Advice on a PC build

Zounds

Hi,
I'm planning on soon building a PC (first self-built PC) and wanted to get some advice on the spec. I'd want it to be able to handle high-spec games and the like. Here's what I'm looking at at:

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 ATX,S-ATA, GbLAN,Firewire,DDR, PCI-Ex16

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939, 512KB

PSU: Thermaltake Purepower Butterfly 480W W0019 PSU

Memory: Corsair XMS PRO 3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2 32Meg x 8, 400MHz

Hard-drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB SATA 8MB 7200RPM NCQ

Graphics: Club3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express, VGA, DVI, Tv-Out

Someone has suggested to me that I get a [Pentium 4 CPU with bigger numbers instead of an AMD 64 at 2GHz] and also, any advice on how to keep it quiet would be appreciatted.
Thank you

astec123

Water cooling is the way to make the machine totally silent, but its expensive, ebay is an option to save money. But I would advise more ram myself especially for gaming or editing images etc. also look at the other bottle neck of the drive, you may want to consider a 10,000rpm drive if you want to go all out on spec. Also no mention of a case, this is by far the most vital part to consider, it needs to be good with the air.

Zounds

The case: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304332&view=detailed
What sort of real-effect does the HD's rpms have on performance?

astec123

significant, faster means the drive can get the data faster and thus reduces load times, also during game play ensures no stalling. There are other advantages such as the fact that a faster drive will also manage to install games more speadily, but some 10,000rpm drives can be loud, some are as loud as normal drives so do research beforehand.

Zounds

i notice that (on komplett anyway) the 10,000RPM drives are alot smaller for more money, doesn't seem worth it...

astec123

komplett are not the only source of drives and nor are they the cheapest. You could consider a Master slave situation, buy a 120Gb drive and an 80, use the 80 for the games and windows too keep speed up and the other for general storage that needs no out of the ordinary speed.

Zounds

Great idea, thanks, where would you recommend getting a drive?

astec123

Dabs.com is a good start not taken a look at the range they stock, but also look to the US and the rest of the EU, google as I say is "your friend"! Best of luck with the system.

Wez

Komplett do good them..

SouperComputer

CPU is more than up to te task of gaming. Dont spend too much on the CPU as dual core should be in full swing at the end of the year.

Get more, faster RAM. Espcially if you plan overclocking. With that board and chip, its not impossible to get 4000 speeds. 512Mb for gaming these days in only barely enough.

RPM makes a fair difference in performance, however there are quite a few other factors.

www.storagereview.com is a good resource for comparing HD's

Samsung seem to be the way to go, quiet and good performance.

in terms of keeping in quiet, a good rule of thumb is using fans with a large circumference and low RPM. For good airflow, at least install 1 front and 1 rear case fan.

This CPU cooler is pretty good and fairly quiet: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302754&cks=SPK


the case you picked is grand. 2x 120mm fans @ 1200RPM, reasonable airflow & low noise. Thats always a good start. Not sure if youll have much room for watercooling in the future though.

PSU is okay, but again, try to get one with 120mm dans for noise reasons. Adjustble is grand but it will still make more noise at full load (generally).

www.hitide.ie do good PSU's called BeQuiet that do what they say on the tin as well as providing stable lines: http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/default.php/cPath/32?osCsid=0bcb53f532dea9f8df5a89aa1154f551


You might as well get everything off komplett, or jes. Too much hassle messing around to save 20euro when you could be messing with your new rig!

The folks here are always swapping graphics cards, so it might be worth your while to lurk on the FS board for a graphics card.

Zounds

thanks, i shoulda said i'm planning on getting two sticks of that RAM, so 1024MBs total and PC3200 is the highest speed RAM supported by that board

padraigf

Lets see....

Get the 400w Fortron rev.2 off komplett instead. Much more power where it counts. Quieter too.

If you're overclocking get the 3000+ A64 instead, komplett only stock the 3000+ with the new venice core. Venice chips regularly overclock to 2.6-2.9 ghz with only air cooling.

If you could afford €315 on a graphics card the X800XL is much faster, but the 6600GT is a nice card anyway.

chump

Get the machine from hell from jes.de ...

Zounds

why do you reckon the 400w fortron is better than the 480w Thermaltake?

(this is meant as a genuine question, no sarcasm or what-not, just in case...)

uberpixie

Zounds wrote:

thanks, i shoulda said i'm planning on getting two sticks of that RAM, so 1024MBs total and PC3200 is the highest speed RAM supported by that board

Unless you are going to overclock don't bother with the fancy ram. The difference between value and very fast ram in games is only 2-3 frames.

Unless you are video encoding a lot or going to the extream in overclocking don't bother.

Have a look on the web for benchies and you will see.

Spend the money you save on getting value ram on a better gfx card or a raptor 10,000 rpm hardrive.

Either gives you way more boost performance in games than the fancy ram.

Fact.

You can get 1gig pc3200 in 2 512mb sticks of matched cas 2.5 value twinmos, corsair or what ever for the same price as one stick of 512mb of the ram you were looking at.

Zounds

uberpixie wrote:

Unless you are going to overclock don't bother with the fancy ram. The difference between value and very fast ram in games is only 2-3 frames.

Unless you are video encoding a lot or going to the extream in overclocking don't bother.

Have a look on the web for benchies and you will see.

Spend the money you save on getting value ram on a better gfx card or a raptor 10,000 rpm hardrive.

Either gives you way more boost performance in games than the fancy ram.

Fact.

You can get 1gig pc3200 in 2 512mb sticks of matched cas 2.5 value twinmos, corsair or what ever for the same price as one stick of 512mb of the ram you were looking at.

I don't really intend doing much overclocking if at all, so thanks alot.

padraigf

The vast majority of thermaltake power supplies (that one included) are designed for a very old power requirement spec. They make the vast majority of their 480w up on the 3.3v and 5v rails. This was fine for the last generation of processors, but modern ones need lots of power on the 12v rail.
That thermaltake probably does 18A on the 12v rail. The fortron does 29A on the 12v. So you see why i think its a bit more suitable
Another reason is that the thermaltake powersupplies are stupidly loud. The forton comes with an average noise level fan which can be turned between average noise and silent with a little knob on the back. Silent will do almost all the time, and since your pc wont be too much of a power guzzler you could get away with the fan turned all the way down all the time.

EL WOG

first thing is to stay way from water cooling on you first self build and if your not that interested in overclocking. also stick to your budget. no mater what you get, there will always be something you wanted to upgrade to.
Try and rate each part and find out were your system bottle neck is and see if you can change it and move the bottle neck to something else. like if your set on an AMD 3200+, then a 6800gt or ultra will not work at there full potential(but close) but a 3400+, and you hole system moves up a notch. Never underestimate a good case and good cooling. It helps make every system more stable and last longer. If you case temp. goes above 45 by much, you can say that your hd has lost about 20% of its life. Over 50 and your at about 40%. Try and have more fans on the back of your system, it causes a diffential pressure in the system that helps with air flow. And try to get a power supply that you can adjust your fan speed. It looks like a 480 is over rated for your system(with is good) and you could run its fans slower.(one of the noisiest parts of any system). Don’t go cheap on the motherboard. One with good features and good support makes life a lot easyer as time goes by. I would not go with SLI. Its nice, but unless you by both gfx cards at the same time, it is too much hassle. They have to be the same make/model and bios ect. With cards changing so much, You might find it hard chasing down a card in a year or two’s time to match your current one, and then you will also have to change your cpu to get the most out of it. A 10000rpm hd is nice, but you will need a second storage hd. Because games are getting bigger and bigger. Most are over 3g and some close to 5g.
hope this helps.

TacT

Zounds wrote:

why do you reckon the 400w fortron is better than the 480w Thermaltake?

(this is meant as a genuine question, no sarcasm or what-not, just in case...)

Thermaltake are junk, just steer clear, fortron are quality psu's. Wattage means nothing, amperage is everything. Thermaltake make quality rubbish if you're into that kind of thing but you're not, trust me

some more info here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17181488

Zounds

Thanks all, this is what I'm looking at now:

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 ATX,S-ATA, GbLAN,Firewire,DDR, PCI-Ex16

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 512KB

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

Memory: TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2.5 Memory184-P X2

Hard-drive:Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB SATA 8MB 10000RPM & Maxtor OneTouch II USB2.0 100GB 8MB 7200RPM

Graphics: Club3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express, VGA, DVI, Tv-Out

In a Antec Super LanBoy Miditower

Any more suuggestions?

SouperComputer

nah, thats a sweet rig.

I got the same fortron PSU a while back, but I haven't used it it. Meant to be pretty good.

padraigf

For a gaming rig you'd be much better off with an athlon 64 3000+ and an X800XL. You're processor is overkill for your graphics card.

Zounds

This is everything that's going into the build, I can spend another €50 and stay in budget, any suggestions on what to improve or add-on?

case:
Antec Super LanBoy Miditower
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304332&cks=PRL

PSU:
Fortron/Source Powersupply ATX 400W rev2 120mm, SATA Special Edition, 24pin
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=301418&cks=SER

Motherboard:
Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939 ATX,S-ATA, GbLAN,Firewire,DDR, PCI-Ex16
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305264&view=detailed

Procesor:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 512KB
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307203&cks=SER

Memory:
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2.5 Memory184-P x2
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=113518&cks=SER

Hard Disk:
Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB SATA 8MB 10000RPM
Maxtor OneTouch II USB2.0 100GB 8MB 7200RPM
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=117353&view=detailed
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307390&cks=PRL

Graphics Card:
Club3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express, VGA, DVI, Tv-Out
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307935&view=detailed

DVD-DL Drive:
LG DVDRW Dual 16x16x4x40 GSA-4163RBB Silver OEM
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304301&cks=PLS

Card Reader:
eMagic USB2 Multi Panel Card Reader 5¼" Black, 2x USB 2.0, 1x FireWire, 2x audio
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=306147&cks=PRL

Keyboard and mouse:
Microsoft Standard Wireless Optical Desktop Black, keyboard/mouse, USB
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=306326&cks=PRL

Operating System:
Windows Xp Professional OEM
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=303199&cks=PLS

CPU Cooler:
Zalman CNPS7000B-AICu CPU-Cooler Socket A/478/754/939/940
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302754&cks=SPK

Zounds

padraigf wrote:

For a gaming rig you'd be much better off with an athlon 64 3000+ and an X800XL. You're processor is overkill for your graphics card.

What about one of these cards, the X800XL being a bit too expensive for me
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304727&cks=PRL
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302678&view=detailed

uberpixie

Zounds wrote:

What about one of these cards, the X800XL being a bit too expensive for me
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304727&cks=PRL
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302678&view=detailed

You have a usb hard drive in your spec. Why?

Club 3d card is fine. No point spending extra on on the other 6600gt's.

Also have a think about what paidraigf said about dropping the cpu down a step to get a better gfx card.

A amd64 3200+ is €100 less than a 3500+ and offers most of it's performance.

A bigger gfx card makes more of a difference in games than a slightly better cpu.

chump

fair play for paying for you XP license!

bounty

chump wrote:

fair play for paying for you XP license!

yea billy gates needs the cash, hes only 2nd richest guy in the world now with 25 billion

Khannie

I'd suggest purchasing your OS licence on ebay. Could save you upwards of 50 euro. A lad I work with bought his (legit) for 60 on ebay recently enough. If you're happy enough to use windows 2000 (I am), then you could save even more. Edit: Just checked on ebay: $40-$50 for what looks like a legit licence for Windows 2000 Pro.

I agree with the suggestion of a 3200+ and better graphics if you're going to be playing first person shooters (like Half Life 2 or Unreal Tournament 2004). It's hard trying to mix graphics performance with the right CPU so that one doesn't bottleneck the other, but you'll rarely be sorry that you opted for more graphics power IMO.

I also query the usb hard drive.

You're getting there

SouperComputer

i think the extra 100e is wasted on the cpu, by the time you REALLY need the extra power, you will get probably a 4000 or better for the same difference in price.

maybe put the 100e towards a nice wireless KB and mouse, silly LED's or something.

also, for the time being, pickup a cheapo win 2k licence for the machine. Then you will have cash to get Xp x64 when it comes out and still have a legit OS to fall back on.

ressem

Paying 100 for a specialised 36 Gb system partition seems a bit over the top.
Surprised no-one's demanded raid 0 (shudder)

If you want to buy from komplett I'd suggest swapping the raptor with the
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM NCQ
which has good access times.


Creating a large dedicated games partition helps to avoid game files being shattered to fit into clusters, so keeping load times down.

The Maxtor onetouch is an external (USB) backup drive. Installing applications on it would cause more trouble than it's worth.

Stick with SATA if you don't want a backup drive yet.

Just checking, you've got a decent monitor?

Also:
MS Windows XP Pro to XP 64 Pro upgrade. Register before Jul 31 even if not for immediate use.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/upgrade/default.mspx
If you're paying MS for post, won't it work out the same as the Win2K ebay route

Zounds

The external hard drive is for storing and sharing media, i was planning on installing all programs on the internal drive. What graphics card do you think would fit and well and give high performance, if i drop down to a 3200 CPU?

My monitor is a 17" TFT AOC

ressem

Good plan, but the 36GB raptor is too small then to hold all your apps, data, system, temp files and virtual memory.

Half life 2 alone is about 4GB, Rome Total War 2.5 GB, seems to be an average. Can't see that reducing.

Also performance starts to drop when you go over about 85% used as you start to restrict the file tables.

padraigf

I'll say it again, the X800XL :P
That's an ATI card though so you're SLI motherboard would be overkill for it. You could save a few pennies by changing the board to the epox 9npa ultra if you get an ATI card.

Zounds

can you recommend any particular incarnation of the X800XL?

uberpixie

Zounds wrote:

can you recommend any particular incarnation of the X800XL?

Never had any probs with sapphire stuff.

Sapphire have an x800xl for €315 on komplett.
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=306372&cks=PRL

They also have a silent version for about €20 extra - €336
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307844&cks=PRL

Also get an external hdrive later. USB hardrives are too slow to stream film off smoothly.

Spend the €100 on an internal 200 gig.

Later you always buy a bigger harddrive and convert your old one to an external by buying an external usb enclosure.

If you can squeez an extra €60 get the 74gig raptor.

You can fit windows and have a seperate partition for a page fiile and another for all your games on it. A little more space than the 36 gig.

Prior Of Taize

once your at socket 939 the CPU's are fast enough anyway...whoever is saying get a 3200+ and an x800 is dead right...also get rid of that external hard drive because it will plough into your ram and lag the sh!t our of your system when your doing big transfers.

other than that nice system ...isnt it strange how much you have changed since you started chatting on boards...very helpful people

mkelleher77

Ebay can be dodgy for buying Software, alot of dodgy/shady dealers selling pirated software.......beware.....www.ebuyer.co.uk are quiet reasonable for parts I found....

Zounds

According to the specifications Komplett give the that external hard drive has almost indentical access times and a far faster transfer rate than the internal SATA ones

DemonOfTheFall

Yes, the drive itself is going to be the same as the internal ones, but once you route all of that through a USB cable its going to go down the ****ter.

USB/Firewire will never be as good as a real SATA cable. the theoretical max on USB2 is 480 Mbps. On SATA at the moment its 150 MBps which equals 900Mbps.

Trust me, USB2 drives are nowhere near as fast as an internal drive

uberpixie

Zounds wrote:

According to the specifications Komplett give the that external hard drive has almost indentical access times and a far faster transfer rate than the internal SATA ones

Look through peoples personal experiance, including my own, internal harddrives do not perform as fast as an internal.

You can play music off an external hardrive ok, try run a movie and it stutters.

Forget trying to run a program that uses a lot of system resources.

It's a fact. If you don't believe it get a lend of an external hardrive.

Zounds

I'll take your collective words for it, thanks,
next thing being, is the 10000rpm drive worth it? I can't find anything with google that definitively says anything one way or the other and i've never used a machine with one.

uberpixie

Zounds wrote:

I'll take your collective words for it, thanks,
next thing being, is the 10000rpm drive worth it? I can't find anything with google that definitively says anything one way or the other and i've never used a machine with one.

From my friend's experience they make a huge difference to loading times in games and windows is much more responsive and faster on a raptor.

SouperComputer

uberpixie wrote:

From my friend's experience they make a huge difference to loading times in games and windows is much more responsive and faster on a raptor.

id second that. Once you use a 10,000 RPM drive, youll think there's somthing wrong with a PC running even the best of 7200!

Bit like getting DSL and going back to dialup!

DemonOfTheFall

The newest SATA-II drives with 16mb of cache are supposedly giving the Raptor a run for its money. Haven't seen benchmarks but so word has it on [H] Forum and theyre pretty respectable.

jessy

Zounds wrote:

I'll take your collective words for it, thanks,
next thing being, is the 10000rpm drive worth it? I can't find anything with google that definitively says anything one way or the other and i've never used a machine with one.

Not if your getting the 36gig one, 74gig is sec gen so a little faster. I have a 36gig raptor and a 300gig Maxtor with 16mb Cache and they benchmark about the same. the 300gig maxtor Is €184 on komplett which is about 80quid more expencive than the raptor but when you consider they are about the same speed and you get 10times the storage space, seems like the right option to me. other than that its looking like a decent Machine.