I recently helped a friend build a new gaming pc/home server. Didn't have long to research it but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Up to now, I had given up on Intel and had been going the Nvidia and AMD route. However, I'm dead impressed with the Intel Core 2 Duo - very fast and efficient. You just have to read the articles on Toms Hardware and Anandtech. What sold me though was reading how successful people have been with overclocking just the lowly E6300 by over 50% and beating even the top of the range AMD chip.
So here's the component list we settled on for the new machine all sourced from dabs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Socket 775 1.86GHz £126.26
- bottom of the range but great overclocking potential
Gigabyte S775 Intel 965P ATX GLan HD 8CH Audio ATX S/Pipe £116.33
- better known as the GA 965P DS4 - has been good overclocking results with this board although there's been a few BIOS upgrades. Lots of features. No small fans.
Corsair Memory TWIN2X1024A - 6400 XMS2-6400 2x512MB 240DIMM CAS5 £73.00
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bog standard top tier brand memory works fine for overclocking - something like 5-5-5-15 timing.
Gigabyte GeForce 7600GT 256MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI S/Pipe 2 £126.23
- for a pure gaming pc, the Radeon X1900 GT would have been a better choice but it would be noisy too. This card is completely silent and can play the current crop of games well enough if the resolutions aren't too high.
LG Electronics DVD + - R/RW 16x Dual Layer Black Retail Kit £29.92
- last minute decision - just seemed to support tons of formats
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB S300 16MB £72.01
- nothing special - just good value for money and supports the latest SATA standard
Antec Case SLK3700BQE - UK 350W PSU ATX Black Quiet Edition £46.87
- I've generally found Antec cases and power supplies to be decent kit - we decided to save some money by not going with the Sonata II and chose this. I was a bit concerned with only having a 350W PSU. However, it's a fine case with decent enough air flow. With any hotter components or overclocking, I feel a front fan should be installed to give the hard disks extra cooling and better air flow around the case.
So for only about £600, it's a great little machine with lots of room for future growth. We haven't tried any overclocking but there's no need for it at the moment - the customer is very satisfied with it. As it gets older and more power is needed, we can overclock it then. Or we can plug in a much faster Core 2 Duo cpu and recycle the old cpu into a media pc.
My next home upgrade will definitely be an Intel Core 2 Duo based board - maybe early next year...