"I don't think you can overclock those Core2 Duos on air with the standard heatsink."
You can just not to the degree I was quoting. In the case I have I expect it to have a high degree of heat dissipation via convection, but you are right in suggesting I acquire an aftermarket heatsink solution. This being the first process I OC I am hoping there are diagnostic tools that will let me have insight to the temperature so I can monitor it and metric different cooling options. I know that they can be significantly OC'd on air cooling alone, similar to how the celeron processor used to be.
"I have the E6400 at the stock 2.13ghz with an 8800GTS 640mb and it’s plenty for the latest games, and you could use the extra money for a better video card."
I do plan on upgrading the graphics card once I see how the one I have is working out with the monitor. I do want the 8800GTX, I've researched it and know a whole lot about it, the GTS while a good option just doesn't have the horsepower that the GTX does, and for the money the GTX is a good option. What I want to happen is the price to come down about $100-150 and that will only happen when the next top of the line card drops. Maybe it'll be a 8900 GTX or something.
"One thing I would definitely do is go with 4gb ram."
I know it is silly but I'm not going Vista anytime before 2008. I can't stand the OS and the history of problems and bad press and negative impressions from my friends. Maybe it's a lot of bs, but I'm very happy with XP SP2 home, and I think I'm going to spring for XP SP 2 Pro, One problem I have with that is the 4 GB barrier which is really 3.0-3.5GB + page file. I'm not interested in dumping money on ram beyond 2 GB right now, In the future though the MOBO I'm looking at is capable of handling 8 GB and in order to get there I have to go Vista, and I probably will in 2008 or 2009 after a firm verdict is reached on Vista vs XP or Vista and the new OS Microsoft is working on.
"Get the best MB you can buy and check the manufacturers forums to see how bad the problems are, keeping in mind the only people there are the ones with problems."
Good advice, I've spent at least 6 hours browsing Asus' forums and tech support for their MOBO's each of the ones I'm looking at. The only thing I wish they had is a better description of each of the P5K variants as there seems to be an endless number of them.
"Unless you are going to run a 64bit OS, chances are your OS will not recognize all 4Gb. Might want to examine that one. It has to to with the chipset on the mobo...."
Base covered.
"you can turn the page file off in XP32 to see all 4gb. It's strictly a 32bit OS limitation its got nothing to do with the chipset as long as the cpu is 64bit that is."
That's an interesting solution, turning off the page file. Would that prevent the OS from dumping any data into the page file at all, because to me that seems like a sure slow bottleneck. Granted if you ran out of ram, the system would crash right? With the page file enabled and 3 gigs of ram would it ever allow the system to address more then 4 gigs of ram total?
"really fast HD like the Rapter X will give you the most noticeable performance increase over any other upgrade."
I really am looking at getting a fast small hard drive for just the OS, maybe 30 gigs, and putting everything and I mean everything else on another one.
Thanks for the ideas guys keep em coming please.
