Conclusions

Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition
This is an excellent chip for anyone looking for a relatively cheap upgrade to an existing AM2 system, a chip to hold them over until Phenom is more widely available, or a Processor for a media center PC. This chip is probably the best budget overclocking chip AMD has at the moment. These chips are frequently hitting speeds faster than that of a stock 6400+ Black Edition that costs about $100 more. In general though, the 6400+ will hit higher clockspeeds than the 5000+ BE. While a good choice for existing AM2 systems I find it hard to recommend the 5000+ over Intel’s e21XX and e4X00 series, which are more efficient at the same clockspeed and also overclock extremely well for all but the most die hard AMD fans.

Asus M2R32-MVP Motherboard
The board worked well and took the 5000+ BE over 300 FSB, so it appears to be a decent overclocking board and should never be the limit of any chip’s overclock. I would recommend this board to anyone who wants to do Crossfire with an AMD CPU which is an attractive option with the HD3870 being relatively cheap and two of them beat one 8800 GTX most of the time. My only complaints with this board are that it doesn’t have memory dividers for any speeds above 800 which prevented me from running my memory at its rated speed. Secondly, it has some layout issues. For example, the placement of the four-pin CPU power, it’s in the middle of the board near the PCI-E slot when it would have been far more convenient to put it in the top left corner of the board. Other small issues are that long video cards may bump up against the northbridge heatsink if not properly attached. Also, if you are using some aftermarket CPU heatsinks the RAM must be installed before the heatsink. In my case since the memory had extra tall heatspreaders, I was forced to use the two slots farther from the CPU socket. The motherboard has enough ports and connectors to satisfy all but the most hardcore users. One of my favorite things about this board was the BIOS. It was easy to use and all the overclocking options except for memory speed and timings were in one spot.

SilverStone OP1200 1200 Watt Power Supply
I was incredibly happy with this power supply. It handled everything I threw at it without breaking a sweat. The voltages were all very stable, even under load, and not once did I hear the fan spin up anywhere near full-speed. It was always almost silent and by far the quietest fan in the system. One other observation about this excellent unit is that it had very long cables. This is a mixed blessing because it means that you shouldn’t have any trouble routing the cables creatively to try and hide them but it also means that there is more wire to hide. There are only a few things I would change about this unit. I would have chosen to make the cables modular so that the unneeded ones can be removed so they don’t block airflow or look ugly. In a way SilverStone has already addressed this. They make two lines: the Olympia series, (to which this PSU belongs), which has fixed cables, and the Decathalon series, which have the same high quality internals as the OP line but are modular. My only other minor gripe with this unit is its price. Currently it retails for about $300 which is on the cheap side for 1200 watt units but unless you really need that much power, it isn’t worth the money. I wish I had access to equipment to properly push this power supply closer to its rating so I could find out if its excellent voltage regulation continued under full load. This is the perfect power supply for a high-end server or an extreme gaming rig or workstation and provides a good value compared to its competition.

OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 / 1150 MHz / Reaper HPC Edition / Dual Channel
High speed, highly overclockable, and heatspreaders: what more can an enthusiast ask. The heatspreaders look nice and are effective. Even when run at 2.3 volts they never felt warm to the touch. I really can’t come up with anything bad to say about these sticks except for their price, which currently is about $195. When you can buy two gig of DDR2 800 for about $60, it’s had for me to justify spending more than three times as much money for an extra 350 MHz. The only other thing that is worth mentioning is that these modules are rated at 2.3 volts, which realistically means that these will need to be RMA’d about every 1-1.5 years if run at rated speed. This is only minor because these modules are backed by a lifetime warranty from OCZ who is known to have one the faster memory RMA processes. I would recommend this RAM to anyone who needs excellent memory performance or anyone for whom money doesn’t matter .

Diamond HD2600 XT SB Edition
The HD2600 XT turns in good performance up to 1280x1024 where its 128-bit memory bus really starts to handicap it. As a bonus, it also is quieter than my X1950 Pro and also doesn’t consume as much power. The only thing that bothers me is that the card tends to run somewhat hot despite its 65nm process, reaching load temps in the high 70s at which point the fan speeds up and gets a little annoying. The use of GDDR4 on this HD2600 XT really helps to set it apart from its competing 2600s at higher resolutions. Low power consumption and the ability to help decode HD video make this card perfect for an HTPC that can also do some light gaming.

PowerColor HD2600 Pro 512 MB
A cheap card that doesn’t use much power and can play the occasional game is exactly what the 2600 Pro is. With these cards costing as little as $60 today there really isn’t much to complain about. This card will play most last generation games acceptable and makes and excellent card for a business computer running Vista.

I wouldn’t hesitate to use any of these components on my own personal computer.

Thanks to Greg for letting me borrow his 24”monitor to do the 1680x1050 testing.
Thanks to ASUS, AMD, OCZ, SilverStone, PowerColor, Diamond, and FiringSquad for providing the hardware and running this cool contest.