Suggestions for a Conroe Build

[akasixcon]

I've heard many great things about the intel conroe. So right now I have about $300 to dish out on computer upgrades. My computer that I'm upgrading uses pc2700 memory, pentium 4 chip which seems pretty outdated. If maybe I could wait a little longer I might be able to finally build this computer with a conroe chip.

I got a video card , 7600 gs 512 mb memory. Its an AGP 8x. How much better is the PCI-E compaired to AGP? Can this card stick with my PC or is it better to ditch it for an PCI-E ?

About how much money do I need to have to build the best bang for the buck with a conroe chip?

I'm going to mainly use the computer for using Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop. I noticed even with my 2gb of pc2700 memory, when I'm rendering files off Premiere pro that I cannot use my computer to perform other tasks.

Maybe its time for a cpu upgrade from my 2.8ghz p4 chip.

I need the following suggestions:

Motherboard
CPU
RAM
CASE
PSU

And any other thing I could be potentially missing.


EDIT: I now decided to return that video card with a $21 restocking fee. So ignore my last statement about having a motherboard with AGP.

[dario03]

Well you can't reuse your ram and IIRC all the good motherboards use pci-e so you can't reuse your video card unless you get a lower end motherboard.

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail e6320 $168

or get a allendale which is the same as conroe but with 2mb cache

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz 2M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail e4300 $116


Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail G.skill 2x1gb $96


Newegg.com - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 Ultra ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Agp and pci-e motherboard $60

or get a better motherboard without agp

Newegg.com - ASUS P5B LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail asus p5b $120

[akasixcon]

Also for the 2mb cache thing, and the allendale does it really have that much of a difference? Meaning is that conroe that cost 60 more than the allen-dale worth that 60 price gap?

So now that we got those parts down what PSU would I need , or how much watts is necessary to properly run this computer flawlessly?

What would be the best case to buy?

Also I'm kind of new in PC upgrading / building and in fact I haven't built a computer yet but I have read many books about it. So my DVD drives and stuff are standard right meaning it would be able to be brought upon new computer without problems?

EDIT: I now decided to return that video card with a $21 restocking fee. So ignore my last statement about having a motherboard with AGP.

[akasixcon]

bumping topic

[vernong1992]

no really no diff... the e4000 series were just for lower-end buyers..... thats why the prices are low

[Sora]

I would purchase an Athlon X2 on that budget as they are very very cheap and plenty fast enough for most tasks. The X2 3600 is 65 bucks and can be overclocked to stock E6400 speeds if not faster if you wanted even. Trust me here..get an X2 3600 and a cheap 7600GT or something.