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New computer, looking for opinions/help
AbyssKnight
Member Posts: 152
Alright, so, this'll be the first computer I've actually made myself, since I'm new to the whole building thing. I'm a whiz at software, but not hardware...well, we all have to learn sometime. I'm Canadian, so all the stuff will be from TigerDirect.ca (good prices, customer support, and, well, it's already Canadian. Definite advantage for me. I'm also kinda in this to build a computer with a supremely fast start-up time, like, 5 seconds-ish. If only I could find a good Socket 939 motherboard with PCI Express and SCSI, I'd get a 15k HDD, but I can't, so I'll stick with 10k.
Remember, CANADIAN PRICES, so don't get scared.
Case
Aesthetic, functional...who wouldn't like that?
Power Supply
Yes, that was the best/least expensive power supply that has the required output I need, as well as all the connectors I need, or will in the future. At least it'll last 
Motherboard
I was debating between this or the Asus A8N SLI Deluxe...I chose this one. It's got everything I need.
Processor/Operating System
Seems like a good bundle to me. Get a better version of Windows XP for about the same price as Professional in the end, plus a free game.
Memory I have no idea what I want for memory, this is where I need the most opinion. For example, would 1GB of DDR800 RAM be better/faster than 2GB of DDR400 RAM? Because if the difference is that great, I'd gladly go with the very expensive DDR800 stuff.
Video Card
Good performance...and the price is right
Hard Drive
Very expensive, but...well, it's 10k RPM. I want speed on my hard drive.
DVD Burner
Expensive, I could get one the same speeds for half the price...but this one is VERY reliable, and it's unique in that it's a Serial ATA connection, kinda rare for optical drives.
Sound Card
Hey, it's a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS...and the games don't hurt.
Keyboard/Mouse
Standard keyboard and mouse. Whee.
Comments
ok heres what i think
case-nice
powersupply-dont understand why pay so much here but whatever i used an x-connect really nice becouse its neat or organized, reduces airflow, and just looks nice
motherboard- in my opinion ripoff try a different brand like asus you get more features for less, just built mine using an asus A8N-sli delux has more features for like 170 and boots up within 8 seconds or around there.
processor and OP- well i think you could get the same one for less somewhere else becouse the way it come out the processor is like 500 when its really around 350.
videocard- probably your best choice out of eveything.
harddrive- umm well just get one with more memory or two for less money but still using sata.
dvd burner- little too pricey for what your gettin but i do like that it uses sata, was looking for a burner using sata but couldnt find any.
sound card- its worth around 95 plus all the games 115. plus you motherboard comes with one so if you arent going to use any of their features dont buy it.
mouse/keyboard- finally something that isnt a rippoff (other than the videocard).
RAM- tell us what your thinkin and well reply- go toward ocz or corsair in my opinion, i like them for some reason.
comparing most the prices to newegg, you are gettin screwed over.
my sexy computer
Um, yeah, see, in Canadian, these are all pretty good prices. I'm getting a sound card just so it's not sucking as many resources from my CPU/motherboard. As for the power supply, it was the cheapest one I could find that had 2 PCI Express connectors, which is what I'm going to be using in the future. But other than the prices, which I'm pretty sure everyone is going to yell at me for (you're all going
right about now), the stuff is pretty good?
As for memory...I'm debating out of these three:
Fastest Corsair RDRAM 512 MB/800MHz
Mid-Speed Kingston Dual-Channel 2x 512MB/400 MHz
Slowest Corsair Value Select 1GB/400 MHz
Obviously, because of the outrageous prices, I would be getting less of the RDRAM. Hence the question, 512 of 800 MHz RAM, or 1GB of 400 MHz RAM?
And you say that an ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe is better than this DFI Lanparty? I compared the two and didn't exactly see much difference, where are they different?
motherboard-just go with asus, more perfessional, and more experience.
power- its all the same shit to me.
processor- nice
video-great since your gettin ripped for about everything else
hard-just get like 120 gigs doesnt make that much of a price difference.
burner- good leaning toward great
sound- good
*sigh* sadly in both you choices of motherboards none supported rddr so you have to stick with ddr wich would be from the ones you picked the slowest and medium ones so i guess you cant go with 400mhz also i dont really know the difference between the 400 and 800 mhz so cant help you much in that area.
sucks to have prices raised becouse where you live doesnt it
ok ill be back tomorrow too tired im goin to sleep
I was looking around the site and it seems the SLI-DR is actually cheaper. You might as well get that since it's exactly the same except it has ADDED features for RAID. http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1356361&sku=D452-2033
Ignore the Asus lovers. Benchmarks have shown that the DFI SLI boards are the best stock and overclocked. The Asus not only costs more but is inferior.
I would beware of Windows XP x64, I recall reading it has some problems with 32-bit software like current games.
Nice hard drive except you're only getting 1? I hope you don't have a lot of software, music, or videos. An 80GB hard drive will fill up fast these days. You could try some of the newer 7200RPM SATA hard drives like the Seagate 7200.8 or Maxtor DiamondMax, all are great (the best 7200RPM's), offer much larger storage, and will save you a lot.
Why exactly are you buying an Audigy 2 GAMER? It is exactly the same as a normal Audigy 2 ZS only they hike up the price because of the games. The games are old and it seems to me you would have already bought them if you cared that much. It is in no way any better than the non-gamer package. Save yourself the money.
It's funny you're going all out on everything except the graphics card. With the money you save from not buying the gamer and getting the SLI-DR invest in a normal 6800 (non-GT, non-Ultra).
Haha, I know, the video card is the next thing I would upgrade. I'm looking for total upgradability in this, so I'm getting the best case, power supply, and motherboard possible.
Also, about the motherboards, I took a look at the DFI User's Manual a while ago, and the DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR (yeah, Tiger made a typo on the title, it's a DR) is a little better than the NF4 UT SLI-DR. Well, it comes with added features like a diagnostic LED and FrontX, for example (I'm actually not sure what difference these make...
), but I'm not sure about the actual specifications of this motherboard. If you're absolutely sure that the UT SLI-DR is better, I'll get that.
As for the sound card, I want the games and would probably get a couple of them separately anyways, like Halo and Splinter Cell, so it's worth it in this package. Halo is a great online game
. I would already have the games, but my current computer would barely play them....
Hard drive: Yeah, I'm actually thinking I'll go with a smaller 36GB 10k HDD for a system drive, and for my top-of-the-line games, and get a 160-200GB storage drive for small programs, music, videos, etc. Hopefully by the time I get this, said problems with 32-bit software on Windows x64 will be cleared up with some updates or something...if not, I can always try what I did on this computer to get old 16-bit stuff to work on Windows XP Pro. I was just missing one file that I didn't know was missing for 3 years
. But it was in some backup folder in windows....so I just had to copy/paste it into system32 and I was good to go.
Thanks for the help guys.
EDIT: As for the GeForce 6800 recommendation, I'd much prefer to either stick with the 6600 GT, because of the price, or spend an extra 45 dollars on top of the 6800 to get the GT, with a nearly doubled memory bandwidth, and DDR3 memory instead of DDR
Well here's my 2 cents on the computer your building, take it or leave it
First the Case, before I went to my Lian Li v1000+ I have the all ALu Tsunami and I really enjoyed it, it has decent air flow and lots of room to work with. So although I could recommend better cases for around the same price, nothing bad can be said about it at all. Good call there.
Power Supply, never ever ever pay attention to anyone that says "it's all the same"... it makes me cringe. If you plan on possibly putting SLi in this system at any point in time in the future, or even a Next Gen VC you'll be kicking yourself for scrimping on the PS or choosing the wrong one. If you look at PS you selected, notice the 12v rail, it's only carrying 15amps both ways, long story short = not good. Look for a PS with a higher ratio for your 12v and just remember that spending more, doesn't always mean better.
Motherboard, I love DFI, there is not issue there, and the SLI-DR 4 is one of the best consistent OC performers out there right now but there is something you have to keep in mind. Jumping ahead a slight, your planning on using an AMD 3800+ to build your system around, which is great and all but as you know, hopefully, this little guy produces a fair amount of heat, one of the bad things about this board is the layout, it's just a general pain in the butt to work with and to make it worse, it's hard as heck to fit any of the after market coolers onto, so keep that in mind. Also, out of the box you will get a slower board then the Asus A8N, but with a bit of tweaking, it's a monster.
CPU/OS, 3800+ Great job if you can't get the extra bit for the 4000 or the fx55/57.
Memory, before you go nuts and buy silly expensive super low latency ram I would HIGHLY suggest you read THIS article written on the Amandtech forum. In a nutshell, basically it says that so long as the memory squares are of good quality, and "decent" latency, you will see little to NO difference using an AMD core and super low lat. That being said, I have seen a decent performance jump going from my corsair VR to OCZ platinum but at the same time I did go from 1 to 2 gigs. My oppinion, get good ram from a good name but there's not need to go crazy.
Video Card, I've seen, set up and used 6600GT rigs and I can't say enough good stuff about performance, so long as your expectings realistic output. The nice thing about the system your building is it will grow with you should you want too. Twin 66's are a great place to start. AMAZING value for price effectiveness.
Hard Drive, What can be said, easily the best choice to make if you can afford it, I own 2 myself and probably the best buy's I've ever made.
And the rest is is personal taste, although you just can't wrong with the Audigy
Hope this helps.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
Alright...I'm now taking open recommendations on cases and power supplies, I guess. I looked at a few other power supplies, and, well, it seemed confusing. And I'm taking electronics class
. So I was hoping someone could help me out on what to look for.
I'm going to be starting to get this in September...I'm waiting until all the people with summer jobs quit, get a job of my own, and pay for this, about $500 a month, until I build the computer I have listed there. After it's built, I'm going to keep paying about that much per month to upgrade it, until I have pretty much everything top of the line, or just under it so that all the bugs have been worked out, and the prices lowered...Athlon FX-55/57, couple of GeForce 7800's (by that time, they should be more affordable and bugs worked out), you know the stuff.
If your looking at spending a little more on the case, I would go with THIS. It's a little more then the first one you came up with but it's a full tower, TONS of room to grow, great airflow and keeps you under that $300.00 and up price range for a good case that we poor canadians have to pay
For your power supply, unfortunately tigerdirect doesn't have a huge amount of options, I would go with the enermax. It has an 18amp 12v switch, good ratings on the 3.3v and 5v, active pfc, 4 sata's and 2 pci-e extensions. The nice thing is that it has twin 12v rails to provide a pure signal to your VC, or two of them if you decide to go SLi in time. Although if you wanted to run anything higher then 6800 GT sli's you would have to change the PS again, since the 6800 ultra requires a minimum 22a current and the new 7800 requires a minimum 26amp current and with SLI no less then 2 rails of each.
Hope that helps a tad.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
Oh, wow, I didn't know that specific video cards needed specific amounts of amperage at 12V...that helps me a lot on what I need to look for
I looked at the TT Armor series a while ago, and it's efficient and everything, but...I just don't like the way it looks...the black one looks better for me, but I still would prefer something with more flair, wave, you know...something like the TT Shark, or the Tsunami, like I chose.
Can someone give me links to good power supplies that can support, well, anything? Preferably not too expensive, like...aim for less than 200 dollars.
Now, as far as wattage goes (you know, the thing that they seems to advertise most, right in the name, 450W, 680W, etc.) what should I should aim for here, assuming I want the best possible computer in the future?
If you're going to upgrade the video card and run in SLI eventually I'd get a 600W+ SLI power supply (SLI requires a special PSU).
Saw that a long while ago. I would get this Xion 600W PSU, but it's not SLI-ready, so...yeah. I was looking for more specific recommendations now, links to actual power supplies
I have an Enermax Noistaker 600W picked out for my SLI rig.
you should get the geforce 7800s
And that looks like a pretty good power supply.
And that looks like a pretty good power supply.
i think he means get two and make them sli instead of two 6600s becouse it will cost less. its worth it.
Yes. Because 7800 GTX's are definitely cheaper than 6600 GT's.
There's really no point in waiting a long time to upgrade. Prices don't drop that fast or that often. The price of a 6800 Ultra has only dropped like $100 since its release. That's not a whole lot considering the price is still $400 and the money you are spending on a lesser card now, a 6600 GT, will catch up with you in the long run anyway. If you're waiting for another price drop, like when the 7800 Ultra comes out, you might as well just not buy a filler video card, use an old one you have temporarly or just buy the best now!
I think I might just do that, Jaguar...this machine I'm using now, it came with some crappy nVidia Vanta TNT or something like that, so I upgraded it to a Powercolor Radeon 9200SE. But if I got a 6600 GT earlier, and used it to game until I got a 7800 GTX/Ultra/whatever the newest is going to be, I could resell the 6600 GT to my friend for almost full price, he'd buy it. So...using a 6600 GT rather than a Radeon 9200SE for 6 months would cost me about 50 dollars in the long run. Not too bad...
Still looking for recommendations on power supply/maybe case...
05.07.30
1. The gf6600gt is a good low to middle calabre gaming gpu, if, big IF, you only want to view game in smaller resolutions (eg. 1280 x 1024 or 1024 x 768.) For the 1600x1200 size with all that eye candy AA and AS and pixel-vertex shader function, then you want something like the x850xt or the gf7800 because those 300 to 350 Million transisters gpu are designed for that usage. But those upper end gpu will be drawing 110 to 130 watts and putting out 80* C temp. You need 24 Amp 12V rail power supply (ps) or +36A for sli (dual gpu) function. And gpu like the 7800 specify pciexpress (x16agp) and wxp.
2. The ps needs quality construction if you want little variance in voltage and assurance if it fries it will not take out a few $600 and $800 components with it. Also a UPS to clean local electricity and filter out surges (lightning strikes on power lines that also can fry $600 and 800 components + low quality ps) and brown outs.
3. The dfi motherboards (mobo...) those following ATI cpu type nForce4 mobo are well aware of the dfi's seriously problematic bios. The bios is defective to such an extent that the mobo can fry the same $600 and $800 components you are spending extra trying to protect through a quality ps and ups. And then the DFI people respond 'well, we warned you we do not support overclocking (oc) so if you oc your system that voids our warrenty and we will not replace the mobo nor the components that mobo fried.'
So one has to try experimental 'beta bios' to try and get the dfi mobo functional, and likely dfi will parrot "those 'beta bios' were noticed use at own risk, you use them, they fried your mobo and components, you accepted that risk using the 'beta bios.' " Meanwhile other dfi users repeatedly post in their forums about the lousy bug/problem ridden mfgr bios and the lack of an updated and improved mfgr recommended bios!
The people using ATI cpu (athlon) love ocing their systems to tweek every bit of extra gaming performance. People that use Pentium type cpu are more inclined towards business (ie. multible browser and background programs.) Also the Pentium cpu mobo will support DDR2, DDR3 and rare rdram system memory. The ATI athlon cpu supports DDR1 (and not give much better performance past pc3200 DDR at that, due to the limitation in fsb the ATI cpu can function) memory.
4. Another consideration you have not mentioned is the monitor you will spend all that time viewing games and programs. If you have a 17" monitor, then that gf6600gt will be fine. But if you are using a 21" or larger crt moniter, than you need a decent gpu that can post images in 32bit colour and 16x12 or even larger res.
5. SCSI for gaming is not really that wise, that is for 3 hard drive (hd) raid configurations. The big market issue with sata2 hd is their providing near scsi performance, w/o the need for expensive scsi adaptors, cables and extra 10 to 15k (hot and noisy) hd. A better approach is to use a fast 8MB cached 36GB ish sata2 hd (raptor) for system files and mostly used programs, then have a 2nd &/or 3rd supplemental larger (200 to 500GB) hd for back-ups and archiving rarely used programs. The stuff you use alot is rapidly accessable in the faster spin (7.5krpm to 10k rpm) main hd while you can stash other stuff on larger and slower (7.5k rpm) hd.
Soon dvdrw (blueray) will be near 50GB a disk, and you will be able to back up most stuff thereon.
6. The rapid booting issue is a measure of how fast the computer can get needed files into system memory from the hd. And how efficient the OS is. Wxp has a bit to work on as far is bug free and trimed down footprint size on hd!
A thing some specialist are working on is dedicated memory on the mobo for OS access, bypassing the need to seek OS files from hd, move data to system memory and from there initiate functional programs to boot up system. Dedicated OS memory on mobo is a 0.5 sec boot function. But it is not readily avail to retail market.
Thanks for all the helpful information there. I do realize that the 6600 GT is a temporary solution and I plan to upgrade that as soon as possible. All these problems I've been hearing about the DFI bios are really making me want to switch to an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, would that be a better option?
What you said about the hard drives is pretty much what I planned on doing, getting a 36GB 10k Raptor hard drive for Windows and all larger games that would benefit from being on a faster hard drive, and getting a 200GB or so drive for everything else.
As for my monitor, I just bought myself a nice little computer desk (using it for games with a small TV right now, I have limited space in my room), and the largest monitor it would fit is a 19-inch CRT, running at 1600 x 1200.
So, two questions now: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, or DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR?
Someone give me a link to a good power supply! (Not really a question, but you get the general idea.)
EDIT: YES, I'm back up to my level of Advanced Member from before!