of RAM even in 32bit version. It's just a bit slower that way.

[boscomonkey]

[*]hd: 2x SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP2004C 200GB 7200 RPM SATA

Why not one newer, larger drive?

Dooh - you're right. I'll get one Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA drive instead. That'll give me a tad more storage and take away one drive's worth of heat.

Does anyone know whether there's a problem with booting WinXP from a SATA drive?

[boscomonkey]

Last, I'd stick with 2GB of RAM for now, by the time you need the upgrade, 4GB prices will be a little better, and you might have DDR3 as a real option (as well as P35 motherboards).

[...]
Regarding usable memory a 32 bit windows system can utilize more than 2Gb of RAM but it is true that a 64 bit OS will make much better use of it. By default the lower 2Gb is used for programs, and the upper 2Gb is used for the kernel and the disk cache. So its not true that it is not used at all - having a large disk cache will help performance, especially when it isn't taking memory away from programs.
[...]

Hmmm, that's good to know. I keep reading different theories why I can't get more than 3.25 GB out of a 4GB system - e.g., PCI-Express eating up memory space, WinXP being a hog, etc.

I currently have 2.5GB in my development machine and am starting to bump into swap space with all the programming-related stuff that's running at the same time. And since going to 4GB is pretty cheap, I'll just start with that. I found these PC6400 sticks on NewEgg that seems to overclock well:

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

[boscomonkey]

E6700s aren't renown for their overclockability. E6400s, on the other hand. . .Hell, even the E6600 has a better price:performance (although it's not a great overclocker, either).

I would strongly advise you (the OP) NOT to get a E6700. Right now the performance difference between the E6600 and E6700 is negligible. In everyday uses, you will not notice the difference. Only benchmarks will show the slight edge the E6700 has at stock speeds. The E6600 is a much better deal especially when it comes to OC'ing. If you get the E6600, and raise the FSB by just 30MHz, your E6600 will preform equal to a E6700. But for $100 less!! And even using the stock cooler, at most the temperature difference at load will be 5C. Nowhere near dangerous. Now let's say you invest half of that $100 savings into a good heatsink. (Like a Ninja) Now you are able to OC your E6600 to 3GHz and beyond!! Your CPU is still kept (realitivly) cool, and you still have saved $50!! And at 3GHz, the E6600 will defiantly be noticeably faster than the E6700.

In short, both the 6600 and 6700 will OC to 3GHz easily. And it makes no sense to get the 6700. But does the 6700 allow me to OC higher than the 6600?

Regarding the motherboard, does it make sense to use a P5B Deluxe instead of a P5W DH Deluxe?

[cmthomson]

In short, both the 6600 and 6700 will OC to 3GHz easily. And it makes no sense to get the 6700. But does the 6700 allow me to OC higher than the 6600?

The 6600 and 6700 are identical chips; they are bin-selected at the end of the manufacturing process. The parts at the faster end of the yield curve are labelled 6700 and sold for a higher price.

So, yes, among a large population, a 6700 is likely to clock higher than a 6600, and it also gives you an extra clock multiplier value to play with (x10). Of course because of random variation among parts, your mileage may vary.

[echto_gammut]

Regarding usable memory a 32 bit windows system can utilize more than 2Gb of RAM but it is true that a 64 bit OS will make much better use of it. By default the lower 2Gb is used for programs, and the upper 2Gb is used for the kernel and the disk cache. So its not true that it is not used at all - having a large disk cache will help performance, especially when it isn't taking memory away from programs.

Thanks for bringing that up, lately it seems most online mag has been reading the back of Windows box, rather than bothering to check the manual.

I am currently running a dual boot with WinXP 64 and Vista64 and while I haven't had any stability problems I have noticed that WinXP 64 (Windows 2003 kernal) SP2 is noticeably faster than Vista. Prior to the SP release it was the other way around, but now I have found I can boot WinXP 64 and run Vista in a virtual window faster than I can run it natively. It makes no sense, but I have run a couple of tests that confirm it.

So, if you plan on running Vista64, get 4 gigs, otherwise stick with 2gigs. I run MS Visual Studio and Virtualized machines all day, so I couldn't live with less than 4 gigs, but for most games and light programming the added memory won't be missed. Plus until MS fixes the Vista video driver initialization problem (ie if you crash an app or a game, IE dumps the video driver and spends 5 minutes trying to restart it when you have aero enabaled), I wouldn't bother putting it on a development station.

[boscomonkey]

In short, both the 6600 and 6700 will OC to 3GHz easily. And it makes no sense to get the 6700. But does the 6700 allow me to OC higher than the 6600?

The 6600 and 6700 are identical chips; they are bin-selected at the end of the manufacturing process. The parts at the faster end of the yield curve are labelled 6700 and sold for a higher price.

So, yes, among a large population, a 6700 is likely to clock higher than a 6600, and it also gives you an extra clock multiplier value to play with (x10). Of course because of random variation among parts, your mileage may vary.

Does the motherboard (i.e., P5W DH Deluxe) know automatically which Core2Duo - 6400, 6600, 6700, etc - is in its socket? If so, will the mobo know to bump the clock speed - 2.13, 2.4, 2.67MHz - accordingly? Or do I have to configure some settings in the BIOS?

[matt_garman]

I currently have 2.5GB in my development machine and am starting to bump into swap space with all the programming-related stuff that's running at the same time. And since going to 4GB is pretty cheap, I'll just start with that. I found these PC6400 sticks on NewEgg that seems to overclock well:

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

That should be good stuff. Check out this link for good overclocking DDR2. I have the "HZ" version of this RAM.

[boscomonkey]

I found these PC6400 sticks on NewEgg that seems to overclock well:

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

That should be good stuff. Check out this link for good overclocking DDR2. I have the "HZ" version of this RAM.

What does all this data mean? The RAM I found - HK - is right next to yours - HZ - but how does the PC board and timing matter? Moreover, don't I have to relax the timing once I OC (so those timing numbers are then moot)?

[matt_garman]

I found these PC6400 sticks on NewEgg that seems to overclock well:

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

That should be good stuff. Check out this link for good overclocking DDR2. I have the "HZ" version of this RAM.

What does all this data mean? The RAM I found - HK - is right next to yours - HZ - but how does the PC board and timing matter? Moreover, don't I have to relax the timing once I OC (so those timing numbers are then moot)?

I'm not an overclocking expert by any means, so take all this with a large grain of salt!

Before I built my E6600, I did a little bit of research on overclocking. The conclusion I came to was that these chips just begged to be overclocked! Anyway, how far they can be overclocked is eventually limited by the RAM. So you need high quality RAM that can also be overclocked (or you'll relax your RAM timings so much that you lose the benefits of overclocking your CPU). The overclocking community overwhelmingly supports RAM build with the Micron "D9" chips. Note that there are different series of D9s (some are better than others, but I don't remember the differences).

According to that DDR2 link, the HK and HZ modules use the same exact D9 chips. But the HZs are rated for better stock timings. I don't know if that means that G. Skill did some testing and cherry picked those D9s for the HZ sticks, or if the HK and HZ are exactly the same, just marketed differently. If the latter is true, you ought to be able to get the exact same overclock performance out of either.

What is comes down to is this: yes, you can relax your memory timings when you overclock, and at some point you may have to. Ideally, however, you want your memory speed to increase proportionally with your CPU and FSB. Better RAM will give you a higher top-end.

Having said all that... I really haven't pushed my RAM too hard or tried experimenting with different settings.

Most of the "research" I did involved reading this enormously long thread. It's about the Intel D975XBX2 ("Bad Axe 2") motherboard, which is what I have, but the concepts should apply to whatever board you get.

Hope that helps a little!

Have fun with your build!
Matt

[cmthomson]

Does the motherboard (i.e., P5W DH Deluxe) know automatically which Core2Duo - 6400, 6600, 6700, etc - is in its socket? If so, will the mobo know to bump the clock speed - 2.13, 2.4, 2.67MHz - accordingly? Or do I have to configure some settings in the BIOS?

The CPUID function of the chip is read by the motherboard BIOS to find out what default clock multiplier and voltage to supply the CPU. The various C2D's have different default multipliers (x9 for 6600, x10 for 6700, etc). The default C2D FSB clock is 266 MHz (quad pumped, and thus quoted as 1066), so by default a 6600 is clocked at 2.4 GHz.

To overclock any CPU, you need to change BIOS settings.