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Feedback on an emergency built system

J

JSM88

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 22, 2003
Messages
77
Ok, I've been following this stuff for years, fiddling with the innards since apple II+ days, but yesterday I was forced to buy and build an entirely new system in 24 hours at the drop of a hat - I'd like some opinions on what I came up with.

Now I have to admit, I'd gotten a little lazy, the cause of this emergency was the sudden death of my Abit BH6 1.0. I kept meaning to upgrade, but other then the video, just never got around to it. I figured at this point that it was best to wait for the new socket and pci-x cards before building my new baby.

On Tuesday morning as I was swapping plugs so that the cable guy could diagnose a box problem I heard a pop followed by the trained cable technicians, "dude, you're smokin here" (nothing like a professional opinion.) A cloud of foul smelling (but not the usual electrical smoke smell) was coming from the area of my computer, but the computer was still running. At this point I'm guesing that the APC put out the smoke (though it still seems to be working) and while the computer still worked for a while, two hours later I was getting no post and no HD spool. As my wife needed to do several crucial things on this system in the next 48 hours this was not a happy moment.

Given that I couldn't know what had bought it and what still worked, and I didn't have a lot of time to guess I put an order into newegg for the following:

p4c 2.8
matched 256meg mushkin ddr3500
Abit IS7 MB
basic case and thermaltake 480W ps
ati 9800pro

got the whole thing for $700, ordered it Tuesday at 11, arrived Wednesday at 3, had it built last night.

My question is this - if you had to build a new system at this instant what choices would you have made? Is this the best way to go given the major changes coming down the pike? Are there areas that I over or under bought?

If you had to buy all the parts for an Intel system today - What would you buy?
 
Choice is simple for me, since I just put my current system together last week(With some older parts, that's why its on a 2.4C or a 9800 Pro).

Q3A Demo0001 screams along at 405FPS with sound and misc other background apps going.

If I had to buy EVERYTHING new, I would get the following:
P4 2.4C (300*12 = 3600MHz)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Matched pair of Kingston HyperX PC3500 1GB (Running 200MHz with tight timings)
Radeon 9800 Pro
Any old large case.
550Watt Antec or Forton.
Two 120MM case fans(CPU intake directly above cpu, exhaust at very top and centered.)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - Accept nothing but the best in sound.


This nearly mirrors my current setup, as seen in my sig. In fact, unless someone trades up my FS athlon setup for a 2.4C I'm just going to stick with this and get a celeron for my second, media encoding, rig.
 
Dew - since you seem to care about sound, and as I have 6000 mp3's i like to listen too through a fairly good audio setup, what do you think of the Game Theatre XP 7.1. I have it, it's not fried, and I'm trying to decide between that and the onboard audio. As it is that GT box acts as an optical extension cord for my system as I use opt-in to my receiver from my comp and the reach of the box makes up for the max 12' length of the optical cables. How much better is the Turtle Beach?
 
If you're already using optical, stick with it.

I am still using analog, so I love the TBSC's driver support and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of 96db. (Zero line noise to my speakers, unlike my old SB Lives(I've owned four of them).)

If you have something that works for you using optical, stick with it. Optical totally eliminates all the merits of the TBSC except for drivers. So if it works, keep it.

Besides, the Game Theatre XP uses the CS4630 DSP, and guess what DSP the TBSC uses. :D
 
512MB? Are you nuts. I cannot stand anything less than 1GB. Then again, I play VERY memory intensive games.
 
Originally posted by Dew
512MB? Are you nuts. I cannot stand anything less than 1GB. Then again, I play VERY memory intensive games.
Click to expand...

not sure but i think Filter meant 512mb stick to maybe upgrade with another later...he's got 1gb in teh sig...come to think..it is an odd statement.:confused:

JSM88 "matched 256meg mushkin ddr3500"...you've gone with mem thats on the pricey side...i'd of gone with some samsunggeneric pc3200 and use the 5:4 or 3:2 dividers in the bios to keep the mem in spec,when OCing, or close to it..
that way you may have been able to get a gb of ddr for around the same $..

just my opinion...sweet deal just the same tho...good purchase.

and answering the question titled...what i have in my sig..well minus the ocz mem that is equal to the 2 x 512 samsung generic in performance (wife's rig)...ah well only 30CAD wasted there. :eek:

did you find out what really fried?...sounds like the PSU.
 
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