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Evaluation Requested - First Build

E

EdDoctor

n00b
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
Messages
11
I've been researching HardOCP for the past few weeks and must say that the amount of information is one up'd only by the cooperative and friendly advice given by the patrons of this board. It is great to see a 'community' that offers advice and their time for the pure enjoyment of seeing people get the most out of their systems. So a big THANK YOU to all of the active members of the community for making my search as effortless as possible.

Initially I was going to wait for nForce4 boards to come out, I wantedt pcie, ddr2 and all the new bells and whistles. After doing a little research, I decided that a good Nforce3 and AGP solution would be more than enough to get a good 3 years out of a system (that's assuming 1 light to medium upgrade in the time frame).

This is what i've decided on and would really like your critiques.

CASE: ANTEC Sivler Aluminum Performance 1 Sereis ATX Mid Tower

MOBO:Gigabyte " GA-K8NSNXP-939" nForce3 Ultra Chipset
I wanted nF3 specifically for the onboard Firewall. The 939 chipsset was chosen so that at least 1 CPU upgrade option could be assumed. I don't plan on doing much overclocking so system stability and reliability are at a premium.

CPU:AMD socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-53
I wasn't sure if this was worth it or not. I keep seeing that the benches for the FX-53 are not so amazing as to warrant the extra purchase. Input on this choice would be appreciated.

MEMORY:4x Corsair 184pin 512mb DDR pc-3200
I keep readidng that corsair is the best, and 2 gig's should keep me happy for quite awhile.

HARD DRIVES: I have a bit confusion here. Initially I wanted to go with just one big hard drive and do a partition for the OS
Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM SATA
However, a friend suggest I go with a raptor for the OS to supplament the larger drive
Raptor 74GB 10K rpm SATA
Now, my main purpose for this computer is Games and a little video editing on the side (purely recreational). I'm not sure if I need the raptor or not, so some input here would be greatly appreciated as well.

CD/DVD DRIVE:
Plextor 12X DVD+/- RW Drive
what can I say. Good reviews all around.

VIDEO CARD:Leadtek NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT
I like the added cooling + the software bundle that comes with this card. The Ultra dosen't seem to be worth the extra cash.

SOUND: Audigay2 ZS Gamer

SPEAKERS: I live in a apartment, so can't go too loud. I figured that these would be good performeres but again, not my area of expertise.
Creative Inspire T7700

I have a 22" trinitron CRT that I will be using and the mouse/keyboard will be a logitech. Do they make adaptors for the connection to vid card?

POWER SUPPLY: This is what I really need help on. I have absolutely no clue about these. I know I need alot to power the 6800GT. I'd like to have a surplus power for future upgrades, as well as somethign that runs quiet. Appreciate the suggestions!


Well, that's my System. It will be my first ever build. Yes I am popping my [H] cherry this fall, any help from the wise gawd's would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
 
OK i'll see what i can do:

First of all, for the CPU i would NOT get the FX-53. It sports ONLY the extra 512kb of cache over the 3800+, and since the 64's have onboard memory controllers, they already recieve amazing memory bandwidth with low latencies. This basically means it is very easy for the CPU to communicate with the RAM, and basically makes the extra cache less important. Also, the 64's have short pipelines, Extra cache is more important on a P4 based architecture.

Personally, i'd get the 3500+ and overclock.

Next, 4 sticks or ram is going to be VERY hard to do. I know many athlon motherboards have problems doing 3 sticks of ram, so unless you see somewhere that your motherboard can support all 4 sticks at PC3200 speeds, i would either just get 1 gig of ram (more than enough) or 2 sticks of 1gig DIMM's to give you 2gb. It is much more expensive, but its the only real way to get it working.

The two hard drives will work very well for you.

For power supplies, i would recommend the Fortron 530w, or the Enermax Noisetaker 425w power supply. They both have very good amperage on their rails, and are known as high quality.

Any other questions i can help ya with?
 
I'd say go with the FX-53 and overclock it. That way it's top-of-the-line and it's overclocked, not a lower-end model overclocked to speeds that don't even rival the FX-53. In all the benchmarks you can see how well the FX-53 does, and it definitely puts itself a big distance ahead of any other chip. That's how I feel anyway, it's definitely good for 3 years use.
 
your specs there are almost identical to my computer (see sig)... for the three questions you pose here are my responses and how i came to my conclusions...

CPU: Price was not an issue for me, so if it is for you your perspective may be a bit different, however I chose the 3800 because the gain on the 53 was minimal if any (sometimes the 3800 was outperforming the 53) in games especially, so i went with the 3800 and decided to save myself a couple hundred dollars (at the time it was something like 800 vs 650 for the price difference between the two)... i figured i could better spend that money elsewhere.

HDD: Get the raptor, trust me, you'll love it... you will definitely notice faster load times in games and programs... but perhaps the best advantage i've noticed is being able to cold boot my computer in about 25-30 seconds now vs 45-60 with my old 7200rpm HD... like you mentioned i use the raptor for games/progs/OS and use the 7200 seagate drive i have for things like music, movies, and saved files... it works like a charm, and i can seriously say this is one thing i will never go back on again...

Power Supply: Yes, you did need a very solid power supply for the 6800GT (i have the BFG 6800GT OC and it eats some power, can't recall the number off the top of my head at work)... my system is running on a 480W Enermax Silent psu... i love it... it's very quiet (a little bit warm perhaps (but nothing dangerous or disturbing, just puts out some heat in my room) and i have everything running off of it just fine... the DPS on the gigabyte board is supposedly able to help keep clean power to the cpu and such too and i've not noticed any problems with my system... (though i'm by no means a power guru that knows a ton about psu's, mine has worked for my previous 2 generations of computers, and still works fine now, so i think if you get something at least 480W, and i highly recommend enermax, then you'll be fine here)...

Now one glaring omission i did notice from your system....

Get a second DVD drive (not the rewritable varity, just a plain DVD drive) because if you are into copying DVD's (*disclaimer: only do this where legal ;) * ) then you'll want to be able to burn straight from the second DVD drive (or if you're burning CD's it works the same way)... rather than having to copy stuff to HD then burn it... you'll save yourself a TON of time and probably some headaches too... plus i always recommend having 2 optical drives as one just requires too much cd changing ;)... oh yeah, and when you're making backups, you can still do stuff on your other drive...


anyway, i like the system you've chosen (as it is basically my computer ;))... and think you'll be happy with those specs for quite some time if that's what you settle on...

so there's my 2cents... anyone got change?
 
I absolutely hate the Antec cases. I've given my two away for free. They are heavy, clunky and I don't really like the way it's designed on the inside. I will take my Coolermasters and Lian Lis anyday. Other than that, it looks fine.
 
Thanks for the Advice.

I'm also looking at the coolermaster praetorian (sp?). I love LL cases but the usb/firewire on the bottom is ill positioned for the amount of periferals I use.

the Power supply advice was just what I needed!
 
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