Building A New System

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Hey everyone! I plan on building a new system sometime soon in the future, mostly for gaming, and I would love your advise on what parts to buy. I've picked out some parts from NewEgg but nothing is official yet so please let me know what you think. Thanks so much!

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 1GHz HT Socket 939 Processor - Retail

ASUS A8N5X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail

Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

BFG GeForce 7900 GT 256MB

Other Notes: I don't plan on overclocking. I can't decide between the 3700+ or the 3800+ X2. I chose the nforce4 chipset instead of the nforce4 ultra because I saw no real benefits from the ultra, am I overlooking something? For the RAM, would I be better off getting 2GB of Corsair ValueRAM with looser timings? Would that be overkill for my setup or would it be better to stay with 1GB of ram with tighter timings? And finally, hard drive space isn't an issue whatsoever. Once again, thank you all for you time in helping me decide on what should be an awesome gaming computer! Cya around!
 
Unless you do a lot of multitasking, save your money and go single core.

Nowadays, I would only consider 2 GB RAM. You might not have games that use this, but there are games out now and in the future that use more than 1 GB, and less paging is always better. Timings shouldn't matter unless you decide to tweak and overclock.

Please don't pay 100 bucks for a 36 GB drive :). Such a waste of money for the amount of space. Spend maybe a couple more bucks and get a 250 GB or a 320 GB HD. With a 250 GB seagate or maxtor, you're getting a 7:1 space ratio, for the same amount of money. Unless it was a U320 15K scsi drive, I wouldn't ever consider it.
 
I would suggest you definitely go with the dual core processor instead of single core. Most intensive applications will be coded to be multithreaded as time goes along and game developers will also be working to create multithreaded games. Encodeing and alot of popular rendering applications already make use of multiple threads and are MUCH faster with a dual core CPU. The fact that you can multitask fluently is just another bonus.

As far as SATAII hard drives go the 3Gb/s throughput isn't going to make a bit of difference. 7200rpm hard drives dont make use of the 1.5Gb/s throughput of regular SATA drives. I would suggest a 250GB or 300GB hard drive over the 36GB raptor though but it doesn't really matter if its SATA or SATAII.
 
Dr. Doak said:
Thank you both so much for your input! Ok, so it looks like I'll be getting 2GB of ram then. After browsing NewEgg it looks like this will probably be my best bet:

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail

So the only real concern left is the hard drive. As I said space isn't an issue whatsoever, however you point is still very valid. This brings me to another question. What about SATA II hard disks? I know they aren't 10k rpm, but they do have 3.0GPS transfer and a considerable amount of hdd space. And I know I would have to get the nforce4 ultra chipset to take advantage of the SATA II. But how would it compare to the Raptor or even a normal SATA I drive as well?

Once again, thank you for helping me out! =D
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Good choice on the RAM. I have used several CORSAIR ValueSelect sticks without a problem.
 
I, too, would opt for the dual core. I won't be going back to single core again.

I would get this motherboard: KN8 Ultra

It's only $8 more and free shipping. NF4 Ultra chipset. Abit makes rock solid, high quality boards.

1GB or 2GB

Both pairs work very well with that board.

PSU
 
As mentioned above, he will be primarily using this rig for gaming. As many tests have concluded (incuding hardocp), most if not ALL games do not take advantage of dual core capabilites. Right now, AMDs dual core solutions are just too darned expensive, around 280 for the cheapest the last time I checked, maybe you could find for a couple dollars cheapers.

If you want to keep this rig in the $800 range, forget dual core for now, and put the money towards a good PSU and more RAM, or even a better video card (GTX). 2 GB of RAM and/or a faster video card is going to make a lot more of a difference for most games than dual core will.

True, some games in the future will take advantage of dual core, but they aren't out right now and probably won't be for a year or so.
 
I would wait for conroe to come out . AMD cpu's should sell for about half what they are now save yourself some money.
 
I would get the 74gb or 150gb raptor instead, they're faster and better than the 36gb one
 
The 36.7 raptor is on the DO NOT BUY EVER list in most forums, here too.

As for hard drives, I've got the perfect drive for you and everyone else on the planet looking for excellent performance and storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701

Go dual core too. While you probably won't see much benefit in games, as the [H]ard article stated, you will see it in general usage. Even though you are primarily a gamer, you have to do other things with your machine too.

Don't bother with the GTX. Just overclock your GT. The cooler should be able to handle the extra heat without issue.
 
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