Building a PC soon..

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nghtfx

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Jun 8, 2005
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the case comes with a 420w one -->



PS2 size/ 420 watts ATX12V P4 ready Power Supply


Anyone have experience with these parts? (reliability/speed ect.)
 
A 350watt raidmax ran my amd 1700+ alright. I never overclocked though. You might want to check out nearby computer stores for cases, since you won't have to pay ~20$ in shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820218405
This should work well if you want to overclock, and it's only slightly more than the corsair value select.


And have you thought about going s754? Since you're budget is kinda low, I assume you won't be upgrading for awhile, and a s754 system could probably save you money, and give you better performance in that case.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103488

30$ more than the 3000+, and no dual channel, but it's 600mhz faster at stock, which would be quite an upgrade :)


And since s754 would probably leave you with agp, here's a good 6600gt to go with it, if that's what you decide on:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122206

Leadtek's were generally pretty hot from what I recall. I went with an MSI 6600gt when I bought mine, but only because leadtek's were always out of stock :(

Btw, this is about 29$ cheaper than the asus choice, but that's after MIR, so that might affect your decision.


*just read the last post:

Since I wouldn't trust newer hardware to a raidmax, an antec smartpower will be pretty cheap and should run your system fine. Or get something like maybe a true power 430watt(which I is very quiet compared to my old raidmax one). That should only cost you about 50-75$.
 
nghtfx said:
the case comes with a 420w one -->



PS2 size/ 420 watts ATX12V P4 ready Power Supply


Anyone have experience with these parts? (reliability/speed ect.)
Click to expand...
I mean..yeah there's a psu in the case, but case psu's don't tend to be all that great.

That's quite a bit of power there..sooo...well...iono..it was an idea.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
A 350watt raidmax ran my amd 1700+ alright. I never overclocked though. You might want to check out nearby computer stores for cases, since you won't have to pay ~20$ in shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820218405
This should work well if you want to overclock, and it's only slightly more than the corsair value select.


And have you thought about going s754? Since you're budget is kinda low, I assume you won't be upgrading for awhile, and a s754 system could probably save you money, and give you better performance in that case.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103488

30$ more than the 3000+, and no dual channel, but it's 600mhz faster at stock, which would be quite an upgrade :)
Click to expand...


What exactly will dual channel do? (I'm behind in computer knowledge)

I don't plan to overclock any time soon.. but later down the road i might mess around with it :) Would there be a performace drop if i went s754, or is 754 and 939 nearly the same?
 
Nearly the same but s939 can run RAM in dual channel, doubling the bandwidth as I recall. This, according to the forum god Eclipse, and others, will net about 3-8% performance gain. However, s939 cpus were generally clocked 200mhz lower than their equally rated s754 brethren, so a 3000+ s939 cpu is still comparable to a 3400+ s754. Anyway, the 600mhz difference in cpu speed should definately make up for the lack of dual channel.

The reason why I suggested s754 is you can get good deals on it. It's slightly last gen technology, so it's cheaper, but it's also somewhat less upgradeable. Cpu-wise you'll have mobile chips to look forward to, which seem to always oc well. You probably won't be able to use SLI soon(although there was s754 SLI at computex I hear) or a dual core cpu, but I doubt either loss will affect you. And as pci-e isn't any faster than agp atm, that shouldn't affect you either. I mean, if you're going to upgrade your comp several times in the next couple years, like by replacing video cards, motherboards, cpu's; stuff like that, then s939 will be good for you. If you're just going for best bang for the buck however, s754 will be good.

I nearly went with a s754 3400+ bundle at tiger direct awhile ago, but went with a 3000+ winnie instead, and I'm sorta regretting it now :(
Anyway, if you do go s939, get a venice core cpu, as it'll run cooler and overclock better in general. That should only cost you 5-15$ more.
 
STOP. DO NOT USE THE POWER SUPPLY THAT COMES WITH YOUR CASE UNLESS IT'S AN ANTEC SUPPLY. RAIDMAX PSU'S ARE GODAWFUL AND CAN DESTROY YOUR HARDWARE, SO ARE MOST OTHER PACK-IN SUPPLIES.

Don't go with Socket 754, you will lose all ability to upgrade to much more advanced processors, like dual-core Athlon 64 X2s. You also lose dual channel memory support, which dramatically improves performance in highly memory-bound applications. Your original selections are good, but I'd swap the HDD for a Seagate 160GB 7200 RPM model for about the same price, which will be much cooler and much quieter (near total silence), and a case with nice quiet 120mm fans like the Antec Sonata. With the Sonata you also get an excellent True380W supply from a GOOD manufacturer that will be more than sufficient to drive that system, and dead quiet itself, too.
 
If he's on a max budget of 750$, I doubt he'll have a minimum of 500$ in a month of so to get a new processor.

Good point on the psu though. It might work, but it's also risky and generally not worth it.

Oh, and if that sonata case isn't horribly expensive, a 380watt truepower would probably work pretty well for your setup, so that'd probably save you money.
 
Vanilla Coke said:
From what I've read dual channel offers about a 5% performance boost
Click to expand...

Depends entirely on the task. It can be much more dramatic in memory heavy operations. Gaming springs readily to mind as does most heavy content creation work.
 
If you could cough up a little more dough, get a larger hard drive. I know that the price on the drive that you've chose is hard to beat, but if you are planning to make this a gaming machine you'll want a lot of space for games, movies, music, and other things. For just a little over $100 you could get this and it should give you more than enough room to start out with.

Also, stick with a well-known brand name PSU that runs around 400 watts or higher. Besides Antec, there's Zalman, Vantec, Thermaltake, Cooler Master, Enermax, and Sparkle. I'd recommend a separate case and power supply as it is hard to find a case with a good PSU outside of the Antec or Thermaltake brands. However, it may be more expensive that way. For example, I was able to find a good case for $25, but purchasing my PSU (Antec TrueBlue I 480W) made the overall cost over $100.

Also get an optical drive, if not two. If you'd have to get one drive, try to get a dual-format DVD burner. You can find various types of single-layer and double-layer DVD burners for under $100. (Click on the links in the previous sentence for some examples.)
 
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor (Venice) Socket 939 Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
$192.00

MSI K8N NEO4-F nForce4 Athlon 64 Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
$88.99

Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail *** Free 2nd Day ***
$82.00

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380817AS 80GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer ***Free 2nd Day***
$67.95

Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH GeForce 6600 GT PCI Express 128MB DDR3 Video Card w/HDTV-Out & DVI Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
$179.99

Coolermaster CAV-T03-UW Cavalier 3 Aluminum Mid Tower Case (Silver) Retail
$63.99

Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-400 400W Power Supply Retail ***Free 2nd Day***
$64.99

Subtotal: $739.91

Prices from www.zipzoomfly.com.
 
$55 Motherboard - Chaintech VNF3-250 (s754)
$101 Case - Antec Sonata (Antec TRUE380W) Chiefvalue.com
$120 CPU - Athlon 64 2800+ Retail (s754) Chiefvalue.com
$109 Hard Drive1 - WD360GD 10Krpm 8mb cache Monarchcomputer.com
$108 Hard Drive2 - ST3200826AS 7200rpm 8mb cache Ewiz.com
$151 Memory - 3x TMSP400/512 for 1.5GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM Newegg.com
$158 AGP Card - Chaintech Geforce 6600GT 128MB AGP Chiefvalue.com

$802 - Total

Hard Drive1 for program files and games, Hard Drive2 for backup, media files, and filesharing.
Drop Hard Drive1 and total is 693 for a highly overclockable and solid system and leaves you budget for a decent Sound Card or USB Headset. For games, it's video card and hard drive that determine game loading and framerate more than processor speed usually. You should be able to get to 240FSB with everything stock mentioned above.
 
Wasted 100$ on hdd's, and why get 3 sticks of RAM?? 1gb is doing well still in games today.
 
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