I recently posted a thread relating to upgrading a processor on another PC. I've since sold that machine and now I'm PC-less.
I almost put this in the Motherboards section, but it's turned into more of a building thing...
I'm on a tight-ish budget of between $900 and $1200 and I'm building from the ground up. I have a screen, mouse and keys so I'll need everything from a motherboard and CPU to a case and a rodent to run on a wheen to power the thing.
I'm leaning towards this board because it supports DDR3 as well as our beloved DDR2, it sports a high stock FSB of 1333MHz and gives me the option to run two cards in SLI configuration, should I choose to do so (by that I mean I happen to be able to afford it later). Also, I've never had issues with Asus boards; thier build quality has always been fairly good and has been improving greatly over the last few years.
The other option was a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P. If I wanted to really push my machine to it's capilliary-breaking limits, this would be a no brainer. It's similarly priced but you can really squeeze some serious sizzling performance. I'll be overclocking eventually, but when I need to.
Just to give you an idea of where I'm at with my budget so far:
GeForce 8600GTS 256MB (purchased, $134.95)
Zalman 600W PSU (purchased, $160)
E8400 CPU ($255 avg. price, not purchased)
Asus P5KC ($165, not purchased)
Antec 300 Case ($90, not purchased)
2GB Generic DDR2 1066Mhz RAM ($80, not purchased)
80GB Samsung HDD ($40, not purchased)
250GB Samsung HDD ($70, not purchased)
Edit: Windows XP Pro $180
Total at $1175. I figure that when the budget permits, and by that I mean once I get my soul back from the Dark Lord that goes by the name or Hon. Master Card, I'll go get another 8600 of some kind and some scary fast RAM.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Asus P5KC, anything better for similar price?
