Cheap Gaming Rig

OfflerCrocGod

Yes I know it's an oxymoron^^^ but as usual price and performance are fighting each other:).

OK so the deal is I've been asked to build a PC for my cousin, the main use of it will be games, I've put together a little something and as there has been a spate of building threads I though I'd join the bandwagon and ask the learned and euridite members of Boards for their valuable advice; now, enough of the bull**** onto the HW:D.

Gfx Card: 9800 Pro 195 euros
CPU: Athlon 64 2800+ 165 eurons
MotherBoard: Cheap ass ASRock K8S8X 70
RAM: 512MB MDT CL 2.5 83
HDD : Maxtor 200GB 110
Case: Chembro Gaming Bomb 50
PSU: 550W 19Db 120mm fan 40
Screen: 19'' CRT V7 Videoseven N110S 160
CPU HeatSink: Thermalright SLK-948U 30
DVD/CD-R/RW: NEC ND-2510A Dual Sided 77
Sound-Card: Trust 514DX 5.1 34
Speakers: Creative Labs Inspire T5400 5.1 72

I think it should be an OK system - by the way I counciled to wait one or two more months but it's wanted now so..... I'd like to OC a bit but the MB is giving me some doubts:dunno:, it will probably have to be ASYNC. Does anyone have any clue as to the 2800+?, would I be right in believing that the Newcastle core should OC well? I'm hoping it will be CG stepping aswell but I can't be certain has anyone bought an Athlon 64 from jes of late and can they tell me the stepping? If anyone's curious as to why I'm buying everything from jes it's because of Kompletts high delivery prices :mad:, too sweet for my taste. The fans (including the Heatsink fan) will be vantec stealth fans - anyone use these guys and were you happy with the results? If anyone has any reason why going AMD-64 is not good or has any comments about anything else (good or bad) please post away!

P.S. can I use the german post option to deliver to IE? - GLS scare me :ninja:

Civilian_Target

It all looks fine to me except for the monitor and possibly the speakers.

Monitor-wise, what you're looking at is crap. At hi-res it'll be quite dark and possibly quite blurry too. For an extra few quid you can have this (I'm sure you'll be able to find it cheaper than what I've shown here, I haven't tried looking for a low price)

http://tinyurl.com/5z9kc

Also, speakerwise, can I recommend the Videologic ZXR500 or 550 series, they deliver an excellent punch for the price. Of couse though, speakers are a personal preference, so you can make up your own mind.

http://tinyurl.com/42ypx

Don't forget to get a decent keyboard and mouse, they're the bits that'll stay with you for the longest, and they bits you use everyday. They're the most important.

Also, a couple of quiet 80mm fans wouldn't hurt

BKtje

I believe all N'castles use the CG stepping tho im not 100% sure.

Stephen

Since the machine is being built for games I'd up the RAM to 1GB. It really made a difference for Far Cry, and I'm betting that Doom3 would like more than 512MB of ram to play with too.

maxheadroom

As scary as GLS are, if you select german post, your package will get lost somewhere in the DHL - Securicor handover (happened to someone else on boards, can't remember who). I don't think the tracking works either on ther german post option.

I wonder if Jes realise the publicity they get from here...

Civilian_Target

Originally posted by Stephen
Since the machine is being built for games I'd up the RAM to 1GB. It really made a difference for Far Cry, and I'm betting that Doom3 would like more than 512MB of ram to play with too.

RAM ain't cheap these days though, and its something that's very easy to upgrade if you find you don't have enough.

I'd recommend that you take 512mb for now, and if you feel the need to upgrade afterwards, do so.

I would take the same attitude on hard disks too, if you can afford to upgrade later and you're not building a miniPC I would buy a fast HD that's cheapest per gig, and if you run out, buy another one and stick it in aswell.

RE*AC*TOR

If you're looking to save money - don't bother with a seperate sound card - the onboard job will do fine. A gig of RAM would be a better investment.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Monitor-wise, what you're looking at is crap. At hi-res it'll be quite dark and possibly quite blurry too.

Have you used one of these before, or read bad reviews?, it looked OK to me 1600*1200 @ 85 Hz sounds good:dunno:

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
For an extra few quid you can have this (I'm sure you'll be able to find it cheaper than what I've shown here, I haven't tried looking for a low price)

http://tinyurl.com/5z9kc

Thats a very good one?, because in the interest of ease of shopping I was going to get the whole lot from jes and the only other monitor that's there is this 19'' Philips 109E50 for 150.

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Also, speakerwise, can I recommend the Videologic ZXR500 or 550 series, they deliver an excellent punch for the price. Of couse though, speakers are a personal preference, so you can make up your own mind.

http://tinyurl.com/42ypx

Ye I wasn't too happy with the selection of speakers in jes - I'll look elsewere for them, I've heard good things about those Videologic speakers.

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Don't forget to get a decent keyboard and mouse, they're the bits that'll stay with you for the longest, and they bits you use everyday. They're the most important.

Also, a couple of quiet 80mm fans wouldn't hurt

Vantec stealth should be OK for that - mouse maybe an MX500, they are meant to be good.

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
I believe all N'castles use the CG stepping tho im not 100% sure.

I think so too - so I'll just cross my fingers;)

Originally posted by Stephen
Since the machine is being built for games I'd up the RAM to 1GB. It really made a difference for Far Cry, and I'm betting that Doom3 would like more than 512MB of ram to play with too.

Stephen I kow you're right but you're breaking the bank!!:eek:, I suppose it means he wont have to upgrade later on - 1GB should be enough for about 9 months :cool:

neokenzo

I'm not sure about how well the Asrock OC but the Chaintech definitely OC better if you can strech it that far.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
RAM ain't cheap these days though, and its something that's very easy to upgrade if you find you don't have enough.

I'd recommend that you take 512mb for now, and if you feel the need to upgrade afterwards, do so.

That's what I though originally aswell, if I wait a couple of months to see what the performance is like and then upgrade when it seems as if it's really necessary I might save a bit ( hopefully prices will start going down instead of up:rolleyes: )

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
I would take the same attitude on hard disks too, if you can afford to upgrade later and you're not building a miniPC I would buy a fast HD that's cheapest per gig, and if you run out, buy another one and stick it in aswell.

Ye but I save 30 euro for the sake of 40GB - it's not much saved but it's a lot of storage (I don't know how much he will delete from his HDD without me telling him;)), thankfully HDDs are just getting cheaper and cheaper.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by neokenzo
I'm not sure about how well the Asrock OC but the Chaintech definitely OC better if you can strech it that far.

I was leaning towards that MB - it's only 25 euro after all, as for the sound card RE*AC*TOR it again is only 30 no way am I going to get 512 extra RAM out of 30eurons:D. By the way I checked how much a 19" monitor would cost to ship from Komplett - 200 euros bloody rip-off merchants!:eek:

kayos

Right I'm after spending loads of time looking into the AMD64 bits as I'm building a PC at the moment...

A few things to note are:

If you want to OC you really want to get a MB with a working PCI/AGP lock.

The Newcaslte cores do over clock better (2.45GHz from a 2Ghz 3000+ http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI5) Komplett do sell the 3000+ newcastle's with the CG stepping as mine arrived yesterday .

The AMD64's work better with tighter memory timings and if you want to OC you should look at getting different memory (from what I have read).

As for what you've spec'd:

For another 30 or so yoyo's you could go for the 3000+.

The gaming bomb has a window on the side and its meant to be crap it stuck on with double sided tape according to one review I read plus it has no reset button (why???). The Antec Sonata is a good case that comes with a very good PSU and a 120mm Case Fan and would only cost a tiny bit more.

Get a main board with a working PCI/AGP lock. The Abit KV8Pro is meant to be a good board but the lock does not work yet seemingly a Bios release soon will fix that.

As said before dont bother with a sound card. Use that money for something else (mainboard would be my suggestion).

Make sure the Thermialright heatsink fits that mainboard!

Get a Gig of RAM if this is going to be a gaming rig.

Shipping from Germany could get expensive if your getting the case and monitor and those heavy bits. My shipping from jes was 20 for Video car, RAM, HD's and router.. it was up on 40 or 50 when I had the CPU, Mainboard, PSU and Case in the order as well.

As for shipping...

I placed my order last Thursday with Jes and there is still no sign of it so god knows where the fup it is..

GLS from Komplett took 5 working days and there was a weekend in between.

DHL from Elara was under 24hrs and was only €10 I think this is your best option for the monitor and case as its a flat rate on deliveries I think.

64Bit is it worth it?
Going for the AMD64 is a good choice if you ask me. Its kinda furture proof in a way.. XP 64Bit is nearly here and you can get the pre-release for free if you so desire (I think we have a full relase version in our MSDN as its down as a volume licensed version must check that!!!). Software is going to be slow coming online for 64Bit but some games are going to be releasing 64Bit versions (Far Cry being one). Till the OS/Drivers/Software are all there for 64Bit you can run 32Bit without any loss in preformance so its nearly a free upgrade when the 64Bit versions do come!!

Hope the above is some use to you.

Col_Loki

CPU: Athlon 64 2800+ 165 eurons

MotherBoard: Cheap ass ASRock K8S8X 70

Ok that isint a good combo right there. The fact that your going for an AMD2800+ means you will need to use pretty high FSB (HTT) to get a good overclock. With the ASRock your getting an SIS chipset which has no PCI/AGP lock so your talkin about mabye 220mhz FSB and then hard drives start to go.

As neokenzo said the ChainTech would be a mcuh better option..... Nf3 250 n all.
You can save yourself €30 on cooling if you get the ASRock as it just wont be a factor.

PSU: 550W 19Db 120mm fan 40

€10 extra will get you a much quieter Tagan PSU, id personally go for that. My bet is the 19Db is total crap and it will be pretty loud.

On the AMD64 chips and revisions topic, there are 512kb and 1mb cache A64's as you know. But the thing is there are 512kb Clawhammers(1mb chips with 512kb dissabled) and newcastles. AFAIK the 2800+ only came in a newcastle core while the 3000+/3200+ came in both.
This means that chances are the 2800+ are the CG revision (im pretty sure all of them are from what ive read).

Your going to have to look at a High HTT and a memory divider but thats not much of a problem.

With the extra €30 youre spending on a sound card, would you not just get a better motherboard with good onboard? Will you notice any difference?

GinjaNinja

i'dals say change the m'board. I've got the MSI Neo FSR. It's the best board i've had yet. The Dynamic overclock is great gets to 220mhz(FSB). No problems.
Also the Cool'N'Quiet feature if great, this feature underclocks the CPU when idle, saving power and redusing noise.

Defo change the PSU. Your going to be running ver power heavy, you need very stable PSU with the 9800-Pro. I've got mine from hitide.ie for 70 yoyo's(still on special). Expensive but well worth it for quietness and stablility.

Change the 9800 Pro to the MSIRX9800 Pro for an extra €10. The reason being is that this card is an XT in deguise. I got one from jes-computer.de two weeks ago. there gaurenteed R360 core(XT core). Hynix 2.8 mem. When you install the latest CAT/Omeaga's the card is picked up as a XT(see pic). All i've done is rewrite the bios to clock it to 412/365(XT speeds). And there ya go an XT for the price of a Pro. i'd highly recomend this. Also to booth the Heatsink also covers all the ram chips front and back. i've over clocked the card to 435/375 and no arti's on stock cooling, best card I've ever got and i've have a few 9800Pro's(see my other treads)

thats my advice but I can't recomend the MSI Radeon enough.
XP64 = masive gaming improvement with the beata ATI driver over XP32. The only downsie is the driver issues, ie most companies don't have any yet. Slowly but surely there comming along.

Best of luck and enjoy it all when you get it.

GinjaNinja

MSI Radeon picked up ans an XT pic

kayos

Originally posted by GinjaNinja
Change the 9800 Pro to the MSIRX9800 Pro for an extra €10. The reason being is that this card is an XT in deguise. I got one from jes-computer.de two weeks ago. there gaurenteed R360 core(XT core). Hynix 2.8 mem. When you install the latest CAT/Omeaga's the card is picked up as a XT(see pic). All i've done is rewrite the bios to clock it to 412/365(XT speeds). And there ya go an XT for the price of a Pro. i'd highly recomend this. Also to booth the Heatsink also covers all the ram chips front and back. i've over clocked the card to 435/375 and no arti's on stock cooling, best card I've ever got and i've have a few 9800Pro's(see my other treads)
thats my advice but I can't recomend the MSI Radeon enough.

Thats good to hear casue thats what I ordered and it was only 190 from Jes (Last thursday) :P it has however gone up since then. I did here something alone the lines of it had the XT core but someone I know said all Pro basiclly run that core... Still at the time I was ordering it was the cheapest so I went for it...plus it comes bundled with stupid amounts of software.

Now if my order from jes would just arrive today/tomorrow I will be a very happy guy for the weekend...

GinjaNinja

I forgot to tell you about the shipping from jes.. not the bes I've ever got.
But it was not their problem the problem was with GLS. suprise suprise. Email jes with the order number and get them to give you te GLS tracking number.
once you get this ring the guys over in www.gls-ireland.com there helpful. that should get the order in quicker.
Otherwise it will get stuck in Dublin for along while,- mine was in Dublin for 8 days before I rang and only then did they send it out from the dublin office.

OfflerCrocGod

Ok I suppose I'm not surprised about the MotherBoard being unfavoured - I don't particullary like it either. So I'll get the Chaintech VNF3-250 instead for 20 extra. I'll also be changing the Gfx card to the MSI RX9800Pro, thanks GinjaNinja for the tip!!, that's 203 euro so 8 extra (it appears to be out of stock), in total 30 euro extra and hopefully a good bit extra power:). I've read one or two reviews for the PSU I was going to buy and they are not that positive about it while the Tagan 380W seems to be a better bet, so 14 extra:p Ah well scrap the sound card and the 1GB of RAM (it can wait). Oh and for the screen..... I think this will be enough:D.

p.s. Thanks 4 all the replies and I'm sorry for taking so long to reply but I've been playing Warcraft III non-stop for the last 8 hours:rolleyes:.

davkav

just lookin at your post now. Like GinjaNinjasaid about gettin the order ref. form jes if you go with GLS there only up in BAllycoolin beside the aquatic centre and if u go into them persally theyll gve it to u then and there once its been delivered to dublin that is. thats what i did to get my stuff could have been waitin for anoher month remember and i just went up and got it myself, dont bother ringin either they dont answer there phones

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by davkav
if u go into them persally theyll gve it to u then and there once its been delivered to dublin that is. thats what i did to get my stuff could have been waitin for anoher month remember and i just went up and got it myself, dont bother ringin either they dont answer there phones

Ye I remember but I pay for delivery to my house not to a wharehouse!, I've had one experience with GLS and that was RMAing a MB and getting it back and it was overall a good experience - I suppose it's the luck of the draw:dunno:. I will afto use GLS though I don't have a choice - the transfer between german post and DHL could go awry big time!

Col_Loki

Must say that looks pretty good. The Ram might be a slightly weak point, Mushkin Level 1 might be another option although it is more expensive but overclocks well and has tighter timings.

Im not the best on screens TBH, but the samsung looks pretty decent.

Tighter timings is a better option on the AMD64 than higher speed memory . Using the FSB(HTT):RAM divider doesent affect your memory performance like it does on the AMD XP or Intel boards. So a nice high HTT to overclock the CPU and a nice divider to run your Ram at a decent speed and your sorted......

OfflerCrocGod

OK I have now recompiled my list

Gfx Card: MSIRX9800Pro 203 euros
CPU: Athlon 64 2800+ 165 eurons
MotherBoard: Chaintech VNF3-250 nForce3 94
RAM: PC400 512MB TwinMOS CL2,5 87
HDD : Maxtor 200GB 110
Case: Chembro Gaming Bomb 50
PSU: Tagan 380W 54
Screen: Samsung SyncMaster 757p 17" FST 130 (19" was too expensive)
CPU HeatSink: Thermalright SLK-948U 30
DVD/CD-R/RW: NEC ND-2510A Dual Sided 77
Sound-Card: Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 Digital 24
Speakers: Creative Labs Inspire T5400 5.1 60 (Terratec are better but have not easy way of volume control!)

Including Delivery and some cheap Vantec Stealth fans and keyboard and mouse the total will be around 1200 euros - which I think is quite good overall. Thanks to all those who posted or gave advice:)

maxheadroom

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
some cheap Vantec Stealth fans

These are not very highly thought of by the PC silencing people (look at forums.silentpcreview.com to see what I mean). Just in case you're buying them because of the "stealth" tag on them - they're apparently anything but stealthy.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by maxheadroom
These are not very highly thought of by the PC silencing people (look at forums.silentpcreview.com to see what I mean). Just in case you're buying them because of the "stealth" tag on them - they're apparently anything but stealthy.

Every fan I have ever purchased for the purpose of silence has turned out to be TA-DA *noisy* and now you tell me that the vantec fans are also noisy; why am I not surprised:rolleyes:. The only fan I have felt was not noisy was a YS-Tech fan - which by the way was not marketed as being quiet. Ok thanks for the heads up I'll look around for some other fans.

secret_squirrel

I have a vantec stealth to replace the ICE fan in my shuttle - its quieter at low revs but only fractionally quieter at full speed. Ditto for the Vantec Iceberq 9800 PRO fan that I got.

Personally unless you mate is desperate for 5.1 sound I would bin the sound card and the 5.1 speakers and just get a good set of 2.1 speakers say Altec Lansing's. Less wires, less mess and top quality sound. You might even be able to get that extra stick of ram

maxheadroom

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
Every fan I have ever purchased for the purpose of silence has turned out to be TA-DA *noisy* and now you tell me that the vantec fans are also noisy; why am I not surprised:rolleyes:. The only fan I have felt was not noisy was a YS-Tech fan - which by the way was not marketed as being quiet. Ok thanks for the heads up I'll look around for some other fans.

here's somewhere that sells quiet panaflow fans:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dorothy.bradbury/panaflo.htm

they're pricey, but apparntely worth it. I have 2 sitting on my desk, but am waiting for the rest of my stuff to arrive from Jes so I can try them out.

(I also got me an Evercase 4252 case, direct from evercase. That was pricey too, but I'm sick of this low, droning niose beside me...)

silentpcreview is really worth a read if you're at all interested in quieting down your computer.

Col_Loki

Yea the Vantec Stealths arent to best for silence.

The Sharkoon SL3 (think its the 3's ) are very good and have a fan controller, also the Noiseblocker S1 on jes are pretty decent, also Papst fans are well known for quiet operation. Panflows are also very good.

OfflerCrocGod

OK looked around and now I'm getting these fans here
Rear Exhaust: Sharkoon LowNoise 120x25 11
Front Intake: NB UltraSilentFan-S1 12
Gfx Card: Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer 8
CPU Fan: NB UltraSilentFan-SE2 13

In case anyone thinks a low noise/rpm fan is not the best to put on a CPU - I think the Gaming Bomb with all those intake and outtake fans will be cool enough to compensate.

I may get this instead as an outtake fan ( I can have the set;) ) but the blue LEDs of the above outtake fan are soooo pretty *shiny*:p I'm confident that will be enough cooling for the hardware - why does everyone want me to dump the Soundcard? - I though on-board sound was not good!

Col_Loki

Unless your going for an Audigy 2 or better chances are you wont notice any difference. Onboard on the motherboard is very good these days........

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Col_Loki
Unless your going for an Audigy 2 or better chances are you wont notice any difference. Onboard on the motherboard is very good these days........

OK I suppose the difference would be near nothing but on-board is not likely to support EAX is it?:dunno:, I thought that would be a nice touch for games - and it's only €24.

secret_squirrel

my nforce2 onboard supports EAX so I would guess the Nforce3 chipsets would as well

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
my nforce2 onboard supports EAX so I would guess the Nforce3 chipsets would as well

Dump goes the sound card then .