I'm a noob, and scared!

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gobucks

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
1,166
0
0
building your own system isn't too hard. I just built my first one a few months ago, and aside from a hard drive compatibility issue, it wasn't very bad. Your configuration seems like a bit of overkill, and there are some better options to be had in a few places.

Here are some suggestions:
1) CPU - Sledgehammer sucks. It's the original A64 core, over 18 months old, and it shows. The clock-for-clock performance is not great, it runs really hot, doesn't have SSE3, has a memory controller that can't handle 4 DDR400 DIMMS, and doesn't OC well. Grab a venice, it fixes all these issues. Besides, 3500+ and 3800+ are way better values than the 4000+.
2) Graphics - 6800GT or X800XL are fine choices, but the SLI is kinda pointless at this stage of the game. ATI's R520 and Nvidia's G70 are going to be shown off at Computex in June, for availability by fall. Why spend $700 for an extra GPU and $100 extra for the SLI mobo when you can buy an X800XL for $250 and upgrade to an R520/G70 later this year?
3) Mobo - nforce4 for sure, but if you don't go SLI, try DFI's NF4 Ultra board for $140, or Chaintech's VNF4 Ultra for $90. They have all the features for way cheaper.
4) RAM - WAAAY too much money for 1GB of RAM. DDR prices have almost cut in half since 6 months ago, but enthusiast memory hasn't, so it's now a pretty poor value. Get a pair of 1GB value memory sticks. They are like $90 each at newegg. If you OC, you can just run a memory divider in your bios, and if you don't OC, than the latency differences will be negligable, like 3% or less. Try corsair, mushkin, OCZ, PQI, etc value memory.
5) Hard Drive - the combo isn't great. Raptors are expensive and small but fast, and the WD 250 is big but slow, not to mention it's slower than its newer competitors, like Maxtor's Diamondmax 10, Seagate's 7200.8, and Hitachi's T7K250. A better combo would be a pair of T7K250's in Raid 0. Together, 2 of these are faster than a single Raptor, and WAAAY faster than a Caviar. (see http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/hard_drives/hitachi/T7K250/p3.htm for some benchmarks) Also, a pair is cheaper ($128x2 versus $175+$130) and gives you more capacity (250x2 versus 74+250). Oh, yeah, and it's SATA-II.
6) PSU - $230 is rediculous. Grab any reputable 450-500W 24-pin PSU and you'll be fine. The 24-pin ATX 2.0 part is important, so that the PCIe graphics gets adequate power. Good choices are Antec's Truepower 2.0 ($120) or Vantec's Stealth VAN-520A ($90).
7) Sound - at this point, the Audigy isn't a great investment. Integrated sound on nforce is quite decent, and Creative has that announced its new line of X-Fi cards is not far away. These new cards will be exponentially better than the 10 year old architecture the Audigy is based on. Looking at the specs, it's like comparing a Pentium Pro to a Pentium EE 840 - its hardware is literally 24 times more powerful. I say try out integrated, wait for X-Fi, and then make your decision.
8) Windows XP x64 - why not? if you're buying hardware, you can get an OEM version, and you'll probably wanna get it eventually anyways, so there's no point in paying for windows twice. Driver support is pretty good, the only problem I'm having is TV Wonder support, but I'm sure it's coming. All games except Splinter Cell Chaos Theory run fine (that's an issue with the Starforce driver, but i guess that will probably be out soon). Oh, and Avast Antivirus free works on x64, so you'll have some protection while you wait for your AV app of choice to be compiled for x64.

That's a good place to start, the rest of the stuff is really just personal preference. Anyways, that should really save you a lot of cash, possibly close to a grand compared to your configuration.
 

imported_michaelpatrick33

Platinum Member
Jun 19, 2004
2,364
0
0
The Venice is not a way better value for a nonoverclocker. The 4000+ has the 1024 L2 cache that will give some extra performance for video editing. It is about 70 dollars more than the 3800+. He has the money so get the extra cache
 

gsellis

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 2003
6,061
0
0
A couple of notes on your responses:

Originally posted by: gobucks
7) Sound - at this point, the Audigy isn't a great investment. Integrated sound on nforce is quite decent, and Creative has that announced its new line of X-Fi cards is not far away. These new cards will be exponentially better than the 10 year old architecture the Audigy is based on. Looking at the specs, it's like comparing a Pentium Pro to a Pentium EE 840 - its hardware is literally 24 times more powerful. I say try out integrated, wait for X-Fi, and then make your decision.

With video editing, I would not recommend this. The latest versions of Vegas and Liquid Edition really want ASIO. On board audio is causing A/V sync issues on capture, even with DV that have been fixed by adding an Audigy 2. The upgrade here would be the M-audio products or an Audigy 4.

8) Windows XP x64 - why not? if you're buying hardware, you can get an OEM version, and you'll probably wanna get it eventually anyways, so there's no point in paying for windows twice. Driver support is pretty good, the only problem I'm having is TV Wonder support, but I'm sure it's coming. All games except Splinter Cell Chaos Theory run fine (that's an issue with the Starforce driver, but i guess that will probably be out soon). Oh, and Avast Antivirus free works on x64, so you'll have some protection while you wait for your AV app of choice to be compiled for x64.
Most editors and graphics apps perform poorly and have some specific drivers that have not yet been ported. X64 is not yet a good option with some of the tasks.


BTW, you listed the Vantec I have.
 

froke

Member
Jun 17, 2004
128
0
0
I'm not going to give my opinion on specific hardware...enough people have done that already. But I'd say if you've got the cash to spend now, you might as well go with higher quality parts because you will get more out of them in the long run. If you just bought a decent processor, then you would want to upgrade it in 6 months to a year. Compare, if you spend more cash on a faster processor, then it will last longer before you fell the need to upgrade it. Also, you will enjoy the blazing speed when you first get it and your friends will envy you (if you like that sorta thing).

As far as your question about testing hardware, I've found the ultimate boot CD contains many many tools that are very useful. Download it at ultimatebootcd.com
 

NightCrawler

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 2003
3,179
0
0

CPU: 3000+ Venice Core $1xx {{{ WAIT FOR 4200, 4400, 4600, 4800 x2 }}}
Case: Antec full tower $35 @ compusa sale this week.
PSU: $61 coolermaster 450/650watts
DDR: 1 gig is enough unless video or photo editing is the main use then up to 2 gigs.
mobo: Asus SLI
burner: NEC 3520A
Hard drive: Seagate or Maxtor or Raptor

With the need to upgrade so much I would never spend $2500 on hardware in 12 months it would be obsolete.


 

AMDZen

Lifer
Apr 15, 2004
12,589
0
76
For someone who is so afraid and such a n00b, you sure have things figured out.

Just a few suggestions, most of them other people have already made.

You don't want the first A64 core, get Venice or if you have to you can still go Winchester. You don't need SLI, thats going to take $400 off right there. You don't need 2 GB of RAM unless your doing video editing, and if your going to OverClock, you can OC a lot more on 1 GB. You can still get the SLI MoBo if you have to, but the ASUS SLI is the most expensive and crappiest OC board out there. Go DFI or MSI.

Personally I would just buy the DFI or MSI board WITHOUT SLI. The one 6800 GT, 1 GB of RAM, and the Venice 3500+, then 1 GB of 3700+ OCZ EB, or EL or something, and OC the sh~t out of it. I already have a friend who bought the 3500+ Venice, which runs at 2.2 Ghz - he OC'd it to 3 Ghz - 10x300 FSB on OCZ RAM. And it runs cooler then his Winchester did, which he bought like 4 months ago and only OC'd to 2.7 Ghz. Completely stable. Thats basically the equivelant of Intel 4.5 Ghz, or maybe even more. Venice roxx it
 
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