Hi guys I've been reading the QGL forums for some five years now and this is my first thread. Most of you are far more knowledgeable than me when it comes to PC hardware, so I'd like to pick your brains if I could. I couldn't find anything (recent/new) in the forums pertaining the latest & greatest video cards or any vibrant AMD vs Intel threads (things have changed in 5 years it would seem!).

I'm not gonna ask you is this video card better than that one perse, instead I'd like to take a different tack. I'm after a system that is cool, quiet and powerful. Don't care if it's AMD/Intel or whether it has ATi/NVidia. Money is not really an issue, but I don't get my jollies by paying $1000 for the latest 3d card, either.

Cool: My house is a freakin greenhouse; and my AMD 2600XP with FOUR fans dies in the ass every summer, and I'm tired of removing the side panel and all but jamming my pedastool fan into the case. I've never bought/used any cooling stuff before, so knock yourself out with suggestions & brand recomendations.

Powerful: Speaks for itself really, but doesn't need to be stupid/crazy, and I'm not an overclocker/tweaker so whatever I buy needs to be ready to rock.

Quiet: Been reading some reviews in PC Magazine about video cards and how some are quieter than others (by having their cooling fans perform less revolutions per minute than others). Some have large fans that rotate more slowly, obviously making them quieter, some have *no* fans, which I found intriguing, and others have tiny little midget fans that sound like a helicopter and threaten to fly said video card from the AGP socket (thankyou ATi radeon 9600 Pro).

Lastly Video Cards: I have nfi idea if i want AGP/PCI/PCIE. What are the pros/cons. Do I want/need two 3d cards? Or one really good one? Don't care about the different software bundles that come with different brands, only the respective performance/quality, and I have no brand loyalty to any marque.

Thanks to anyone who reads this & takes timeout to talk tech to a tech noob. You guys are some of the brightest and knowledgeable folk in Qld when ti comes to this shizzle. Hopefully I'll see you all at the next QGL meet if everything works out right. Cheers.

1) I'd say you'd be crazy to buy any top of the range stuff unless you are burning money for fun. The prices will drop bigtime once the next greatest thing comes out. Really you could spend 7-8k on a computer easily if you wanted to, it does all come down to how much you are willing to spend. I would say buy stuff a step underneath the best.

2) To your heating/cooling issues :) Unless you wanted to branch off into the extreme cooling side (watercooling/vapo) which costs a fair bit, I'd recommend a nice big hefty 100% copper Zalman cooler. Can't hear them and they cool extremely well, even go as far as puttin a zalman onto the videocard, the more silence the better :D Also go with a decent sized case with good cooling.

3) Videocards you are definately going to go PCI-E, AGP is on the downward spiral and all the latest stuff coming out now does NOT support it anymore. PCI is long dead and forgotten as a videocard slot.

4) Unless you are again the money burning type don't bother with dual SLIed videocards. Unless you are buying 2 of the best cards because there is no single card that is better then you are pretty much wasting your money IMO. The performance gains really aren't worth they money the 2nd card costs.

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Righto hardware discussion time! The Intel Core2 Duo stuff is the latest stuff to come out, bit pricey but great performance wise and its beating AMD's latest CPUs at everything. The good thing about this is it has forced all the AMD stuff down.

Again its going to come down to how much you are willing to spend, do you want the whole kit with keyboard/mouse/LCD/Speaker or just the box itself?

I just priced up a decent gaming oriented system on the cheap for a friend and came out at about 1.6k just for the box itself with an AMD AM2 setup.

AMD AM2 3800+ dual core CPU
Asus M2N-SLI Motherboard
2GB Geil 667MHz DDR2 RAM
320GB Seagate 7200rpm 16M HDD
XFX GeForce 7900GT 256M VIVO Videocard
Gigabyte Aurora Case
Tagan 580 PSU

If you can budget 2-2.5k for the box then go for a Core2 Duo setup with similar hardware. If you can afford a few more hundred go up to the 7900GTX card range.

Yeah Rubba's suggestion is pretty good and like he said if you can budget in a few more bucks get the core 2 duo, its cooler and more efficient than the AMD even though the amd's have become really really cheap due to recent price changes

oh and if you can give a budget range you're willing to spend on this im sure someone can come up with a good pc

last edited by Captain America at 09:34:55 27/Jul/06

Wait until Conroe arrives in Aus (about 1-2 months tops).

Conroe is Core2Duo for the desktop, or if you want mobile you need to wait for Merom (2-3 months is my estimation). Also, get 2-4gigs of DDR2 ram, but check the fsb of your processor, if its 667, then get 667 ram, if its 800 get 800 ram, make sure the is cpu wait times on memory.

I'm not sure about graphics, but i think NVidia 7950 has the crown right now, thou someone who is into gaming might be able to shed more light on this.

All of this will mean more when Conroe comes out, but check Tomshardware or Anandtech for the perf numbers if your interested.

Yeah I was hoping some gamers would chip in and recommend a video card/cooling stuff. Chicken, thanx heaps for your input bro. I should have been more specific. I'm happy with my 19" monitor, keyboard, speakers and even sound card atm. I was going to cannibalise my current PC for these parts. HD wise, I'm easy, it doesn't really matter, but bigger is better.

Last dude suggested 2GB of RAM...is this necessary? Not that I don't believe him, just that I'm surprised by the amount. But meh, RAM is hella cheap, so be it.

Budget wise: Well I'm keeping all my peripherals + soundcard/network card so all I'm looking at is new case/CPU/Mboard/Drives/cooling shizzle/video card. So say up to 2k. Hopefully my tax return is $5k - $10k (from the last 4 years lol) but again, I'm not one to splurge top dollar for top-of-the-range tech that I will only end up using to combust my wood fired oven next winter.

So it would seem I'm after a PCIE 3d card somewhere around the $350-$550 range...any suggestions progamers?

*Lastly, is everything 64 bit these days, and thereby rendering the HHD/SoundCard etc from my old comp useless? Or is it still compatible?

Thanks guys for your input/time once again. Peace out.

Go for 2GB of RAM, you can never really have enough, and Vista will no doubt be a RAM whore. As far as cooling goes, I'd strongly recommend shelling out for a good case with a good cooling design. I run an Antec P180, and it keeps the hard drives and power supply in a separate chamber in the bottom of the case to set up a kind of wind tunnel, in order to keep HDD and PSU heat out of the main chamber where the components live. Seems like a good idea to me, and no doubt there are other cases with other nifty design tricks to help manage heat. As for Video cards, I'm no expert on models or anything, but if you run Linux, go for an Nvidia, the Linux driver is a lot less hassle than ATI's offering (hence why I bought one).

So it would seem I'm after a PCIE 3d card somewhere around the $350-$550 range...any suggestions progamers?

The Nvidia 7900GT would fit right into that range, you should be able to pick one up somewhere around the $400-500 mark depending on what features you want with it (like VIVO etc)

2gig of RAM is pretty much the gamers standard nowdays with games like BF2 and WOW being so RAM hungry. It's only going to get worse so I'd say start with 2 gig then if the need arises to go higher in the future you can always throw another 2 sticks in later.

As far as cooling goes, I'd strongly recommend shelling out for a good case with a good cooling design

Very much agree which is why I suggested the Gigabyte Aurora, its got plenty of room and alloy construction so its light as. Only screws you need to use are with the mobo, everything else is screwless mounting. 3 x 120mm low speed fans for good airflow with no noise. Only thing that annoys me is the bling bling blue leds in the fans, but nothing a pair of wirecutters can't fix :P