A Pat on the Back

ve

Over the last month or so I've been frequenting this forum looking for advice on on my first build. Over the last week the components started to arrive, and I now have what is definately the best PC I have ever used, thanks to the sound advice I received here.

This is what I've just built
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB, BOXED w/fan
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket -939, Super Cooling pipe, PCI-Ex16
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-107-CS)
Graphics Card: PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
Optical: NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x, Dual, Black OEM
Power: NorthQ 4775-400, ATX 400W Silent, 140mm Fan, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin
HD: Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM
Keyboard: Saitek PZ08A Gamers Keyboard Backlit UK Black USB Retail
Mouse: Razer Diamondback Plasma 1600dpi Gaming Mouse Limited Edition - Retail (KB-013-RA)

and all of that is sitting in a: CoolerMaster Stacker 830 RC-830 - Silver Trim (No PSU) (CA-090-CM) case.

I have been out of the gaming loop for a while, and wanted to have a decent machine to play the likes of Half Life 2, etc with decent performance. I ran 3DMark 2006 on it and got a benchmark score somewhere between 4200 & 4500 (can't remember exactly what it was).

But anyway I would just like to say Thank you very much everyone for helping me make up my mind as to which components I should be looking at. The build went fine, except that my case doesn't have an internal speaker so I can't take advantage of the motherboard voice alerts which would have been nice. I'm sure I can get an internal speaker and connect it up fairly handy later. Also I haven't had a chance to do any gaming on it yet, but when I was doing the 3DMark tests earlier this afternoon, the system didnt make much noise which is a definate plus. Also the temperatures I'm seeing are approx. (30 - 35c on the processor, 35 - 40c on the motherboard). I'm assuming this is fairly normal, because the 5 fans are not very loud (stock fan, graphics fan, hard disk block fan, processor fan, power supply fan).

Also my motherboard has this "Cool & Quiet" technology, which is disabled by default in the BIOS. I was surprised at this considering it's possibly one of the main selling features of the board. I still haven't enabled it, do I have much to gain by doing so?

Thank you very much again

Khannie

nice looking computer.

cool n' quiet just underclocks your processor when it's not under load. This leads to less power consumption which means less fan noise.

Worth turning on IMO.

easy_as_easy

you dont know how jealous I am right now.

hamster

Ve,

How much time did you take to build it and how much did all the components come to? What LCD monitor did you go for and are you using native 1280x1024 resolution? It's sounds like an Oblivion playing system.

Ruu_Old

Let me know how that graphics card performs for you.

ve

The total price tag of the box was approx €1600 incl. VAT & Del.

As regards the graphics card. I have it running on a fairly decent 21" CRT. LCD screen will have to wait another while, but I will not be buying anything smaller than a 23" when I do make the move. Considering the above 3DMark score includes tests on my processor, I did the stress test in HL2 - "Lost Coast" and came out with a frame rate of 92fps @ 1280x1024 (full detail). The fans are also not as noisy as I expected.

If any of ye guys were to Crossfire 2 of these cards or the X1900's, you will be laughing all the way. They are excellent cards IMO. (I got mine in a weekly special offer from overclockers @ €350 incl VAT & Del about 2-3 weeks ago.)

This card is 100% perfect for playing Half Life 2 (tested with latest patches & drivers). Now I do have 2GB of CAS2 RAM in there also and a dual core processor. I still takes Half Life 2 about 25-30 seconds to start up.

I was looking at some of the Torc Interactive Stuff and would like to know if it is worth my while upgrading to WinXP 64bit and playing the likes of HL2 64-bit etc. To the best of my knowledge the only thing that would hold me back from doing so is driver compatability. The only thing that I have in that machine that I didn't buy new was a 802.11g(108Mbit) wireless card, which may not work in 64bit land. The graphics card is Vista ready (or so the big bold text on the box states). But I'm the kind that will probably stick with XP for quite a while, I don't like taking chances with the ground I stand on.

What do you think?