Will This Rig Work?

Eye

ok been planning on a major system overhaul for a long time and the time is finally approaching so have been searching about for the best parts to buy and have pretty much set my mind to what's in the list below. Just need to make sure before i buy this that everthing is okay and that i'm not missing anything or getting anything completly arseways like i had planned on throwing in DDR 2 but then realised i could'nt do that with the system i was building so over the last few days parts have changed back and fort and i think this will pretty much be the final list.

So here goes...

Case: Jeantech Apollo JN8005
PSU: Hiper PSU ATX 580W Black, Type-R, HPU-4K580 Dual Fan, Silent,SLI, 20/24pin
Motherboard: Abit AN8 32x (Socket939)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939)
RAM: OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (Times 2 = 4Gb Total)
Graphics Card: XFX GeForce 7800GTX Extreme XXX Edition 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI
HDD: 4x (Maxtor DimondMax 10 300Gb SATA 16MB)
Monitor: Samsung 19” LCD Syncmaster 930BF 4ms

before people start jumping around with arms flying in mid air shouting are you mad....the answer is simple...yes a little

also before people criticise my HDD choice let me just say it's not changing, Maxtor drives rule, i've been using them for about 7-8 years and have only ever had 1 fail me after about 4-5 years of service, so don't even go down that road

everything else pretty much does what it says on the tin. Will i run into any problems? at the moment my only issue is finding somewhere to buy the Abit board, can't find anywhere stocking it atm

Any advice welcome

ShiverinEskimo

Savage lookin machine - graphics card is the ultimate. i imagine this is going to cost well in excess of 2 grand..what will you use this machine for?

THe only thing I would change is the PSU - Hiper suck. Very unreliable. See if you can find an Antec or something. A 500w antec would be better than a 580w hiper.

Oh, and i'm a fan of DFI lanparty mobos - feature packed and built to last - best for overclocking which by the looks of your RAM you might be planning a bit. Abit are good too however so only a minor recommendation.

BTW: that is correct that you are buying 4 300GB hdds? what on earth do you need 1.2 TB of storage for?

I have the same CPU and its excellent - will overclock easily to a 4800+ speeds on air alone.

Eye

LoL

well if my calculations are corect....and i'd like to think they are, then i'm looking more towards the €3000-3500

Machine will mostly be for Gaming but alot of Photo editing and maybe in the future video editing too.

Main reason for going with ABIT is that i know they are very solid boards and this new board can take 6 SATA so it can handle another 2 SATA drives which i will probably add next year.

you are correct in thinking i plan to get 4x 300Gb drives, atm i have 4 drives and a total of 600gbs but only have about 50Gbs free between the 4 drives :-\

ShiverinEskimo

I did reconsider again after posting and actually put some thought into the cost of all of it. staggering really. Why not go the whole hog and get a 22" widescreen monitor or dual 19".

I have dual monitors and love it - and i do **** all photo editing etc. I imagine it would rock your world.

Eye

i saw a pic of your rig on that other thread and it has actually put the idea of a second 19" monitor in my head, they are only €370 on komplett atm so it's an option, but not necessary atm to get the system up and running so could always wait until next year when i save a bit more, ideally i'd love to come alont next year and add another 2x300Gb drives or maybe higher and the monitor plus another Gfx card but that is a v expensive card so may not be able to do that will have to wait and see how this section goes first

ShiverinEskimo

Well you'd hope that another of those cards will be right down in price later on but the trouble then is we'll be looking at 8800 GTX's or whatever the next gen is for nVidia and one of those is normally better than 2 of the next down..

As is always the case with buying a new PC - buy now and you'll miss out on new technology, wait and you'll be waiting forever.

Khannie

Would you not consider a fast single core? That graphics card is gonna be wasted on that processor.

youcancallmeal

Khannie wrote:

Would you not consider a fast single core? That graphics card is gonna be wasted on that processor.

Didnt know that graphics card wouldnt run as efficiently on a x2?
Whats that all about?

Eye

i'm as puzzled now as youcancallme>al....what exactly do you mean khannie?

Is there something that i have missed or overlooked? are you saying that the X2 is a crap cpu?

SouperComputer

x2 is fine, but apps havent been optimised for it yet, and it could be a while before they are.

Games will effectively treat it like a single core, the only benefit you will have is that you could perhaps encode video on the spare core while playing a game. If you dont plan doing this and want the ultimate game performance, grab an Opteron (more info here: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054852953 ) , on a DFI mobo it will rip.

DFI mobo is the way to go for top performance. Personally, id wait until I have the extra HD's and buy a SATA card for them whan the time comes rather than getting a board with 6 channels.

4Gb is a waste, 2Gb is enough for the most demanding games. I would get 2Gb of PC4200 or maybe even faster. When you actually need 4Gb, the extra 2Gb will be a lot cheaper. I wouldnt get TOO fussed over timings, nowadays a faster clock with a slightly higher latency seems to be the sweet spot for RAM performance.

A seasonic, BeQuiet or Fortron Source PSU is the way to go.

for the HD's do you plan runner proper (IE hardware) RAID. I would go for RAID 5 if spending that amount of money on HD's. Also, make sure you have good airflow in the case and keep the HDA temps below 39Deg C.

Lastly, it would be a shame for this rig not to have water cooling have you considered it?

Eye

Well first off, with regard to the RAM, no point in me getting PC4000 when the board will only use PC3200, So with that in mind obviously i will get the best PC3200 i can find. DFi boards are good but my experience with my exsisting board has been just that...good, nothing exceptional or anything like that so i think i will be sticking with my AN8 32x board, Abit have really done me well in the pas and i've never had so much as a hint of a problem with them.

4Gb's of ram now may seem like overkill to you but i'm sure i'll find use's for it, god knows i've used my exsisting 1Gb of ram over the last 3 years or so while the average pc was only coming with 256mb's and everyone thought "you'll never use 1Gb" look at it now it's become standard for alot of new pc's. I always like to stay 1 step ahead so that i don't have to keep pumping money into the machine to keep it upto date. If i do this upgrade now i should'nt need another major upgrade for at least 2-3 years.

Not really decided yet on what way i'm going to setup the hdd's, thinking about raid but have my doubts there too.
Hdd's will have plenty of cooling so no need to worry about that there

Yeah i considered watercooling but if i was to go down that route i'd have to lower the specs in order to budget that in, as it is i've gone over my €3000 budget :-\ and although everyone will say there is no need to worry about watercooling....i'm just not sure i would trust it, if something goes wrong then there is a hell of a mess, and i do know someone that this has happened too :eek:

SouperComputer

no point in me getting PC4000 when the board will only use PC3200

You can still use PC4200, but you will be able to squeeze more out of it than the best 3200 if you catch my drift.

I always like to stay 1 step ahead so that i don't have to keep pumping money into the machine to keep it upto date.

To me this is a contradiction, by using 4Gb you ARE pumping money to keep it up to date. The extra 2Gb RAM is more expensive now than it will be when you do actually get to using it, not to mention that it may be easer to get it on one stick. Future proofing has to be one of the biggest scams going with PC's!

You can spend the money saved on watercooling which IMO benefits the system more in the long term. Im sure you know that if you want top of the range gear, you will always end up spending money.

My experience is to buy second from the top, and possibly overclock. Sometimes for a given part the saving in money can be as much as 30% but the loss in stock performance is usually less than 5%.


A RAID 5 array will give you fault tolerance as well as giving you the full capacity in one contigious block which you can partition if you need too. Although a harware RAID 5 card would not be too cheap! Without RAID its either have a few different volumes in "My computer" or throw all your eggs in one basket with RAID 0.

Watercooling is fine, its like anything just take you time with it. If you are building a 3k system then im sure you will be paying attention to detaill

ShiverinEskimo

I'd have to agree with the opteron point aswell even though I have the dual core athlon (i needed it because i rip and encode a lot of DVDs and so didn't want the pc held up by this - which has worked wonders for me)

A mate however bought a 1.8 opteron and clocked it to 2.8 on watercooling - its an absolute beast of a chip - its the FX architecture so he basically has an FX-57 (€1050)for the price of an opteron (155) and decent CPU watercooling kit (200 odd). In regards to trusting the watercooling just give it the time and attention it deserves. Leave it running for a few days outside the system and watch for leaks - or even better watermains test it - if it passes a mains pressure test you can be certain a 12v pump wont force a leak!

A possible avenue to explore. Saying that though - the GTX will make a difference - my machine cant manage the soft shadows in FEAR running a GT, yet the same spec with a GTX murders them. So while the gfx will always be CPU limited a little, there still are improvements to be made when spending more. Thats my 2cents..

Eye

The whole processor debate is still bugging me, everyone is saying go opteron instead of X2.

Now Looking at the X2 4400+ and the Opteron 175 spec wise and price wise they are identical, but to me the X2 would have seem to have the upper hand being dual core no?
Surely that's the way things seem to be going and ok myabe right now there's not much support for them, but i think in time applications will supoprt them and take full advantage of them, and in the mean time you've got a kickass cpu that todays apps can treat as a single core....ie same as opteron?

Overclocking is not something i plan to do, so i'm not going to go out and buy an opteron 150 and clock the crap out of it. I'm putting enough money into the machine so that i should'nt need to overclock anything.

As for the raid issue... i've been thinking of it but i prefer to just have single disks that so that i can fully control my backups myself, means i get more storage and don't duplicate loads of crap that i wont need. If it's important it gets backed up on 2 seperate disks and dvd if needed/possible, not so important then gets thrown onto a dvd and 1 hdd, simple really and leads to more of the HDD's being available

gline

Eye wrote:

I'm putting enough money into the machine so that i should'nt need to overclock anything.

when does someone not need to overclock a system?:D this is a new concept to me. Its not about the need to overclock it is just getting more speed for less €

id probably recommend opteron as you would save a good bit, also i recommend a better psu, seasonic or PC P+C are recommended

ShiverinEskimo

The overclocking option isn't just about the satisfaction of getting more speed - it also works wonders for your wallet. In 2 minutes I went from a 530 quid chip to a 850 quid chip just by changing one setting in the BIOS - 320 quid for 2 minutes work..

You're going for the chip I have so I highly recommend you do what I did and just up the fsb to 215/216 from 210 in the bios and you'll have the guts of the 4800+ thus saving you a few hundred bucks (prices have come down since I upgraded).

Eye

yeah it's something i'll consider alright, would obviously need to make sure i get proper cooling for the cpu, have'nt fully decided which to get yet. i take it your not using the stock heatsink and fan there ShiverinEskimo?

been kinda looking at the "Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940)" -> http://www.arctic-cooling.com/cpu2.php?idx=10&disc=

pretty sure it would do a good job and it would give me the option of Overclocking it then if i wanted to at a later date.

Col_Loki

You can still use PC4200, but you will be able to squeeze more out of it than the best 3200 if you catch my drift.

Wouldnt advise Pc4200 if hes not going to overclock. Its a good bit more expensive and he wont take any advantage of it performance wise.
Also he is looking at 1gb sticks....

But definetly agree with buying 2gb first and then upgrading if you ever need it.... makes perfect sence.

ShiverinEskimo

Eye wrote:

i take it your not using the stock heatsink and fan there ShiverinEskimo?

That's the sweetest part - i am using stock. Saving for water cooling as we speak - expect to get at least 2.8ghz then.

Eye

wow that's pretty good, what sorta temps you get running it clocked with just the stock cooling?

ShiverinEskimo

42° idle up to about 45° when using one core flat out and then 49° when both cores are under a decent load.

I warn you tho - she's a noisy biatch. I want water cooling not just for the extra performance but also because this pc is in my bedroom and hence causes probs if left on at night.

DemonOfTheFall

Theres already decent gains to be seen out of dual core if you use an nVidia graphics card. A 2.9ghz X2 is faster than a 3.1ghz FX-57 in gaming, saw benchmarks proving it on hardforum.com

I'd stick with the dual core mate, dont be put off. The gains from it are only going to get bigger and bigger. You definitely have to overclock a PC that nice though, get an XP-120 and a nice medium speed fan.

SouperComputer

Wouldnt advise Pc4200 if hes not going to overclock.

yea, if not overclocking then its pointless. But if I was spending that amount on a rig I'd be making dawm sure I get the most out of it!