First Gaming rig please help 1 week purchase or less

[Cirndle]

Case: Already bought exclude from cost. (Antec 1200)
Monitor: Already bought (ASUS HDMI/LCD 22'' 1080P)
Speakers: Already bought Logictech X 540 5.1
Mouse: Already bought Logictech G5
Keyboard: Already bought Logictech G11
Mousepad: Already bought Razer Exact mat

Need to purchase soon
Budget 800-1100 with shipping
Places of purchase unless another decent is recommended : Tigerdirect/Newegg.

PSU: Corsair TX750W 129.99 Tigerdirect
Mobo: ASUS P5Q3 P45 board 159.99 Tigerdirect

Optical: SAMSUNG 22x DVD Burner OEM 24.99 Newegg
Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 74.99 Newegg
GPU: MSI HD 4850 with aftermarket cooler 189.99 Newegg
RAM: GSkill 4GB (2x2gb) DDR3 1600 PC312800 149.99 Newegg
CPU: E8400 164.99 Newegg
CPU Heatsink cooler: Tuniq Tower 120 49.99 Newegg

Comments:
Regarding these two items:
CPU and Mobo

I dont know if the E7200 with 1066mhz fsb will work on the Mobo above, so that is why I picked the E8400, but Idk if it is a good buy currently would rather stay E7200 if I can and go Quad something later.

Mobo was chosen for futureproofing with support for DDR3, and all. If it will work with E7200 please let me know, or if E8400 is better choice let me know.

Comp is built for gaming, but also I will be overclocking to get some more out of it, if E7200 oc to about 4ghz.

Recommendation, and opinions are welcome.

*Side Note:
I need to get an OS, Will vista 64 bit work on this hardware?
On your main page will the upgrade ones work fine clean install? for Xp and Vista?
Virtual PC, if I use it can it play games, and do I need an OS for it? or can u choose one? Or should I just dual boot? Reason being if some stuff wont work in Vista, and later on I will be getting a few more hard drives to do Stripping.

Either RAID 0 with stripping on SATA's, or go oldschool and do SCSI controller card, and get some off ebay like 36gbs ones and do RAID 0 with them, and use SATA hd or multiple for storage.

let me know what you think. My funds become available this friday.

Total for this is 1023 round up total with shipping to CA. From both places.

cheers,
Chris

[RickyTick]

Definately go with the E8400 over the E7200. The L2 cache is 6mb vs 3mb. It will be a much better performer and is very overclockable.

I see no reason to install an operating system other than Vista Home Premium 64-bit. If you want to dual boot something else, thats fine, but Vista 64 bit is the way to go.

I like Newegg and TigerDirect too. Just to give you something else to compare with, look at zipzoomfly.com and mwave.com. Both are very competitive and highly regarded.

Killer system btw. :)

[Cirndle]

Thanks RickyTick, I value you and Jamie's input.

edited read here:

Do you think my machine above is better then the board member's current recommendation rig?

For my items being in CA where would you get each part for the cheapest price, and reliability?

[Cirndle]

Updated List:
AP=Already Purchased, so irrelevant to final price

Case:Antec 1200 (AP 150.14 Newegg)
PSU:Corsair 750TX 750W 109.99 Newegg
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q3 159.99 Tigerdirect
CPU: Intel Quad Q6600 2.4ghz 175.99 Amazon
RAM: G. Skill DDR3 1600 4gb 2x2gb PC3 12800 149.99 Newegg
Graphics card: MSI HD 4850 (With the fat non reference cooler w/heatsink pipes) 192.99 Amazon
Sound card: NA Will buy later onboard will suffice for now. (Xtremegamer from logictech refurbished on ebay is 40ish warranty included.)
Hard Drive(s): WD6400AAKS Western Digital 640gb 16mb cache SATA 79.99 Tigerdirect
Optical Drive(s): SAMSUNG SH-S223F OEM 22x dvd burner does all media. 24.99 Newegg

Monitor:ASUS 22'' widescreen LCD/HDMI monitor 1080p true. 243.51 Newegg
Speakers: Logictech X 540 5.1 surround sound 51.95 Ebay, justdeals.com
OS: Vista Upgrade Home Premium 82.92 Amazon

About 10 bucks cheaper using mwave, and zipzoomfly, but my shipping address isn't on cc info, so couldn't use them. Please read my post which I hope will be a sticky on fixing the WD6400AAKS seek time issue.

Total: 1060.19
All prices above were with shipping.

Let me know what you think, and if I should change this, does it beat the current recommedation build?

[Rob]

About 10 bucks cheaper using mwave, and zipzoomfly, but my shipping address isn't on cc info, so couldn't use them. Please read my post which I hope will be a sticky on fixing the WD6400AAKS seek time issue.



Stuck! It's here under the Mass Storage message board if anyone is looking for it. Nice heads up!

http://forums.mysuperpc.com/showthread.php?t=2123

[Cirndle]

Question and update

Update:
My orders have come in waiting for Asus P5Q3 mobo and 640gb hard drive arriving tommorrow afternoon.

Questions:
What is best way for heat transfer to spread thermal grease?
Dot and use heatsink to spread, or X shape and use your finger in plastic to spread evenly across all cpu, cover only middle?

Lapping: Is it really hard, and is it beneficial? Is it better to do the heatsink or cpu?


Also,
CPU: Q6600 1066mhz fsb supported
Mobo: Asus P5Q3 supports
1600MHz
800MHz
1066MHz
1333MHz
memory: DDR3 1600mhz

My question is: Is this compatible, and If I use the fsb of 1066 will I be able to user DDR3 1600mhz ram, and if so will it down clock or no?

Thanks for all your answers in advance.

[RickyTick]

Read through this. Its great help.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=138&Itemid=1

[Cirndle]

Thanks for answering about the thermal grease.

I use AS5, so glad it did good, and for application way I guess thin and spread fully and evenly over the cpu is good?

So the plastic on finger trick is a good idea, and make sure to shake TIM before using.

Now for my other question, about fsb's compatibility, and lapping.

[RickyTick]

Lapping really seems like a lot of work to me for a small gain. Its definately for the hard core enthusiasts. Check this out.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=133979

btw, I don't know the answer to your ram question 100%, so I don't want to give you any misinformation.

[Cirndle]

On lapping, I will try it out on my old computers heatsink. AMD's don't have IHS so no go on processor.


On ram this is how I thought it went:

If ram is based off of higher speed fsb, then it underclocks, but I can overclock the bus on motherboard and get divider to 1:1 or close.

1600mhz=400mhz fsb X4 for 4 cores.

That is my reasoning, just hope it works.

[zburns]

Artic Silver told me the area of importance was about a "dime" size in diameter using a BB size blob. I thought that too "tricky" to control. I used a "Garden Pea" size and probably cheated on the "oversize" side a little. The important thing (its obvious) is to lower the fan/heatsink assembly to the CPU with the fan heatsink as close to "perfectly parallel in both directions to the CPU heatsink in order to come close to symmetrical spreading.

Lapping, a new term to me several months ago, I am not so sure about. The temp lowering effect may be mostly due to removal of the plating down to the base metal. My Zalman is chrome or nikel plated; not good for heat transfer relative to the base metal, copper.

But once you remove the "protective" chrome or whatever, the copper will corrode under exposure to room or cabinet temperatures at some specific rate of time; given the heat caused by CPU operation, the rate of corrosion will rapidly increase. Corrosion may not occur in areas where thermal grease has been applied; or the nature of the corrosion will simply change due to the covering of thermal grease. Once corrosion starts you have no way of knowing what happens from that point on other than to take things apart and look at them.
You cannot assume the mating of the two surfaces with thermal grease will provide "airtight" seal. There will be some opening for "air paths" to occur.

Do the lapping, take it apart in a year, observe the copper surfaces for their condition; if they are still bright "mirrors", then my comments above are incorrect, probably. But are there any forum comments (other forums, not this one) on "unbiased" tests run to allay my comments?

Artic Silver 5 does have silver particles in it which would help the heat transfer for minute uneven surfaces. Once you use the grease, you create a "dimensional" ie, "thickness" extra layer between the two heatsinks. So the heat transfer has to move thru the "thermal grease"; it is not metal to metal heat transfer in any event. This to me says perfectly "micron" smooth mating surfaces is not relevant.

As for the Pea size blob in the center; if you have ideal spreading meaning a circle, then there are uncoated surfaces (at the corners) facing each other presumably not 100% touching; some percent of that heat will move to the grease covered area for heat transfer. But presumably more heat is in the center. If a manufacturers thermal grease instructions change for "quad" cores, that means the highest heat is more spread out than on the older CPUs. The corrosion is the major concern. My arguments above are theoretical because I have never used the technique, nevertheless they are technically supported. Before I used this technique, I would like to see comments regarding this process, its pluses and minuses from a valid testing lab or a discussion direct from a concerned manufacturer.