~$1500 - help!

Z

Zen

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Jul 27, 2003
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Hey everyone,

I built a rig about 1-2 years ago, and have recentley given it to my family. I'm in the market for a new one - but haven't been up to date with all the new hardware (processors, dual core etc...)

If you were given $1500 (with aLITTLE flexibility) and you were planning on gaming (but you also wanted a long-term PC) - what would you buy?
 
I'd buy what I have in my Signature... and a better HDD because my Maxtor drive is loud as a Shotgun while seeking.
 
Zen said:
Hey everyone,

I built a rig about 1-2 years ago, and have recentley given it to my family. I'm in the market for a new one - but haven't been up to date with all the new hardware (processors, dual core etc...)

If you were given $1500 (with aLITTLE flexibility) and you were planning on gaming (but you also wanted a long-term PC) - what would you buy?
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Just for the tower? or monitor, KB, mouse, speakers and the rest?
 
Won't I be able to build a better rig than the velocity for cheaper?


1500 for solely the rig.
 
Zen said:
Won't I be able to build a better rig than the velocity for cheaper?


1500 for solely the rig.
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I was just giving some idea whats out there. Yes you can build a better tower
;)
 
Case: cooler master centurion $55

DVD Burner: NEC $40

HS/F: XP 90 w/ Panflo M1A $36

RAM: G.Skill DDR500 2x1gb $217

Mobo: DFI SLI-D $165

PSU: OCZ 520W $125 AR

CPU: X2 3800+ $322

Video Card: eVGA 7800gtx $469

Subtotal: $1429 but you need to add a HD. Something SATA w/ a 16mb Cache

This leaves open SLI but if you don't want to be bothered with SLI, you could get a cheaper MB. Most people like DFI here for overclocking, assuming you want to go that route. Oh and you might want a better HS/F but the XP-90 is one of the best for the price.
 
Taken from a previous thread..

1500build.png
 
How stable is DFI? When I built my rig a few years back I never even considered DFI, are they new?
 
Zen said:
How stable is DFI? When I built my rig a few years back I never even considered DFI, are they new?
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Not at all, and don't listen to the other people here. DFI is for running at 300+ MHz on your FSB, only for serious, serious overclocking. ASUS or ABIT will do fine for your casual overclock, and are MUCH better in the stability and "work-out-of-the-box" departments (and are cheaper to boot ;) ). That Ultra-D DFI board costs as much as most basic SLI boards, and in my opinion is not worth the money, time, cursing, and furstration. I have heard that DFI boards are stable with heavy tweaking in the BIOS, but the way you talk you sound like you wouldn't know what to look for. Avoid DFI like the plauge.
 
sac_tagg said:
Not at all, and don't listen to the other people here. DFI is for running at 300+ MHz on your FSB, only for serious, serious overclocking. ASUS or ABIT will do fine for your casual overclock, and are MUCH better in the stability and "work-out-of-the-box" departments (and are cheaper to boot ;) ). That Ultra-D DFI board costs as much as most basic SLI boards, and in my opinion is not worth the money, time, cursing, and furstration. I have heard that DFI boards are stable with heavy tweaking in the BIOS, but the way you talk you sound like you wouldn't know what to look for. Avoid DFI like the plauge.
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Giving advice based on "I've heard"? :rolleyes:

The DFI is not unstable, if it were it wouldn't be the great overclocker that it is.. neither is it difficult to set up. These two common misnomers stem from the fact that so many heavy overclockers use the board to run their hardware on the bleeding edge, and because when it was introduced it offered a set of BIOS options that were previously unaccessable with other NF4 Ultra-based motherboards. Now that the standard is set, most if not all of the motherboard manuf. include these options on their flagship boards (the Abit An8 series for example has far more BIOS options than the DFI now) That's not to say you have to play with them all and possibly create issues with your system.

BTW, the Asus A8n SLI runs $160, the Abit An8 SLI runs $150. The DFI as you can see above runs $120.
 
Stellar said:
BTW, the Asus A8n SLI runs $160, the Abit An8 SLI runs $150. The DFI as you can see above runs $120.
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Mmmm-hmmm, the ASUS A8N-E costs $109 ;)

Stellar said:
That's not to say you have to play with them all and possibly create issues with your system.
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You still have to play with them to get it stable. He obviously doesn't know how to do this.
 
Samsung HD definitely, Seasonic S12 PSU definitely, avoid Corsair Value with nf4 definitely... And screw water cooling, just get a Thermalright heatsink or an Arctic Cooling Freezer64.

I dislike my DFI. It's too picky. Sometimes I have to move my video card to the other slot to get it to boot or it just sits there running but not doing shit. But it does generally work.
 
sac_tagg said:
Mmmm-hmmm, the ASUS A8N-E costs $109 ;)


You still have to play with them to get it stable. He obviously doesn't know how to do this.
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Play with what to get it stable? The most he'd have to do outside of overclocking is change the VDIMM to his RAM's rated setting (but not if he buys the RAM I selected, which runs at the default 2.6v).

If he left everything else at default he would be fine and perfectly stable. On the off chance he does run into a problem he's got a huge, very knowledgable support user base over at DFI-street to hold his hand thru fixing it.
 
dandragonrage said:
Samsung HD definitely, Seasonic S12 PSU definitely, avoid Corsair Value with nf4 definitely... And screw water cooling, just get a Thermalright heatsink or an Arctic Cooling Freezer64.

I dislike my DFI. It's too picky. Sometimes I have to move my video card to the other slot to get it to boot or it just sits there running but not doing shit. But it does generally work.
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Could be (most likely) because you've physically modified the video subsystem of the board.
 
dandragonrage said:
Only if you consider switching it to SLI mode modifying it...
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Am I wrong or does it not still require conductive paint on the chipset to enable SLI on the Ultra-D? Also, are you running more than one 6600GT?
 
Since I'm looking for a longterm machine, I want to stay away from overclocking (which may, consequently, steer me clear of DFI land).
 
Yes, it requires connecting traces, but it has nothing to do with the problem. And no, I'm only running one. I moved it down so it wouldn't be right on top of the horribly placed chipset.
 
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