cruiser647 Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 (edited) My mate wants me to build him a PC. I have a question for y'all. Is it worth going for a Quad Core or still a Duo Core 2 (Core 2 Duo - whatever)? Is there anything that takes advantage of Quad Core? I think he'll be gaming it mostly, with plenty of surfing, and the odd MS Office use. Cheers! edit - Is water cooling any good or would a great design cooler be better? Edited November 12, 2008 by cruiser647 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bullett Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 I'd go quad not much price difference and a bit more future proof. Cooling, depends on what you want. If you want to do radical overclocks or make it near silent then yes go watercooled otherwise you can run the stock cooler for most applications no problem. The other alternative is to use a 3rd party air cooler, these are pretty good and you can get either low noise ones or low temp ones. With a gaming PC memory, graphics and PSU are the most important components. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruiser647 Posted November 12, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 I'll probably just get a fancy but quiet cooler for the CPU. I've seen a few nice ones for £40 at CCL. I'll get a good case with beefy but quiet PSU too. I plan on installing XP Pro. Don't suppose Quad Core's work with that do they? No interested in Vista nor XP Pro 64. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mac Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 Works fine with quad core - it's licensed on physical processors, not cores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bullett Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 For a gaming rig I'd probably go Vista. Nothing wrong with it apart from the annoying protection program (which I turned off). Can you even buy XP anymore? Plus you get to use DX10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chav Posted November 12, 2008 Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 My mate wants me to build him a PC.I have a question for y'all. Is it worth going for a Quad Core or still a Duo Core 2 (Core 2 Duo - whatever)? Is there anything that takes advantage of Quad Core? I think he'll be gaming it mostly, with plenty of surfing, and the odd MS Office use. Cheers! edit - Is water cooling any good or would a great design cooler be better? arctic cooler pro is all the cooler you'll ever need for about £15. that'll let you add 20-30% to stock speed of most quad cores. quad core definitely makes sense - count the number of threads running on your pc (via task manager) typically its 100+, so even every day stuff will benefit. i'd recommend q6600, overclocked to 3ghz, and an nvidia 8800gt. both cheap as chips now, and 80% of the performance of the fastest/greatest/latest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruiser647 Posted November 12, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2008 Thanks folks! Will come up with a spec and let y'all know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobK Posted November 13, 2008 Report Share Posted November 13, 2008 (edited) The established wisdom over on the OcUK forum is that for the same money you're better off getting a faster dual core cpu than a slower quad core, if the main use will be gaming. The quad core cpus also use a lot more power and run hotter. I'd go for an E8400 and an ATI HD4850/70 myself. Edited November 13, 2008 by RobK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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