New system!

Anyone?

First off, what form factor is your case?
Does it need to be mATX?
Will need to know this before I can help you with yor MB selection.

This MB's onboard graphics will not support Vista.
I am almost certian you need at least a GMA950 integrated graphics solution to run Vista.
It may be able to play some basic games, but not verry many and not verry well.

Your CPU is a verry good overclocker but I doubt your MB is.

1Gb ram is pretty low for Vista.
On my system at boot it uses ~750Mb before I even open any programs.
2Gb would treat you much better.

Really need to know what your budget is and what form factor you need your MB to be before I can help you more.

hi thanks for responses am going to change the spec completly (as you do)

Anyway gonna go for a

Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3

E4300

KVR667D2N5/512 Kingston Value Ram (about the only memory in the Gigabyte Memory list that i could find!)

Have now got a VIA VT6421 Raid card and seems to be okay in my test ( I practice RAID arrays with two old 4.2GB WD drives. It also recognises an old CD-rom so hope it picks up her DVD-Burner.

MB and CPU look decent.
Your MB's onboard will suport aero and should allow for basic gaming.
Depending on your budget, it might be worthwhie to get the GA-965P-DS3 mb with a little better video card.

Give this, or this ram a try.
Corsair makes some of the best memory out there.

Unless you need raid 5 or 10, I am not shure what you would need a raid card for.
Gigabyte's DS3 MB supports raid 0 and 1 so you should be fine without it.

Meh...

X3000 performs almost the same as the 6200TC, not the 7600GS.
Plus it will share memory with the rest of the system.
Here are some charts to play with to see the diffrence. Well let's see. I own both. If I run a test with the 7600 GS, then take the card out and enable the onboard graphics and run the same test and the numbers are negligibly close....how does that NOT make them comparable? Hmmm. :?

Where exactly are the x3000 numbers in your chart?
I don't even see my 7600 GS card in the chart!

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] 76G512P-RH

She does't need RAID (yet) but she is training for a Administrator (not IT Admin!) job and eventully i will (later this year) get her a decent SATA system drive and use the RAID card for 2x Big storage drives in RAID 1. So the RAID card is just to get her HDD and ODD on seperate channels (not good to bout more than one device on one channel, unless you data transfers dont copy from one to the other.)

***Just noted (as you mention) that it has an onboard SATA RAID controller so will remove the SATA/PATA RAID card when upgrading to SATA.***

Well I see that you are going with mATX are you going to have a tight budget I love building PCs on a budget. I do pretty well in getting great performance for my dollar.

Here are a few suggestions from me.
Try looking AMD x2 CPUs
I would definitly use a stand alone video card. Especially with Vista
Is ATX from factor still workable for you. Gives you more space to work with and is some times less money for a better board
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103741
MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138041
VIDEO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130075
MEMORY
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820141218
or if you have the funds
MEMORY
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145527
HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822147007
Buy as many as you like and use onboard RAID. Or if you would like more storage and you have the funds go with 700GB models.

Although I have never personally used a standalone RAID pci card. I believe that the onboard RAID should suffice.

I have heard that the AMDx2 Windsors overclock really well and stay cool. If you are serious about overclocking make sure you use something other than stock cooling fans although I have heard that the stock fans are pretty good.

I hope this helps you a little bit.

Yeah the PC is for Media encoding and a little games, a standalone is always better simply because it frees up memory (even if it is fast)

So that board looks good except I can't find a place that does (or can confirm) Revision 3.3.

Has any one got a Rev3.3 (of the GA-965G-DS3 ) and if so where did they buy it? (In the U.K or sensible shipping from the US.

1, Will this pc overclock well? If you use Core 4300 perhaps to 266 Mhz because it supports 266 Mhz(1066 Mhz oced)
2, Will it be stable?
3, Is 1GB enough for vista? (not getting it for ages though) yes
4, Is the 946GZ Chipset any good? get a 965 that's good
5, Is the onboard graphics good enough for basic (3D) games like the sims? (and for Aero?) 946GZ = GMA3000, 965G = GMA X3000 big difference, search the web about it.
6, Is it going to need a force 10 wind to keep it cool? (her case only has 80mm mounts) 1 side air duct, 1 rear fan (for sure), 1 input fan (recommended)
7, I need to solve the one PATA channel prob should I....
A, Use a Cheap SATA2PATA adaptor? Please no
B, Use a ATA card for the Optical drive or the HDD? Optical ata always, HDD sata always
C, Put the Optical drive in a USB box?No

If you want the save money and use board video go with a ati or nvidia mb.

Actually the GMA950 and GMAx3000 are neck and neck with encoding according to the links. The 6200tc still would beat both in encoding as well. BUT it would not replace a romantic dinner with the GF Theres no contest there

The side fan must blow air towards the interior of the pc, if you're going to oc it may be better to put a fn blowing towards the interior of the pc, otherwise putting the side air duct, quite in line with the processor fan would do the work as most modern heatsink fans blow air towards the heatsink therefore processor side.

The side fan will mostly depend on how concerned are you with the noise and how cooled is the room in which you place the computer.

An input fan is very well appreciated as long as it blows air towards the hard drive(s), mostly the integrated circuit part, as it will down the temperatures by quite a big margin, with WD2500KS 250 Gb 16 Mb SataII it was 22-25ºC with fan blowing and 42-45ºC without. Lowing the temperature enhances the lifespan of the hard drive.

I hope this helps

Hi I'm back!

(Long post this) Ok so i got the parts today and my girlfriend is also coming round. (I pick her up at a bus stop so I dont have to drive all the way). So jobs in rough chronalogical order were

1, Prepare case for big day Cut the front fan blockages with a dremel

2, Install fans and postion them so that the cables are at least tidy-er than normal

3, Keep Girlfriend amused with Cheescake (Must have dope inside)

4, Unpack and marvel how it remids me of a 2003 P4 board from gigabyte and how I still use it for my familys PC so they use the web.

5, Read the instructions a few times so i am familar with the (for me) new S775 CPU

6, Nervously take out the unwanted MB standoff's and put them in correct places (I use 6 in this Case/MB combination)

7, (The bit i hate) Install the board (never sure what to hold) and hear it scrape as it clicks into place into port bracket

8, screw in screws to Standoffs and at this point some of the standoffs use different threads (Some HDD/Case style and some ODD/Floppy style)

9, Connect stuff like the 24-pin PSU and 4-pin 12V connector (Was expecting an 8-pin)

10, take chip out of packing (I got the retail one to avoid first-timer mistakes) The TIM is already applied to the bottom of the Retail HSF to make life easier and pressed home the four pins (Would prefer nuts and bolts)

11, Installed memory (2x 512MB for dual channel)

12, hooked up just PWR on front panel connector and turned on wall voltage and PSU voltage and pressed the big red button....... Beep (The nicest sound in the world) (Normally I never suceed in doing a first time boot as the memory slots are dusty)

13, Bios version is F4 so updated that using floppy to F7)

14, Post's again phew!

15, loaded optimised defaults

16, posts again so started fiddling

17, Notice that you can have the onboard GPU as well as PCI-e card so great for multi monitor setup

18, Notice all sorts of other options

19, Use my new VIA VT6421 card to control the ODD because my 642 had a boot rom I can select the drive directly in the BIOS (if i use CD-ROM I get nowhere)

20, XP disc boots and installs... BSOD sh1t. Turns out you have to install the F6 driver even though was only using drive to install windows.

21, Install F6 driver and all is well and XP installs just fine!

22, Loaded the supplied CD to install Drivers and this completes sucessfully

23, Installed Autopatcher, Spyware Blaster, Spybot Search and Destroy all okay plug in network cable to update above and all is well

Spent rest of day playing with it and seems okay except for using Easy tune 5 to get a 20% increase whch killed the onboard NIC! a reboot and turned off O/Cing sorted it!

Was running a 10% O/C and now Memtest reports errors <if I use the Test All Memory AND Bios-All options>. Windows Memory Diagnostic (From UBCD 3.4
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ reports no errors.

I ran Prime 95 for about an hour (earlier today) and it was okay so dont know why memtest failed. I'm hoping that memtest is just too old for DDR2 or maybe the 965???

Gonna run more tests (maybe Prime 95 overnight) and hope for the best otherwise will just start RMA'ing!

P.S the Bios version is REV 1.0