New box build, please help.

U

u4ia

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 1, 2003
Messages
153
AMD x2 3800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103562

WD 250gb SATA Drives x 2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144701

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813131517

OCZ 2gb Memory (ddr400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820146970

Antec Sonata 2 Case (going for nearly quiet setup)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811129155

I'm not a gamer, but I am a power PC user. I'm fairly stumped at what video card I should buy. I don't play many games, but it's nice to be able to I guess. If any1 can give me any advice, I'd appreciate it. I'm ready to order this ASAP.

Current box is a HP P4 2.8ghz box, 2gb of ram, and dying IDE hard drives. I have a Pioneer 108 optical drive I'll be transferring over.

This should be a nice speed increase.
 
If you're going for the quiet set-up, I'd personally get a SLK3000-B case from Antec and a S12-600 PSU from Seasonic from Newegg and some Yate-Loon 120mm fans off Jabtech.com.

Power PC user is kind of vague...what all, exactly, do you plan on doing with this rig?
 
You'd really suggest a $160 power supply? And a $50 case?

That just made my budget jump up by $110. It's already on the verge of being too $$$ right now anyhow.

I can't see spending that much on a power supply. Especially when I've NEVER personally had a power supply die in my 10years of computing.

As for power user, take it as you wish. I'm an IT consultant by trade, I'm on the PC several hours per day, doing anything from surfing the web, to editing lots of pictures, to encoding DVD's, etc. I need a fast box.

I just don't stay up on hardware much anymore due to it not really being necessary. The box I built 3.5 years ago is still kicking ass for just a general PC for the family. AMD 2000 I think, 1gb of ram, nice hard drives, etc. Unless you are really aiming for something it's hard to say just how faster a new computer will seem.
 
u4ia said:
You'd really suggest a $160 power supply? And a $50 case?

That just made my budget jump up by $110. It's already on the verge of being too $$$ right now anyhow.

I can't see spending that much on a power supply. Especially when I've NEVER personally had a power supply die in my 10years of computing.

As for power user, take it as you wish. I'm an IT consultant by trade, I'm on the PC several hours per day, doing anything from surfing the web, to editing lots of pictures, to encoding DVD's, etc. I need a fast box.

I just don't stay up on hardware much anymore due to it not really being necessary. The box I built 3.5 years ago is still kicking ass for just a general PC for the family. AMD 2000 I think, 1gb of ram, nice hard drives, etc. Unless you are really aiming for something it's hard to say just how faster a new computer will seem.
Click to expand...

That case/PSU is loved to death by the quiet crowd. Since you mentioned silence, I tried to get you the quietest rig possible. What you originally picked out will be fine.

Anyway, since it appears you don't game, I'd say something along the lines of a 6600GT or x800 would serve you well. They're fast enough to run games if the option is ever needed, but won't break the bank.
 
GForce64 said:
That case/PSU is loved to death by the quiet crowd. Since you mentioned silence, I tried to get you the quietest rig possible. What you originally picked out will be fine.

Anyway, since it appears you don't game, I'd say something along the lines of a 6600GT or x800 would serve you well. They're fast enough to run games if the option is ever needed, but won't break the bank.
Click to expand...

Are there any slighly less expensive PSU's out there that fit the bill for quiet?

I just REALLY hate the fan sound by a big gaming PC. Been there, done that.
 
I'd say since you're only using a mid-range video card, I'd go with the S12-430 from Seasonic. It's like 100 on Newegg.

If you're looking for cheaper than that, stick with what comes in the Sonata.
 
Be careful with the power supply, I tried an Antec 550Watt $120 unit w/Asus a8n premium and it would power-off abruptly. These Asus boards need at least 30amps on the +5Volt rail to be stable. Ended up going with the S-12 even though it stung on price (I agree with you $159 is outrageous). It's nice and quiet and my rig's been really solid since.

Read all about it here:
-fshttp://francisshanahan.com/detail.aspx?cid=418
 
I ended up getting everything above. Couldn't be happier so far.

EVGA 7800GT is by far the loudest part of the system, will be trying to get a silent cooler on it in the near future.

Can't believe how fast these SATA drives are, running avg times under HD tach at about 53MB/s. I took pictures of the build and I'll be uploading it probably tomorrow once I get files and stuff transferred.

So far so good, and rock solid and very cool. Case is very nice, and no problems with the power supply thus far.
 
Sorry if I'm late here. :p I would also recommend the 6600 GT card for you. If you believe the power supply to be steep, go for the Enermax Silent Whisper series. But make sure it has 30+ Amps as Francis says.

-J.
 
GeForceX said:
Sorry if I'm late here. :p I would also recommend the 6600 GT card for you. If you believe the power supply to be steep, go for the Enermax Silent Whisper series. But make sure it has 30+ Amps as Francis says.

-J.
Click to expand...

I ended up getting the 7800GT.

No-tweak scores have been roughly 16000 in 3dmark03
No-tweak scores have been roughly 7400 in 3dmark05.

The stock PSU that came with the Sonata has been fine so far, and I've stress tested the box as hard as it'll get played.

That's with 6 USB devices, 2 SATA hard drives, 7800 GT, 2GB of OCZ RAM, IDE Pioneer 108 DVD-burner, and the Asus A8N-SLI deluxe.

I've never needed the high dollar PSU's that everyone says is NECESSARY.
 
As for the 450W Smart Power PSU, I would agree it would be good enough but it's reaching the limits.

Try burning your optical drives, extracting a 1 GB file over your two hard drives, running 3DMark2005, with Photoshop doing rendering operations, with a scanner scanning an image, along a printer printing while uploading a 200 MB file over a net and tell me if your computer still stays alive. ;):p

-J.
 
GeForceX said:
As for the 450W Smart Power PSU, I would agree it would be good enough but it's reaching the limits.

Try burning your optical drives, extracting a 1 GB file over your two hard drives, running 3DMark2005, with Photoshop doing rendering operations, with a scanner scanning an image, along a printer printing while uploading a 200 MB file over a net and tell me if your computer still stays alive. ;):p

-J.
Click to expand...

Well until I see limits, there is no reason to upgrade. I sure would have kicked myself in the ass if I would have bought a $100+ dollar PSU now that my setup is perfectly capable.

I'm sure there is a breaking point to everybox, but the PSU is not the bottle neck here.
 
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