$1500 CAD PC Build

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Guardian999

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Aug 16, 2005
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I am building a new PC that will be used mainly for 2D art, like Painter. I work at very high resolution so performance is important. I game occasionally, but it isn't the top priority.

Athlon 64 3000+ Venice - $200
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 ULTRA-D - $167
Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA - $160
Antec Neopower 480W - $127
OCZ Platinum El PC3200 2x512 - $195
eVGA 6800GT - $408
Antec P180 Advanced - $160
TOTAL - $1416

Here is what I picked so far. I still need monitor (around $300), DVD-writer, keyboard and mouse... That is going to put me over budget, so if anyone has advice, I'm all ears.
 
You could get cheaper ram(patriot 2,3,2,5, or corsair), and buy the harddrive when it's on sale for around $100.

-Mn Scout
 
I see you live in Canada. I guess you can disregard my statements on price then. You still good get slightly cheaper ram.

-Mn Scout
 
MN Scout said:
I see you live in Canada. I guess you can disregard my statements on price then. You still good get slightly cheaper ram.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Being from Canada limits availability and you have to keep the conversion in mind. Any advice on which RAM to get that is cheaper, but still allows for equal performance? I am semi-noob with comp stuff, but I am learning quickly.
 
Are you planning to overclock, and are you trying to hit a specific mhz on you ram sticks? Seeing you motherboard decision of a DFI I think I might sit this discussion out and wait for a more knowledgeable person to come though. I've heard that the DFI is the best ocer , but it's picky and you have to get all the bios settings just right, so depending on how much you want to try the oc route maybe someone can suggest a different motherboard that is more friendly.

-Mn Scout
 
MN Scout said:
Are you planning to overclock
Click to expand...
Yes. I am relatively new to overclocking, but I have overclocked CPUs and GPUs. If anyone has a good link or information on RAM O/Cing or O/Cing in general, I'd appreciate it.

MN Scout said:
I've heard that the DFI is the best ocer , but it's picky and you have to get all the bios settings just right, so depending on how much you want to try the oc route maybe someone can suggest a different motherboard that is more friendly.
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I have read similar information about the abilities of DFI mobos. I plan on getting the top performance out of whatever hardware I get, so DFI seemed like a logical choice. I will need to do some research on it, but I think that is the best route. I am willing to get water cooling later, if necessary.
 
Asian Dub Foundation said:
if ur goin to be doin CAD, i think it should be better with 2gb of ram
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Oh. Maybe I should say that by "CAD", I meant Canadian Dollars... Lol.
 
The 6800GT's price just seems like, mind boggling. I'm sure you can get it cheaper than that even in CAD.

Edit: BTW, it's out of stock.
 
Megadeth_Guy01 said:
The 6800GT's price just seems like, mind boggling. I'm sure you can get it cheaper than that even in CAD.

Edit: BTW, it's out of stock.
Click to expand...
Nope. eVGA has the cheapest 6800GT that I've found. It's crazy expensive. I have thought about going down to the 6600GT (saving $200) or to an X800 (save $50). For now, the 6800GT is still in the build mostly for it's dual dvi, and sheer power.

Also, I don't plan on getting the comp until sometime around Christmas, so prices will drop and stock will change.
 
^^^ Can always count on DougLite for posting the HDD info ;)

Question man... Why the hell ya spending over 300$ on a case and P/S (dont forget case shippin is 10-20$)? When you got a 1500$ budget, you can skimp almost 200$ off that case, get a good case/PS combo and get a much better CPU. I dont know why everyone picks OCZ ram... yeah, its good stuff, but its over rated... Get ya some Corsair or Kingston...

Heres ya a good Antec case:
ANTEC SONATA II BLACK ATX MID TOWER WITH 450W P/S

With that money saved between the case ~ ram ~ P/S, you might think of getting one of those tasty X2 CPUs ;)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 939 Dual Core CPU - Retail $374.00 (usa)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 939 Dual Core CPU - Retail - $467.79 (canadian)

Or just upping the CPU a few notches...
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ - Retail - $359.94
 
Rune75's comment has been enshrined in my signature :)

Also, for the OP: You may want to examine your applications, and see if you will benefit from having 2GB of RAM. If your applications are chewing up more than 1GB, then having 2GB of Value RAM will be better than having 1GB of RAM that OC's well.
 
If you are serious about things like high resolutions, 2GB of ram, or even 1.5 is better than 1.0. I think that low latencies won't be a huge big deal, so you may want to concentrate on overclockability of the chips themselves since you are talking about overclocking that CPU so much (at least, if you really mean to.) I suspect the DFI board, if any, will provide the voltages the winbond UTT CH5 chips need to oc properly, so you can always try them if you want (I got these SpeedPremium chips for pretty cheap) though you should of course make sure that the board actually can do this. If you give them around 3-3.2V to the memory, you can possibly get up to 250, maybe even (probably rarely) as much as 275. Well, I can only verify that at 2.8V they'll reach 215MHz and be overnight stable, but be unstable at 220 (I may try to get it more precice later, or I may not.) d-: If that board doesn't do such voltages, you'll probably want to look into memory that OCs more at lower voltages. Ask around in the memory board for your pricerange and what specifically you can get out of that board and someone will probably give you something more specific.

Whatever you decide on, just remember that your memory will end up holding back any overclock if the memory is TOO cheap. As long as it's halfway decent though, you should be able to get it so that the OC bottleneck lies elsewhere. Ideally you can get it down to the CPU itself in the end. I've heard of DFI boards doing some amazing things, so I suspect you can count on it to not hold you back any.

(BTW, Quadro modding won't really make any difference if you really are talking about 2D applications being your most important factor. Quadro = 3D CAD.)
 
Thanks for all the information. There is so much thought that needs to go into a PC, and I'm not the best person to do it. Thank the [H] God for this site!! Lol.

*looks back and forth* (the cowards way of saying "bump"... lol)
 
*cheer DougLite*

Oh, and I stand by my thoughts above, Guardian999... (Bumping for the hell of it.) I'd write more but I'm almost late for werk.
 
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