Building new comp and just want some feedback and advice.

I've only so far made a loose decision regarding the processors listed below:-

P4 630 3.0GHz (800 FSB, LGA775, 2 MB) $270

P4 640 3.2GHz (800 FSB, LGA775, 2 MB) $329

Pentium D 820 2.8 GHz (800 FSB, LGA775, 2x1 MB, Dual Core) $379

The only AMD chip I have considered is the

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHZ 1MB $339

Hi ,

From what i've read in magazines, the Athlon 64 bit chip is currently best for games.
Out of the ones listed above it seems a pretty close call.
If you can lay your hands on a FX57 chip thats the daddy ..

Personally if i had to choose from the above i'd go Athlon 64 , and a nice fast ATI card , depending on your motherboard , either AGP or a PCI Express..

This is a website i use quite often , www.tomshardware.com.

This link may also help you decide ,http://www6.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/.

Hope this helps ..

www.tomshardware.com has been a big help but still undecided at this point. I was going to go with the P4 630 but have started to rethink the choice.

Should have added that the system is for gaming. So then I should go with AMD?!?
Let me know.

last edited by Red Dragon at 06:21:29 09/Dec/05

last edited by Red Dragon at 06:21:38 09/Dec/05

hey, i highly recommand the AMD chips for gaming... the P4's are for dual process work like alt+tab from one program to another and work like word processing. The AMD chips are much better in perfermance for gaming than P4s. i work in an internet cafe and we have 40 computers of 3500+ AMD 64 cpus and they run great for any games we put on them.

see our computer specs on www.thegamesplace.com.au for some idea of what we've got... and that might help you with your decision. our computers run like a dream for CS: Source, need for speed and all the games that we've got.

Cheers and good luck with your decisions

I've decided on the AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (2.4GHz).

Anyway, time to get on with the rest of the system. Anyone have suggestions for the motherboard, ram, hd/s, graphic card ??

last edited by Red Dragon at 12:48:16 26/Dec/05

Your probably better off looking at a site such as Overclockers Australia.

For AMD, i wouldnt touch ASUS, ASrock or Gigabyte boards. That leaves you with Abit and DFI

The only Abit worth mentioning is the AN8-SLI. All the fatality boards are just this with a little extra thet very little people will use. Its much cheaper as well, and has all the features you will need, and overclocks well if thats your thing.

The DFI range is good, but be prepared to larn ALOT before you start building it. There is an insane amount of settings, and it will take alot of time to get it stable.

Ive owned both, and the Abit is the nicer board.

Ram.
Do not get cheap stuff. The DFI hates it with a passion, and the AMD chips like low latency more than clock speed. There is some nice ram on Nintek's site. Anything other than Kingmax will do fine.

If you want 2gb, dont get 4x512mb sticks. A64's will run it at 2T timing, much slower than 2x1gb sticks.

PSU.
You need a minimum of a 480w for the DFI. No if's, buts or why's. The Abit will run on a lower psec one, but dont bother going under 450w either. NEVER touch a generic PSU for ANY A64. Its a sin that can never be repented. Get a decent PSU like a Tagan or Antec. Seasonic are good if you like silence, but the Antec NEO480 is almost as quiet.

Video.
This is limited by your budget. DO NOT get 2 6600GT's, a 6800GS will be 2x as fast and cost less. The 7800GT would be ~ the same price, and is much faster. Only reason to go SLI is if your rich, and want 2 7800 Series cards.

Pick the fastest one you can. the 7800GT is the best bang/buck up at the top, then the X800GTO 16 pipe. The 6600GT is slower in most applications. I wouldnt go lower than this for a new machine.

Id try to squeze a 7800GT in, even if you have to go for a 3500+ or 3200+. Youll end up with a machine that will last longer, and could possibly upgrade at a later stage, if it becomes economical (IE: Perormance gain vs outlay is better with adding a 7800GT, and selling your old one and getting the next series card)

Heat sink.
Zalamn 9500 for Performance and silence. Dont go near anything with a Thermaltake label. Its usiualy more noisy than its rated, and never quite as good as its rated to be. Same with their cases, they are nowhere near the Antec / LianLi / Coolermaster cases.

HDD's.
Seagate used to be quiet, now theve turned around, the only good thing about them is their 5 year waranty. WD Sata and IDE drives are now virtualy silent. My 2 200gb WD's (IDE and SATAII) make less noise than my Hydor Pump or the 7800GT.

Hopefuly that helps. Have a look at OCAU for alot more information as its probably more helpful than here.


last edited by ArJuna at 00:45:58 27/Dec/05

Thanks for all the info ArJuna. Is the advice you have given of personal choice or proven to be the best choice for the given setup.

MOBOS:-
In regards for the motherboard, I was gonna go with either the Asus A8N-E OR Asus A8V-E-DELUXE. Are these boards not worth the money?
Are my only choices really Abit and DFI boards?

RAM:-
I was gonna go with a 4x512mb setup. Didn't know about the 2T timing.
Does that mean the same for 4x1gb setup?
Brands:- Kingston or Corsair. Can you recommend others?
How do you tell if ram has low latency?

PSU:-
I was going to go with a 450W supply but now will have to go up to 500-550W.

VIDEO:-
I have taken a look at the GeForce 7800GTX 256MB and like what I see except for the price, hopefully can get them to knock it down a bit.
Dual graphics at this point isn't cost justifiable for me.

HDD:-
Western Digital seems to be a good choice.

HEATSINK:-
Never really thought about it. Which component is it for?

last edited by Red Dragon at 13:35:26 27/Dec/05

Dude this is what you need

ASUS A8N
2 X Leadtec winfast 256meg 6800's in SLI
2 x 1gig of DDR 400 Kingston memory
AMD 4000+ 64 bit processor
Audigy 24bit sound blaster
Coolermaster Pratorian case + 500w PSU
Pioneer Dual layer burner.
G5 logitech mouse and Saitek Eclipse Keyboard.
WD 10,000RPM 75 gig SATA
WD 7200RPM 200gig SATA

if you want good fans for the GPU's and CPU go ZALMAN

Price tag?

keyboards and mouses last me only 6 months.

MOBOS:-
Asus's cheap (Under $300) boards arent much good. I wouldnt touch them with a 10ft pole. The Motherboard is the heart of the machine. Dont skimp on it or itll come back and bite you.

The Abit AN8 SLI or Ultra if you can find it are 2 of the best boards around. 2nd best overclockers (within 100mhz of the DFI's), stable, and work out of the bok. Also silent because if the heatpipe.

RAM:-

2t impacts performance from 10 - 30% in varying cases. Itd be much better to get 2 sticks rather than 4. 2gb is fine, 4gb is overkill.
Timins are usualy written like this 2-2-2-5. the lower the numbers the faster it is. the first number is the CAS latency. its the most important one. CAS 3 is the slowest DDRI speed, and CAS 2 is the fastest. Faster = better. The difference is less noticeable that the 2T speed loss, but its still there.

Have a look at Nintek.com.au. Id go for some Corsair Value (Cas 2.5) or some Mushkin (CAS2) if you can spare that much. 2.5 isnt much quicker than 2, so you can save a bit here if you need to. Gskill is another good brand. Corsair is expensive for what you get, you pay for the name.

PSU:-
the Antec NEO480 is enough even for 2x 7800GT's and a Opteron 146 (FX in drag) @ 2800mhz. and Enermax 535 is another good pick, and fairly cheap as well. Stay away from Generic ones (Ultra X-Connect is included here)

VIDEO:-
If you have access to MSY, get the MSI 7800GTX for ~$635, otherwise a 7800GT is still good enough. If youd prefer a Radeon, look at the X1800XL. They are INSANELY overclockable, some hitting 10k in 3Dmark05, close to a SLI 7800GT setup. They are a little harder to overclock, but respond well.

HDD:-
Raptors are fast and noisy, the SATAII drives are reasonable quick and quiet. if you need speed, get 2 and RAID 0 them.

HEATSINK:-
The Zalamn 9500 is quiet and "has the efficiancy of Water". there very nice. i was going to get one untill i managed to score the WC kit i have now for a very good price. Otherwise the Arctive Freezer 64 Pro is another good HSF.

Hey, im in a similar position and i now how it feels because you wanna make sure that everything you buy is gonna be quality. Heres what i intend to buy and all my prices are taken from allneeds.com.au

1 x Athlon 64 4000+ Socket 939 64 Bit or 4200+ Dual Core – Venice Core – $525 or $630
1 x G-Skill 2GB PC3200 2x1GB DDR CAS 2-3-2-5 - $365
1 x Pioneer DVR-110 D - $75
1 x SeaGate 200 GB 7200 rpm 8MB cache - $150
1 x Asus A8N-SLI-PREMIUM nForce4 SLI, PCI-Ex, Raid, GigaLan - $280
1 x Xpertvision 7800 GTX- $ 750
1 x 550 Watt Codegen PSU - $100
1 x Thermaltake Soprano Series Case Black - $165

Total $2500

Right now the Athlon 64 Bit processors are well and truly head and shoulders (possibly even chest) above intel. Depending on what Gfx card you want you'll want a fairly powerful processor. Personally you won't notice a huge increase in performance between single and duel core processors with games like HL2 and BF2 as dual core technology is something that will most likely only be implemented for games like UT:2007 and ET:Quake Wars but i definitely think its a wise choice to go for a dual core processor (depending on your budget)

Cant remember who said it but you'll definitely want 2x1Gb sticks of ram as most modern day motherboards will accomodate for a pair of identical ram (with regards to timing) and will hence be more efficient that way.

Disregard whatever someone said about staying away from Asus if an AMD's involved. The Asus premium is the best motherboard going around and while it might not have the overclocking potential as some DFi mobos may have, Asus mobo's are far more stable and solid where performance and reliability is concerened.

As for GFX cards i wouldn't bother about brands like BFG, and XFX etc. who offer factory overclocked cards. The card itself is exactly the same between brands but they will charge you 200 bucks extra for the software that comes with it.
Right now the GTX is the best card going around (dont bother waiting 2 months for the 512 Mb GTX to come out because the performance gain isn't worth the extra money) But if your budget cant accomodate the GTX you will be more than happy with the GT.

Lastly make sure you have a fairly powerful PSU, Brand names aren't essential in picking a PSU as you will hear people complain about every PSU manufacturer in the world. I haven't included an aftermarket heatsink for your CPU in my pricelist but the extra 70 bucks for a Zalman HS is definitely worth it.

After that you only have to decide what HDD, DVD burner/ Rom and Case you want etc. which aren't that big a deal really.

Don't forget to allow for around 500 bucks in your budget for a logitech G5 mouse, a used keyboard and an LCD screen ;)

Not bad for a first post :D

Very helpful to say the least :)

I know very little about overclocking and most likely will never trend into that territory but time will tell.
Is it even worth the risk??

"Don't forget to allow for around 500 bucks in your budget for a logitech G5 mouse, a used keyboard and an LCD screen"

LCD screen yeah, logitech mouse no, cheap keyboard cheap mouse = good investment. All plastic in the end ;)

I'm still sorting it all out.

I dont think overclocking is worth it and is most likely reserved for the people who only want high 3d mark scores and an extra 3 fps. Not to mention the extra stress that oc'ing puts on a Gfx card and the other components in your PC.
If you get a good enough system then there should be no logical reason to OC anything.
As for the mouse i used to say i'd never spend 100 bucks on a mouse but after playing cs with my mates G5 and getting an instant 5:1 Kd ratio, you notice how reactive it is compared to the mouse i stole from school :P

Didnt realize the Premium was under $300, ill have to change it to 'ASUS's under $280 boards', but the commentes still stand true and tested. the Premium is good, but expensive compared to the Abit (Not the Fatal1ty rubbish), and its a damn stable and well built board, unlike most 'Cheap' ASUS boards ive had the displeasure of working on.

All the 7800 series cards were built in the same factory, so there isnt much variation on them other than HSF, Bundle and Warranty, so get the cheapest and spend money elsewhere.

the 512mb GTX is impossible to find, this leaving the X1800XT 512mb as the fastest card you can buy, However i wouldnt go that way unless youve got nothing else to blow it on. 7800GT or X1800XT are the 2 best price/performance that you would be considering. Might also be worth going with a Crossfire board if you go the ATi Option and want to try crossfire later...

If you lanning, get a decent pair of headphones facored in as well. Anything that ISN'T Stenheiser or Zalman will be good. ThE beyerdynamic and Koss headphones are VERY recomended. have a look at headphones.com.au for alot of models. he even has a 30 day return policy if i remeber rightly. the owner is a frequent poster on OCAU and knows his headphones.


last edited by ArJuna at 01:39:08 01/Jan/06

ArJuna, would you mind listing the problems you have had with asus boards. Was it due to overclocking?

Which one is faster UltraDMA 133 or Serial ATA??

Is Serial ATA -> SATA by chance?

The two Asus boards that seem to be a good choice to me are A8N-E and A8V-E Deluxe. Any recommendations on either??

On the http://www.cworld.com.au/ site for the Asus A8V-E-DELUXE it states the following:-

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI-E X16
2 x PCI-E X 1
3 x PCI

I don't see how it can have 2 x PCI-E X 1 even from looking at a picture for the board on the Asus site.

At the moment I'm in favor of the A8N-E.

last edited by Red Dragon at 15:59:44 02/Jan/06

Most of the issues revolve around Build Quality. DOA, dieing IDE / SATA etc... worst is the NB fan. Its so small and Noisy due to the high revs it does, and tends to die easily, just like the DFI ones do.

SATA = Serial ATA, just a shorter way of saying it.

On HDD's, the drives in use today (Excluding the Raptors) still arent fast enough to properly utilize IDE, so SATA is realy overkill for them. Mainly the advantage is the smaller cables and Native Command Queing. If he difference is small, id go for the SATA(II) drive. Only if its signigicantly cheaper consider IDE as it is becoming a n old connection

Ahe A8N-E is the budget board. STAY away or spend more for a better one. the A8V is a VIA chipset and as such is even worse.

Usualy the 1x slot is up the top of the board. The ASUS has them both below the PCI-E 16x slot, so with a bid card the first will be un-useable. Even with a decent card you will want it clear for airflow.

Quote:
At the moment I'm in favor of the A8N-E.

I wouldnt be at all. Its a budget board and as such skimps on Quality. Spend some cash on a Decent board and you wont have any problems

This is really becoming a tug-of-war between what to choose after you knock asus. The A8N-E has gootten good reviews from users mostly complaining about the noisy chipset fan and also the problem has been fixed in the 2.0 board revision.

DOA? NB?

I'm looking into different boards manufacturers, mainly the ones you mentioned earlier.

Could you recommend some boards, single and dual graphics.

Is the Abit AN8 Fatal1ty SLI board of high quality?
Also is the Abit AN8-SLI of high quality?

I can't pick the difference between the two, are there any?

last edited by Red Dragon at 20:56:34 02/Jan/06

last edited by Red Dragon at 21:26:31 02/Jan/06

Even though the might have fixed the Fan issue (NB = Northbridge, or chipset) i still woudlnt go near them.

DOA = Dead on Arrival

MSI isnt bad if you want an alternative. Just get one with the nForce 4 Ultra / SLI chipset. EG, K8N Neo4 Platnum (Ultra) or K8N Diamond / SLI Platnum (SLI)

The Abit AN8-SLI is very good and Silent (No fan to make noise / die). Unless you want the features in the Fatal1ty, it just isnt worh spending the extra. All you realy get is 3 extra Fans on the Chipset, so more noise / chance to die, and the uGuru panel. It doesnt seem worth it to me.

I have the AN8-SLI here, which i used for a while when my DFI went back for RMA. Its a brilliant board, and easy to work on. Even has ultra bright LED's for the people who are interested in that sort of stuff.

If tou can find the AN8-Ultra, its the same, just without SLI, and a fair bit cheaper. Abit decied to stop making them, so there becoming quite rare.

Did you mention Arjuna that the Abit and Asus AN8-Sli are essentially the same motherboard? My advice is still to go for the Asus An8 Sli Premium. Instead of the usual heatsink it only has a heatpipe on the motherboards which turns out to be a much less noisier and more effective way for dispersing heat away from the motherboard. As for recommending Msi as a brand that is simply a big no no. The only people i've ever heard say good things about Msi are those who have only used their products for 3 months before upgrading.

last edited by Demps at 13:23:28 03/Jan/06

I'm not too bothered by noise.

To me the ABit AN8-Ultra is very similar to the Asus A8N-E if not the same.

Well finally selected the board that I feel will do the job nicely. Don't have to guess which one.

Anyone know good places to buy computer parts cheap?
For hard drives the more ram they have the better?

last edited by Red Dragon at 10:42:45 08/Jan/06

heya m8, im no comp "gun" but have u tried here?

http://www.msy.com.au

hope it helps, and they have a few stores in nsw