Making a new comp after 3 years away

M

Mestizo

n00b
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Sep 8, 2004
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8
Hi All,
The last comp I made was 3 years ago, since then I've pretty much been out of the scene, so I want to get your opinion on what I'm getting. Here's the list of components I'm considering:

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0 for AMD & Intel systems Power Supply - Retail

NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

SAMSUNG 204B-Black Black 20.1" 5ms LCD Monitor - Retail

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

BFG Tech BFGR68256GSOC Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail

CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3700BNBOX - Retail

And a NV Silencer 5 rev 3.

End total: around $1700

I'm basically trying to make a quiet, yet decently powerful comp. I might cave and replace the 6800 with a 7800GT. My major concern is that the mobo won't post with the XMS ram installed, since I've read a couple of the newegg reviews saying that it had problems with XMS ram. Anyone know more about this?

Thanks in advance!
Mestizo
 
Can't put that AGP 6800GS into that mobo ;) You should go with the 7800GT. Great bang for the buck. You should try to squeeze in a dual core 3800+, perhaps.
 
I second that. And I'll be sure to say again that you can't use an AGP card with that board, it on supports PCI-Express.
 
Get the EVGA 7800GT and SLi Mobo bundle instead. Its a really good deal.

Linkage: http://www.evga.com/articles/public.asp?AID=258

And also to reinforce the last two posters points, You can't put an AGP card in a PCIe board.

Other than that it looks good, you'll really like the Sonata II, very durable design, PSU is strong to, Antec Smartpower 450. It also cools really well for only having the one 120mm case fan, imo.
 
haha thanks guys, that'll teach me not to read specs too closely.

So that mobo will boot just fine with 2 sticks of XMS?

Thanks for the link devman, how do I get that bundle? I've added that specific 7800gt to my newegg cart, but I don't see how to add the motherboard.
 
I don't know if newegg has it anymore, you're catching the tail end of the offer, its been going on for a month or two now. Anyway, looks like Tigerdirect still has it at $339 + shipping, thats including a rebate, and ClubIT still has it as well. I ended up getting mine from Tigerdirect about a month ago, and haven't had a problem.

Another thing check out EVGA forums for to make sure about your RAM with that board, I haven't had any problems but I heard interesting things about this board being picky about its RAM.

Unoffical RAM list: http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9905

OFFICIAL RAM & CPU LIST: http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11206

Edit: Looks like monarch still has it too.
 
ummm.... id get 2 hd's and a dell lcd (cheaper and better)

id also get 1 mb l2 cache, dont think the 3700 has that
 
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