Lazy A$$ - self build?

pencil

Hi all,

Jasus, its been 18months since my last build & things have changed since then.

Back then I had all the time in the world to research the bits & bobs but now with a month old baby time is NOT my friend.

I'm thinking of just buying one of the two top end prebuilt systems from Komplett http://www.komplett.ie/k/cc.asp?bn=10306
either the 'Komplett Intel Gamer' or the 'Komplett Opteron Workstation'.

I fecking hate to spend this much money without doing the necessary research but the constant nappy changing & burping is time consuming :rolleyes:

I need this machine for - high-end-graphics, gaming & low-end-video-editing.

Along with your disgust at my laziness can you give me your opinion on these machines?

pencil

Okay getting into it.

Core 2 Duo seems to be the chip setup to go with.

Any recommendations of the miariad of Graphic Card setups?

Sean^DCT4

PCI- Express Saphire Radeon x1900xt €330
It can be overclocked to x1900xt-x speeds.

pencil

Gonna need a Firewire port

What do you think of up grading the motherboard of the 'Intel Gamer' spec to this MSI P965 Platinum, P965 (sh!t none in stock)

Or this guy Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, P965

pencil

Sean^DCT4 wrote:

PCI- Express Saphire Radeon x1900xt €330
It can be overclocked to x1900xt-x speeds.

Thanks Sean,

its not on this list http://www.komplett.ie/k/config.asp?ConfigSystemId=10206 do you know if its complatible?

8T8

The Gigabyte board while fine for usage according to reports from some is picky about the DDR2 brand RAM it uses though if Komplett are building this then it's reasonable to assume they will use a brand that is known to work.

All PCI-E graphics cards are compatible with PCI-E x16 slots no need to worry about that the X1900XT will work. Though the card itself is not on the suggested choices from Komplett for building the PC how you go about getting that included in your build I do not know. If you click on the expert options it will list the XTX version but that is more expensive either that or go with a 7900GT or GTX as the alternative.

With the stock MSI board you could just get a PCI Firewire card to go with it, instead of the MSI Platinum version or the Gigabyte.

Edit by irlrobins: This was the 200,000th post on the Comp/Tech Forum. Congrats 8T8. And to everyone else who made the other 199,999 posts.

Edit by me: Cool I snagged the 200,000 post : )

Ruu_Old

I don't think you should bother with a firewire port, the rest that has been mentioned is good.

pencil

Ruu wrote:

I don't think you should bother with a firewire port, the rest that has been mentioned is good.

I find the firewire port great for using Adobe Premiere to control video equipment.

pencil

Do you think this machine will be good for gaming?

conzy

Well the 6800gs is a good card but its not a high end card...

The 6700 is an overkill, get a E6600 or a E6400 so you can spend money on other components....

Try ankermann they will be cheaper and they have better components... for example you can get all of this for the same price as the sytem on komplett:

- INTEL Core 2 Duo E6600 2,40Ghz FSB 1066 S.775 2x2MB: € 149.99
- ASUS P5B DELUXE WiFi 965 P/S/GBL/R/SATA/F/V/DDRII): € 137.90
- PCI-e 512MB ATI RADEON X1900 XT TV-out- DVI: € 289.90
- IDE 400 GB HITACHI Deskstar 7K400 (8MB-7200rpm): € 169.49
- 256MB DDR-II RAM G-Skill CL4 533MHz
- DDR-II upgrade from 256MB to 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 84.90
- DDR-II RAM 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 104.90
- DVD-RW PLEXTOR 16x/16x/8x PX760A Double Layer (CaseColor): € 82.90
- DVD-RW Samsung 16x/16x/4,0x RAM DL SH-S162A/BEBE (CaseColor): € 42.90
- Aspire X-plorer Midi-Tower - Silver: € 69.00
- Intel CPU cooler
- 380W Tagan TG380-U01 Black Edition: € 51.00
- Realtek ALC888 8 channel audio
- 10/100 Ethernet LAN

1

1.581,80 €

1.581,80 €

pencil

Conzymaher, that looks interesting!! I wouldn't share your tastes in cases tho

Do you reckon the system you recommended should get me by playing top end games for a couple of years.

BTW thanks very much for the help!!!!



System:
- INTEL Core 2 Duo E6600 2,40Ghz FSB 1066 S.775 2x2MB: € 149.99
- ASUS P5B DELUXE WiFi 965 P/S/GBL/R/SATA/F/V/DDRII): € 137.90
- PCI-e 512MB ATI RADEON X1900 XT TV-out- DVI: € 289.90
- SATA 74 GB Western-Digital RAPTOR WD740GD: € 112.90
- 256MB DDR-II RAM G-Skill CL4 533MHz
- DDR-II upgrade from 256MB to 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 84.90
- DDR-II RAM 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 104.90
- DVD-RW PLEXTOR 16x/16x/8x PX760A Double Layer (CaseColor): € 82.90
- DVD-Drive IDE Samsung 16x/52x SH-D162C/BEWE (CaseColor): € 15.90
- Floppy Drive: € 6.50
- GMac case - Black: € 7.90
- Intel CPU cooler
- 380W Tagan TG380-U01 Black Edition: € 51.00
- Realtek ALC888 8 channel audio
- 10/100 Ethernet LAN
- Yes, I want a superquiet PC: € 25

1

1.468,60 €

Ruu_Old

pencil wrote:

I find the firewire port great for using Adobe Premiere to control video equipment.

Ah right so, you can always get a cheap add-on PCI firewire card later if you wanted to get a motherboard that hadn't got the onboard firewire. Looks like you have it sorted nearly sorted anyway.

GenericName

conzymaher wrote:

Try ankermann they will be cheaper and they have better components... for example you can get all of this for the same price as the sytem on komplett:

- INTEL Core 2 Duo E6600 2,40Ghz FSB 1066 S.775 2x2MB: € 149.99
- ASUS P5B DELUXE WiFi 965 P/S/GBL/R/SATA/F/V/DDRII): € 137.90
- PCI-e 512MB ATI RADEON X1900 XT TV-out- DVI: € 289.90
- IDE 400 GB HITACHI Deskstar 7K400 (8MB-7200rpm): € 169.49
- 256MB DDR-II RAM G-Skill CL4 533MHz
- DDR-II upgrade from 256MB to 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 84.90
- DDR-II RAM 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 104.90
- DVD-RW PLEXTOR 16x/16x/8x PX760A Double Layer (CaseColor): € 82.90
- DVD-RW Samsung 16x/16x/4,0x RAM DL SH-S162A/BEBE (CaseColor): € 42.90
- Aspire X-plorer Midi-Tower - Silver: € 69.00
- Intel CPU cooler
- 380W Tagan TG380-U01 Black Edition: € 51.00
- Realtek ALC888 8 channel audio
- 10/100 Ethernet LAN

I'd be interested in something like this also. Ankermann does seem to be cheaper than Dabs for these components.
However I'd upgrade the RAM to 800 Mhz and maybe get two smaller hard disks for RAID.

Although I haven't really kept track with updates in PC technology in a while so I don't know if that has much benefit? Would it be worth the cost?

pencil

GenericName wrote:

and maybe get two smaller hard disks for RAID.

Exactly what I'm doing.

Just going to read up on that graphics card & try to find out if a two graphics card configeration is worth it???

8T8

pencil wrote:

Exactly what I'm doing.

Just going to read up on that graphics card & try to find out if a two graphics card configeration is worth it???

Depends entirely on what kind of graphics card you pair up.

2x low end not worth it of course.

2x mid range can be worth it in some instances - were price or power requirements are limiting factors.

2x high end usually worth it - at resolutions of 1280x1024 or lower you can crank up the image quality (AA and AF) in games & turn off the various optimizations in the GPU driver. But to shine you really need a display capable of higher resolutions.

A secondary benefit from dual GPU's are that it tends to raise the minimum frame rate.

As to which is better NVIDIA's is generally more reliable and better supported though driver updates, ATI's is improving as well and nails NVIDIA in some areas like specific games and image quality but ATI are a bit slower to add support for games into their drivers.

GenericName

8T8, I wonder if you could help me with the issue of RAM and Conroe.

I'm sure it's a question you are asked a million times, as I would imagine for most people it's among the most confusing areas of buying a home PC. If you're like me, you will only look at these things every 2-3 years. When it's time to buy a new PC.

From having read some reviews and benchmarks last night I would come to the following conclusions. Could you possibly comment in case I've got it wrong somewhere. Might save me some cash..

PC2-4200
A speed of 266Mhz gives a 1:1 ratio with quad pumped Conroe. It's the cheapest.

PC2-5300
333Mhz is out of sync. But you could underclock the memory or overclock the FSB to see a 1:1 ratio. But it seems PC2-5300 run at DDR2-667 will still be faster than in sync PC2-4200 and almost match PC2-6400 if timings are tight (3-3-3-8). Lots of options with this module type and prices are not much greater than PC2-4200.
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=1&artpage=1962&articID=472

PC2-6400
Price goes up considerably for PC2-6400. As PC2-5300 with tight timings can almost match it performance wise, it makes sense only if you are overclocking. However, this is the recommended RAM on most forums I visited.

PC2-8500
Would rule this out as the prices are astronomical so the price increase vs performance increase ratio is woeful.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/363/1

Bottom line, the gap between cheap RAM and expensive RAM on Conroe seems to be pretty minute, However, I would say, buying high quality PC2-5300 is the best option from a cost/performance perspective due to the options it gives - more overclocking headroom at DDR2-533 speeds, or tight timings at DDR2-667 speeds. But then again, I've read that PC2-5300 is the worst choice you could make with Conroe. Which makes it all very confusing.

8T8

The real word differences between DDR2-533, DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 aren't all that great generally.

If you are getting a P965 motherboard I would go with the DDR2-667 and it has an improved memory controller for DDR2 and the extra bandwidth helps in some situations over simply getting DDR-533. Like you say you can tweak it to get it running 1:1 or get lower timings modules etc. so you have room to experiment.

DDR2-800 is really only if you want to win some bandwidth benchmarks or are soley going to be doing a lot of video encoding were this helps.

I think you already made the right call is getting some PC-5300/DDR-2 667. Not sure were you read that DDR2-667 is the worst choice sounds like BS to me.

Naux

GenericName wrote:

I'd be interested in something like this also. Ankermann does seem to be cheaper than Dabs for these components.
However I'd upgrade the RAM to 800 Mhz and maybe get two smaller hard disks for RAID.

Although I haven't really kept track with updates in PC technology in a while so I don't know if that has much benefit? Would it be worth the cost?

Has anyone checked with Ankermann about VAT and delivery rates in Ireland???? The price you get on their site is for Dutch VAT(16%) and delivery(€25) I think.

pencil

I tried to purchase the following on the Ankermann site but it may be broken - it doesn't ask for credit card details ???

System: INTEL Core 2 Duo 1,86Ghz
E6300 FSB1066 S.775 2MB
Equipment:
- INTEL Core 2 Duo E6600 2,40Ghz FSB 1066 S.775 2x2MB: € 149.99
- ASUS P5B DELUXE WiFi 965 P/S/GBL/R/SATA/F/V/DDRII): € 137.90
- PCI-e 512MB ATI RADEON X1900 XT TV-out- DVI: € 289.90
- SATA 74 GB Western-Digital RAPTOR WD740GD: € 112.90
- 256MB DDR-II RAM G-Skill CL4 533MHz
- DDR-II upgrade from 256MB to 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 84.90
- DDR-II RAM 1024MB CORSAIR 667MHz: € 104.90
- DVD-RW PLEXTOR 16x/16x/8x PX760A Double Layer (CaseColor): € 82.90
- DVD-Drive IDE Plextor 16x/50x PX-130A intern: € 34.00
- GMac case - Black: € 7.90
- Intel CPU cooler
- 420W Be Quiet P5-420W-S1.3 V2 rt: € 75.00
- Realtek ALC888 8 channel audio
- 10/100 Ethernet LAN
- Yes, I want a superquiet PC: € 25

1

1.504,20 €

conzy

Conzymaher, that looks interesting!! I wouldn't share your tastes in cases tho

Just to clear my name, out of the few cases that Ankermann have that one is the least sh1te