Please rate this system

kazzer

Im building a new system and looking to spend about €800-€1000 (no monitor for now). I want to mainly use it for games and multimedia. I have put together a list from komplett. This comes to €790 (no case/power).

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8GHz Socket 939, 512KB, BOXED w/fan
€147

MSI K8N SLI Platinum, nForce4 SLI, ATX Socket-939,4xSATA2,GbLAN,Firew,PCI-Ex16
€174.00

TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Dual Pack Kit w/two matched PC3200 DDR DIMMs
€104

Western Digital Caviar 160GB SATA 8MB 7200RPM
€88

Gainward GeForce 6600GT 128MB 2ns GDDR3 PCI-Express,"Ultra/1960PCX GS"ViVo/2xDVI
€214

LG DVDRW Dual 16x16x4x40 GSA-4163RBB Silver OEM
€63

Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Silver Floppy Drive Internal
€10


What do you think of this set up? Im going for socket 939 and SLI to try make the system last as long as possible, is it worth spending that much on a motherboard? Can I improve it or save money somewhere? Im going to look at other sites, I just wanted to get an idea from komplett. I havent included a case or power supply yet, could someone recommend one. Its difficult to know what you will get by looking at pictures on the net.

Dempsey

Get a Hard Drive with 16Mb and NCQ. Do ya really need a floppy drive?

Try pricing that spec on overclockers.co.uk, you might save some money

kazzer

Hi Dempsey,

I just got the floppy to install the SATA drivers. Is that necessary?
What is NCQ? I will definitely be shopping around. Thanks again.

Zoned

Go for 256Mb Graphic Card

look at http://www.tomshardware.com/index.html

The power supply should be a good one for gaming or else you could end up with niggly problems...

check out http://www.directron.com/psu.html

have fun,
Zoned

Mutant_Fruit

can;t you install the drivers off a USB memory stick?

Dempsey

Oh yea, forgot about the SATA drivers. You'll need a floppy drive for that anyway. It should be possible with a USB Stick since they can be made bootable but I've never tried, Anyone try?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2094

This should have some useful info about NCQ and 16Mb Cache.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302880&cks=PRL

kazzer

can;t you install the drivers off a USB memory stick?

Can you do this? If so i wont bother with the floppy.

slade_x

kazzer wrote:

Hi Dempsey,

I just got the floppy to install the SATA drivers. Is that necessary?
What is NCQ? I will definitely be shopping around. Thanks again.

Get the floppy drive its only €10 and it'll save a lot of hassle

kazzer

What about this CPU? Should I go for something a bit more powerful?

Dempsey

How much are you willing to spend?

deckie27

You should think about getting a single 1gig ram chip
This will leave spac for upgrade in the future

Edit: the CPU is fine for now upgrade in the future

quarryman

hey kazzer good luck with the build.

regarding the case, you can't go far wrong with the Antec Sonata. Comes with very nice PSU.

Price the stuff on Dabs.com too. they've got a good delivery rate to Ireland. I've had no probs with them.

Tony H

if your going for an antec get this instead of the sonata http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304339&cks=PRL
and this PSU http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/32/products_id/323
and change the dvd rw for http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305765&cks=PRL

CatInABox

One thing, you've got a SATA 2 enabled board, Why not go for a SATA 2 enabled drive? Twice the speed.(Theoretically anyway)

The Cpu is fine, and 939 is definately the way to go.

To be honest, SLI has turned out to be slightly meh. For the investment that two cards requires, its probably not worth it. However, getting a 256 meg card with a 128bit interface is more important, games like Half Life 2 cry out for this type of card.

Orion

Zoned wrote:

The power supply should be a good one for gaming or else you could end up with niggly problems...

I second that. My network connection kept dropping out when I was gaming and it came down the a sub-performance PSU. So I got this one.

CatInABox wrote:

However, getting a 256 meg card with a 128bit interface is more important, games like Half Life 2 cry out for this type of card.

I dunno about that - I have a 128mb card (Radeon 9800 Pro) and HL2 has absolutely no problems with it.

DirtyHarry

yeah just put the sata drivers on your memory stick from the floppy on an other rig. You can use it that way. floppy drives are ancient! As for sata2 id wait till they become more common. (you can get some but the difference is not noticable.

Go for a NEC DVD/RW, they are better than the LG's

Also dont go for the single stick of 1 gig ram. go for two sticks of 512mb for dual channel.

Otherwise its a good rig! Tho your not getting the most out of sli by buying two 6600GT's. To really get the potential its worth getting 6800GT's or higher. But i think ur budget doesnt go that far. so go with the first ones.

Cheers

nadir

I like it, nice setup, good manufacturers, Id go for a maxtor hard drive myself, if its for gaming take the advise on the gfx card.
I like your setup cause it will run nice on linux.
Big up a fat gentoo install at some stage.

WizZard

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

can;t you install the drivers off a USB memory stick?

No, it's a limitation of Windows setup, it must be a floppy drive

(in fact a USB floppy sometimes won't even work)

jozi

Dont know if you intend overclocking but if you do the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D is a very good mobo.
Dont skimp on the psu, very important and can cause a lot off hasle. Make sure it has dual 12v rails not sure about what amps but thats where google is your friend.

Jozi

kazzer

Thanks for all the advice!

Im looking at cases at the moment, what do you think of these? Also this power supply?

Beantech Igloo 2 Miditower, Aluminium (Without PSU)
€79

Cooler Master Cavalier 3 case Silver (Without PSU)
€74

Cooler Master Wave Master Silver Aluminium (Without PSU)
€177

Fortron/Source Powersupply ATX 400W rev2 120mm, SATA Special Edition, 24pin
€65

Anarchist

AS peeps said earlier 256mb mem card and not 128, I ordered my upgrade from overclockers as Komplett did'nt have the fx-55 in stock.

The Clown Man

Actually I'll hop in on this one as well if you don't mind!

I'm also putting together a machine here.

So far I'm fairly happy with this:

Thermaltake Purepower Butterfly 480W
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Dual Pack
Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse,
Norman Internet Control, 1 year license
PC box
SoftThinks Installation/Recovery
PowerColor Radeon X700PRO 256MB GDDR3
Beantech Igloo 1 Miditower,
Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Silver
MSI K8N SLI Platinum, nForce4 SLI, ATX
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz Socket 939,
Samsung SpinPoint P80SD 160GB SATA II
Logitech Cordless Desktop EX100,
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
Pioneer DVDRW Dual Layer DVR-109 White

Seems to be about what I need for €1400. (I don't need a monitor or sound card) Also, I reckon theres no point in getting an SLI compatible geforce cause the 256MB cards are too expensive. I'll have the option if I do decide to go that route.

Any corrections/advice anyone can give before I go ahead and order it?

Cheers.

kazzer

How much more expensive is it to have komplett build the system for you?

Orion

Well for me a case is a case is a case. I'm not really into modding. I've got a crappy little Q-Tec case myself. It's what's inside is what is important to me.

Earlier I linked to the wrong psu - I actually bought the 450W model. I'd recommend go over what you need - 400 might be pushing it a little tight on that system. Apart from that, Fortron are a respected make.

Orion

The Clown Man wrote:

Actually I'll hop in on this one as well if you don't mind!

I'm also putting together a machine here.

So far I'm fairly happy with this:

Thermaltake Purepower Butterfly 480W
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Dual Pack
Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse,
Norman Internet Control, 1 year license
PC box
SoftThinks Installation/Recovery
PowerColor Radeon X700PRO 256MB GDDR3
Beantech Igloo 1 Miditower,
Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Silver
MSI K8N SLI Platinum, nForce4 SLI, ATX
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz Socket 939,
Samsung SpinPoint P80SD 160GB SATA II
Logitech Cordless Desktop EX100,
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
Pioneer DVDRW Dual Layer DVR-109 White

Seems to be about what I need for €1400. (I don't need a monitor or sound card) Also, I reckon theres no point in getting an SLI compatible geforce cause the 256MB cards are too expensive. I'll have the option if I do decide to go that route.

Any corrections/advice anyone can give before I go ahead and order it?

Cheers.

If you have a retail version of Windows you can transfer it to the new machine. That'll save a few quid.

Also do you need a floppy drive at all; never mind one for €89! That's a ridiculous price for out of date technology. You can buy a 1Gb USB drive for less than that from Komplett - here.

Personally what I would do here is price all the parts individually and see what it adds up to with out the Internet Control and Recovery software. For example, the DVDRW drive you've chosen only costs €75 separately but it's costing you €110 as part of a pre-built system. It's not that hard to put it all together when you have all the parts and there's plenty of us here who can help out.

The Clown Man

Cheers for the reply.

Yea I have no problem putting the system together myself. I have done my own builds with my last 2 pcs. I didn't realise it would be more expensive/didn't check to be honest.

There doesn't seem to be an option to go without a floppy. You can select "none" for just about every option but the floppy.

And I don't have a retail version of windows - I keep promising myself this one will be clean. ... That is I don't have a retail copy Spare. All used. Ahem.

I'll tot it all up seperately anyway and post what I come up with.

The Clown Man

Ok all of the above w/o floppy and software comes to €1358.

I sort of guessed that the prices would be low due to the fact that you are buying so much from them at once. And I think for €45 I'll take the floppy and the software and the added insurance that if anything goes wrong all I have to do is send it back. Good deal imo.

However, I did come across this which is only €110 more expensive than the X700 and which I would take if it were on the little list. I'm going to enquire further into it as it would be much handier if I wanted to make use of the SLI in the future. Also, the OpenGL is apparently better on the 6800.

Anyway cheers for the help.

kazzer

Just to add, if anyone else is in the process of building a system please post it here.

The Clown Man

Oh by the way,

I ended up going with this:

307752 - AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2 GHz Socket 939, 512KB cache, BOXED
306274 - MSI K8N SLI Platinum, nForce4 SLI, ATX Socket-939,4xSATA2,GbLAN,Firew,PCI-Ex16
301964 - Beantech Igloo 3 Miditower, Black Aluminium (Without PSU)
305701 - Fortron/Source Power Source Powersupply 550W Special Edition 20pin & 24pin
2 x 306714 - XFX GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI-Express,Tv-Out, Dual-DVI, Retail
302257 - Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB SATA 8MB 7200RPM NCQ
118737 - Corsair Value S. PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 512MB
305762 - NEC DVD recorder ND-3520A IDE Black Bulk,DVD+R/+RW/DVD-R/-RW (Dual layer)

It's a PC kit for €1,320. The 2x 6600GT's did it for me. Bloody good deal imo.

So that and a MX1000 and Logitec wireless Keyboard and I have all want.

(I found a spare XP Pro key!)

Now all I have to do is wait. :mad:

TacT

Much better than the first choices clown

The Clown Man

I know! At minimal extra cost really.

The Maxtor is handy too.