Building 1st PC, need help

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s0ulcal12

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Nov 19, 2004
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This is going to be the first pc that i will be building. I decided to order my parts from monarchcomputer.com because i live in california and dont want to pay sales tax.

Alright I have decide to go with intel and i might as well go with ddr2. Now for the list of parts that i decided on.

Case: CM Stacker1 black(from newegg while they have the .99 cent shipping)

Motherboard: Asus P5AD2-E Premium(should i save some money and go with the dlx?)($230)(dLX version $206)
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merc...uct_Code=110468

Cpu: Intel P4 640 3.2GHz LGA775 2MB 800 FSB (HT) (Retail Box-w-Fan)($282)
Thermal compound: Arctic Silver 5(newegg, $10.49 + .99 shipping)

Memory:1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR2 (667) PC-5400 Corsair w/LED (TWIN2X1024-5400C4PRO)($281)
Or
OCZ Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Revision 2 Limited Edition Dual Channel Kit 240-Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR2 PC2-4200($268)
IWhich would be a better choice? Is there a big advantage going with 5400 over 4200 ram?

Video Card: Build by ATI x800xl PCI-express(already have. From Compusa)($250)

HardDrive: 74gig Raptor(Also have already)(150 after rebate)
Planning on getting a storage drive later on. I have a 120 ide drive that i can use for now.

PSU: I don't know what i should get for this part. Can someone help me out on this part.

For the ram, cpu and motherboard it comes out to around $800.00.

For the Case, AS 5, and PSU around $300

How does it look. The main thing that im not sure on is the memory.

Did i forget anything?
 
Hey man, Ill help you on AIM if you want. Send me and IM @ JonMichael06.

PSU brands: Antec, Enermax, Forton, OCZ, and so on...
 
PSU, most of 'em with "active PFC" are pretty decent. Ones by OCZ & Enermax are very good.

"I have a 120 ide drive that i can use for now" keep or add to if you need more space than that. There's nothing wrong with IDE.

The RAM speed is its maximum rated speed (although if you're lucky it'll go over that), it only matters beyond 3200 if you're going to overclock it that high.

Welcome to the board / hobby. Got F@H installed yet?
 
I was reading some threads on PSU and saw that PCandP(something like that) was also good.

As for the harddrive the only reason i say that is because i have had that hd for over 2 years and it might be breaking down soon.

F@H??
 
Folding @ Home. It's a distributed computing project that uses your spare CPU time that would otherwise be doing nothing at all, to help advance medical science by calculating things that it would be impossible to do with a stack of supercomputers. There's alot more about it over at the distributed computing section of the forum, and the project's homepage is http://folding.stanford.edu/ where there's more info and the download.

PC&P is good stuff.

One thing to add to your shopping list...a UPS (power backup) unit is a good thing to have. At the least you should have a decent surge supressor, preferably with a fuse.
 
s0ulcal12 said:
I have had that hd for over 2 years and it might be breaking down soon.
Click to expand...

Is it doing anything odd that would give you that impression? Drives can last substantially longer than that. Regardless, backing up your irreplacable files to optical disk on occasion is a Very Good Idea.
 
Well not really anything that would make me think so, i just kinda want to upgrade it to sata drive. No more ide for me.

Oh and my dvd burner is going to be Plextor 716sa, the sata one.
 
They make dongles for that if you want to do it but save some cash.

Plextor burners are great, I was going to go that route whenever DL media becomes reasonable (I figure a couple years...;p) except I found an external 5.25 USB case for about $15 so now I'm using that. No more bending down and leaning around the desk to swap disks! :)
 
From my 2 ram choices which would you guys choose? or should i consider something else.

I cant find PC&P on newegg, what manufacturer is it under? How many watts should i get? 400-500?
 
You only want to get $250+ RAM if you're gonna be OCing. If you're not gonna OC just get Corsair Value RAM.

Also you need to tell us what you're gonna be using the comp for and what your budget is.
 
Well i may OC later on so i might as well get some quility ram now. I am going to use the computer for video encoding, music, dvd stuff, internet, and playing some games(like HL2, doom3 and BF2). I just want a good all around cpu. I dont really care if its AMD or Intel.

As for my budget, For the cpu, ram, and motherboard im willing to spend around 800 on these parts. For the Case i already decided on the CM stacker black so 160 for that. For the PSU people have been saying not to go cheap on this part so i guess i can dish out 150-200.

I already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and speakers i can use.
 
AMD's Winchester and soon Venice cores are the fastest CPU's right now, they run cooler than intels, and will be better OCers so you might want to consider AMD.

If you consider AMD you want to look at there Winchester 3200($200) and 3500($300) CPU's or there equivalent Venice core CPU's which come out April 4th. Venice will run 3% faster than Winchester clock for clock and also use less watts.

If you consider these CPU's you want to pair them with an Nforce4 board DFI Ultra-D($150) is the best stock performing and OCing Nforce 4 board but MSI and ASUS also make decent Nforce4 boards.

For PSU alot of people are buying the OCZ PowerStream 520w for around $150
 
How would a intel 640 compare to say a 3500 venice core(i know it isnt out yet)? They are close in price.

If i go amd i will have to go with ddr1. Isn't dual core(either side) going to use ddr2? if a want to upgrade it may save me some money if i go intel with ddr2. But if AMD venice core is that much better than intel 6xx series. I guess i can hold off until april 4 and check out some review on them.
 
Athlon 64s stack up amazingly well against 6xx series Pentium 4's, running faster in most tests, emitting about 1/2 as much heat and costing less. Also, Socket 939 will be expandable for Dual-Core and Single-Core chips likely into 2007-- while Socket LGA775 will be replaced as soon as Intel's dual-core chips come out. You'd be MUCH better off with a Socket 939 board on nForce 4 and an Athlon 64.

DDR2 has no speed benefits yet, Intel really jumped the gun making it a requirement of their platform. DDR1 is all that will be required by Dual-Core chips, if you add DDR2 later on boards/CPUs that specifically require it, it'll be your choice-- and it's likely only going to be a requirement on Socket M2 chips, not Socket 939's.

For your RAM, grab 2 512 MB sticks of DDR400/PC3200 Corsair Value Select or Kingston ValueRAM, and for a power supply grab an Antec or Enermax model >400W, e.g. the Noisetaker 420 or the True 430.
 
Ok time to check out amd side. Will all Nforce4 board support the new venice core?

Mobo: since i dont need SLI. i was checking out DFI, Abit or asus .
Dfi Nforce4 ultra-d($140)
or
Abit "AN8" NVIDIA nForce4 ($145)
or

ASUSnForce4 Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU, Model "A8N-E" ($139)

Cpu: Amd 3500 s939 venice core($275?)

Ram: CORSAIR XMS, Xtra-Low Latency 2-2-2-5, 184-Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200, Model TWINX1024-3200XLPRO($270)

DVD drive: plextor 716sa(has anyone had any problem with this drive and nforce4)

Video card, harddrive, monitor, etc, already have
 
It should run a Venice fine. I'd go with the DFI NF4 Ultra-D as it's tried-and-true, and a supreme overclocking board if you're into that. Don't waste money on the low-latency RAM; it's about a 3% performance boost for 250% of the price! 2 sticks of 512 MB Corsair Value Select DDR400 or Kingston ValueRAM will get you the same performance for $120 total, not $270.

Also, I'd get an NEC 350A series double layer DVD writer (only $52 on NewEgg) rather than that Plextor, myself.
 
All Nforce4 boards will support Venice but some may need a BIOS flash.

My friend just built a new comp with the DFI ULTRA-D and I can tell you he loves it. Its super fast for him. The BIOS has alot of options tho, can be overwhelming for some.

No one knows what the prices on the Venices will be but they may be higher than there MSRP due to high demand.

If you're going to pay $250+ for RAM you want OCZ Enhanced Latency Dual Channel Gold VX 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-4000 -Retail($262)

Its the fastest performing DDR out there and some are specualting that when AMD goes dual core they might up the DDR requirements to PC4000 so if they do you'll be alright.
 
Ballz2TheWallz said:
givin your video card selection,your gaming so go A64 and get 1gb of tccd with 2-2-2-5 timings
Click to expand...

Low-latency RAM is, for the most part, a waste of money. I'd pour the saved cash into buying twice as much DDR400/PC3200 ValueRAM/Value Select than you would've before, if you really need to spend that cash. Or invest in a 300 GB Seagate 7200 RPM hard disk. You can never have too much storage. There are just so many better things to spend that $150 on than a 3% performance gain.

(FACT: Memory timings have nearly 0 impact on gaming and the improvements are barely even noticable in synthetic memory benchmarks. Food for thought.)
 
is value ram good for overclocking tho?

OCZ Enhanced Latency Dual Channel Gold VX 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-4000 -Retail
What type of memory is this one? tccd?
 
s0ulcal12 said:
is value ram good for overclocking tho?

OCZ Enhanced Latency Dual Channel Gold VX 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-4000 -Retail
What type of memory is this one? tccd?
Click to expand...
pc4000 is a waste unless your overclocking but still TCCD overclocks well, its generally pc3200 with 2-2-2-5 timings. and it improves my 3dmark05 from having 2.5-3-3-6 timings to 2-2-2-5 timings and thats with an overclock on the higher timings. i dunno if you have A64 chip but its vital to preformence on amd

this is TCCD from ocz that i know of
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-890&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE
TCCD is currently one of the best(preferably to my knoweldge THE BEST)being manufactured right now for overclocking
 
Ballz2TheWallz said:
pc4000 is a waste unless your overclocking but still TCCD overclocks well, its generally pc3200 with 2-2-2-5 timings. and it improves my 3dmark05 from having 2.5-3-3-6 timings to 2-2-2-5 timings and thats with an overclock on the higher timings. i dunno if you have A64 chip but its vital to preformence on amd
Click to expand...

Actually, performance gains from lower-latency RAM are very minimal, and RAM timings are irrelevant to overclocking. On Athlon 64 systems you can lock down the RAM divisor as low as you like to avoid having to buy >400 MHz rated RAM, but the only real reason to get >DDR400/PC3200 is to run the CPU host clock synchronous to RAM clock, yielding a (small) performance gain.
 
.... Actually, they aren't that far apart, but that isn't what I said.

PC2700 runs at 333 MHz effective, 166 MHz actual clockrate.
PC3200 runs at 400 MHz effective, 200 MHz actual clockrate.

The difference in latencies is what don't make much difference. Going down by 1/3 for example on your RAM timings, decreases the # of bus clocks that must occur before a RAM operation completes. This is not directly proportional to the speed of the operations, the RAM is still bottlenecked waiting on the rest of the system. Going from say, 3 clocks to 2, does not create a 1/3 performance increase. Simple as that. The actual figure is more like 2%.

Now, you have to ask yourself is that 2% RAM speed increase worth $160 when you can use that same money to add another gig of regular non-gimmick RAM, and still have $50 left over?
 
As I said before, on an Athlon 64 you can lower the RAM divisor so the RAM CLOCK DOES NOT RISE WITH THE CPU CLOCK, so you DO NOT NEED any type of special RAM to overclock the machine. I have 2 512 MB sticks of Kingston ValueRAM (DDR400/PC3200) in my machine and I am running it at 262 MHz FSB over the stock 200, with the RAM clock at about 365 MHz. Great CPU performance, RAM performance only about 3% slower than it would be running synchronous to the bus. And I saved over $150 this way.
 
Ok if i go AMD... will the plextor 716sa work fine in the dfi nf4 ultra-d? I heard that with non-intel sata may not work right
 
Yeah the Plextor works fine.

Had some boot issues until I flashed with the 3/10 BIOS, so you might want to do that early on.
 
s0ulcal12 said:
Ok if i go AMD... will the plextor 716sa work fine in the dfi nf4 ultra-d? I heard that with non-intel sata may not work right
Click to expand...

It'll work fine, any SATA disk will. Who did you hear that nonsense from? Stop listening to them!
 
it was on cdfreaks i think....their forums. Seeing that their forum is based on CD\DVD drive, i thought it would be correct.
 
s0ulcal12 said:
it was on cdfreaks i think....their forums. Seeing that their forum is based on CD\DVD drive, i thought it would be correct.
Click to expand...

That Plextor drive is the shit, but you can get one for half the price that works well enough that you might not notice the difference.
 
Are we going to get anything faster than 16x, or is that where dvd-+r will stop. Like how cd burning stopped at 52x and everyone went to dvd.
 
Once Blu-Ray media gets reasonable in a few years, I don't think it'll matter as much anymore.
 
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